Pre-Socroties

"Thales believed that the Earth floats on water and all things come to be from water. For him the Earth was a flat disc floating on an infinite ocean. It has also been claimed that Thales explained earthquakes from the fact that the Earth floats on water. Again the importance of Thales' idea is that he is the first recorded person who tried to explain such phenomena by rational rather than by supernatural means."

However, despite his rationality, he still anthropomorphised water, and believed the earth was flat. Still, his thinking was on the right track for the time.

I was always taught that Thales was attempting to replace to God's as explanations (Hesiodic and Homeric Gods) with the explanations of nature.

He also said 'God's are in all things'. I think he believed that within all things lay the answers to those things.

TTF

I also thought that Thales could be saying that everything on Earth contains a part of the divine...that somehow everything retains a part of the Creator.

But then, hey, I could be reading too much into it. That's probably the thing that annoys me most about Philosophy!