“Anaximander was the first scientist in recorded history.”

The word scientist was apparently first introduced by the English polymath William Whewell (1794-1866) in 1834. He coined it by analogy with artist.

The importance of his work is that he introduced scientific and mathematical principles into the study of astronomy and geography. Anaximander believed that the earth was a cylinder. The crucial contribution of Thales to scientific thought was the idea that natural phenomena are explicable in terms of matter interacting by natural laws, and are not the results of arbitrary acts by gods. Anaximander more rationally suggested that lightning is caused by clouds being split up by the wind. An essential part of the Milesians' success in developing a picture of nature was that they engaged in open, rational, critical debate about each other's ideas.

The title "first scientist" is difficult to bestow due to the evolution of scientific inquiry, but William Gilbert (1544-1603) is a strong candidate, particularly for his work on magnetism and his influence on Galileo Galilei. Many experts recognize Ibn al-Haytham, who lived in present-day Iraq between 965 and 1039 C.E., as the first scientist. We could go back to the most ancient of the ancient Greeks, all the way back to Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 624 B.C.E. to about 545 B.C.E. By many accounts, Thales achieved much in both science and mathematics, yet he left no written record and may have been, like Homer, a celebrated figure who received credit for many great achievements but who may never have existed at all.

Thales' hypotheses were new and bold, and in freeing phenomena from godly intervention, he paved the way towards scientific endeavor. He founded the Milesian school of natural philosophy, developed the scientific method, and initiated the first Western enlightenment. Many anecdotes are closely connected to Thales' investigations of the cosmos.

Anaximander was the author of the first surviving lines of Western philosophy. He speculated and argued about “the Boundless” as the origin of all that is. He also worked on the fields of what we now call geography and biology. Moreover, Anaximander was the first speculative astronomer. He originated the world-picture of the open universe, which replaced the closed universe of the celestial vault. By drawing a map of the world he was the first geographer. But above all, by boldly speculating about the universe he broke with the ancient image of the celestial vault and became the discoverer of the Western world-picture.

The term 'scientist' is a relatively new invention, having been coined by British polymath William Whewell in 1833. Before then, those who tried to fathom the workings of nature were regarded as philosophers. As such, some regard the Ancient Greek thinker Aristotle to be the first scientist, but for his pioneering use of experiment, observation and maths to understand nature, the Italian genius Galileo Galilei arguably best fits the description of 'first scientist'.

Aristotle is widely regarded as the first real scientist. He wanted to find out everything that could be known about the natural world. Aristotle's contribution to science is perhaps best demonstrated by his classic description of the growth of a chick inside an egg, which involved a simple experiment of opening eggs in sequence.

The first recorded important contributions to Greek science are from the city of Miletus, near the coast of what is now Turkey, beginning with Thales in about 585 B.C., followed by Anaximander about 555 B.C., then Anaximenes in 535 B.C. We shall argue below that these Milesians were the first to do real science, immediately recognizable as such to a modern scientist, as opposed to developing new technologies. The crucial contribution of Thales to scientific thought was the discovery of nature.

Anaximander, the sixth-century BC Greek philosopher, is often called the first scientist because he was the first to suggest that order in the world was due to natural forces, not supernatural ones. He is the first person known to understand that the Earth floats in space; to believe that the sun, the moon, and the stars rotate around it—seven centuries before Ptolemy; to argue that all animals came from the sea and evolved; and to posit that universal laws control all change in the world.

The English academic William Whewell first put the word “scientist” into print in 1834 in a review of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences. Debates over its acceptance or rejection were, in the end, not about the word itself: they were about what science was, and what place its practitioners held in their society. The term experienced a very turbulent existence before its final grudging acceptance almost one hundred years later.

Rovelli mounts a persuasive argument that Anaximander was the first true scientist, the first to suggest that order in the world was due to natural forces, not supernatural ones. Prior to Anaximander, Greek thinking, including that of his teacher Thales, ascribed the causes of natural phenomena to the actions of the gods. Anaximander was the first to look for natural rather than supernatural mythical causes and to be willing to reject the views of authority.

Thales of Miletus was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and merchant. He is considered Greece's first true scientist and mathematician. He was also the first Greek mathematician that established geometric truths using deductive logic and reasoning.

Anaximander was an innovative thinker for his time and made important contributions to science, philosophy and mathematics. He described the origins and evolution of the known universe without citing supernatural causes, a major departure from previous mythological explanations. Anaximander therefore, came to be known as the Father of Cosmology for pioneering naturalistic explanations of cosmology, independent of divine forces.

About 14 years before Anaximander was born, Miletus had been the birthplace of the first scientist in recorded history, Thales. Anaximander was one of Thales' first students, perhaps the very first. Thales' core belief, which he passed to Anaximander, was that rational explanations rather than the Ancient Greek gods should be used to account for natural phenomena.