Patricia F. O'Grady is an Australian historian of philosophy specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and in particular on

Thales of Miletus Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded ...

. She earned a doctorate in 1998 at Flinders University, with the dissertation ''Thales: Some Problems in Early Greek Science and Philosophy''. Her books include: *''Thales of Miletus: The Beginnings of Western Science and Philosophy'' (Ashgate, 2002) *''Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Ancient Greek Philosophy But Didn't Know who to Ask'' (edited, Ashgate, 2005) *''The Sophists: An Introduction'' (edited, Bloomsbury, 2008) She was the author of the first book to cover Thales, although another has subsequently appeared. Some of her claims about Thales have been controversial. One of these concerns Thales' prediction of the

eclipse of Thales The eclipse of Thales was a solar eclipse that was, according to ancient Greek historian Herodotus, accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. If Herodotus' account is accurate, this eclipse is the earliest recorded as being ...

in May 585 BCE. Following

Bartel Leendert van der Waerden Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (; 2 February 1903 – 12 January 1996) was a Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics. Biography Education and early career Van der Waerden learned advanced mathematics at the University of Amster ...

, O'Grady suggested that Thales could have predicted this solar eclipse through its occurrence 23 1/2 months after a lunar eclipse, using

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...

n data on prior eclipses. However, although David Sherry finds this theory convincing, it has been disputed by Dirk L. Couprie, who argued against the possibility of making the prediction in this way and provided an alternative theory. Another of these claims concerns a passage in

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

stating that Thales described the Earth as floating on water. The consensus of scholars is that Thales thought that the world was flat, and floats like a leaf or a raft on a flat ocean, but O'Grady takes the non-standard and disputed position that Thales thought of the Earth as a sphere surrounded by space, with its land masses ("earth", using the same word as Earth in ancient Greek as one does in English) floating on its oceans, and that Thales was misinterpreted by Aristotle.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Flinders University alumni Australian historians Australian women historians Australian philosophers Australian women philosophers Scholars of ancient Greek philosophy {{Australia-historian-stub