The Basis of Everything Is Water: Understanding Risk in Markets

Water covers much of the world’s surface. Its ubiquity in many forms, in sea, in rain, in sweat and so on, perhaps explains why it has held such a fascination for mankind. Today, most of our lives are somewhat divorced from nature, in comparison with our forefathers who toiled the land or hunted their prey. Today over half the world’s population inhabits cities. A minority lives in the countryside. However, even in cities, people are willing to pay a premium to have a view of a river or a sea. For humans, there is something appealing about water, aside from the obvious necessity that we need to drink it and the fact that our bodies are largely composed of water. Thales was particularly interested in water. One of the ideas that Thales is best known for is his philosophy about the importance of water. He believed that the principle of everything was water. Aristotle explains that: Most of the earliest philosophers conceived only of material principles as underlying all things. That of which all things consist, from which they first come and into which on their destruction they are ultimately resolved, of which the essence persists although modified by its affections — this, they say, is an element and principle of existing things…. Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, says the permanent entity is water (which is why he also propounded that the earth floats on water).