ABSTRACT
“Thales was best known in antiquity as an astronomer”, wrote Stephen White. The idea that Thales played a role in the emergence of astronomical knowledge has deep roots. By an embryonic astronomy, we usually mean a first representation of the celestial bodies, placing them in space and, perhaps, in time, along with a more or less sketchy account of how the sky is composed as a whole and how it works. Apuleius points out that the measurement of the angular amplitude was performed by Thales in old age. In conclusion, Thales certainly developed a great interest in several astronomical recurrent phenomena, with limited inferences on other conjectures, but no comprehensive idea of the sky, or of the celestial bodies, can be ascribed to him despite what some ancient sources and modern interpreters claimed.
