thales: the origin of the landscape

Thales of Miletus (c. 624 - c. 546 BC) is considered to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. As a mathematician and astronomer, he was the first to break from mythology and approached the study of the world from a scientific perspective. Thales' primary principal was that water is the source of all things. He believed that water could be transformed into mist and vapor and in its purest form, air. Air could become the sky and in fact, could become fire in the form of the sun and stars. Clouds would be a metamorphic phase. He also believed that water could develop into a solid state and become land. In essence he believed that all things, regardless of their current state, came from water. He further believed that regardless of the state in the transformation processes, all things would return to the state of water. These triptych images seek to represent the Thales principal.