One of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece and judged by Aristotle to be the founder of physical science; that is, he was the first Greek to search for the ultimate substance of things, which he identified with water. A polymath, he is supposed to have predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 bc and to have introduced the study of geometry to Greece. He apparently believed in some kind of hylozoism and panpsychism, but claims made in late antiquity about his doctrines and discoveries are regarded as unreliable.