This Day in History-The Beginning of Philosophy

Today, May 28 is one of the beginning dates offered for the beginnings of philosophy in Ancient Greece. The reason is quite simple really. A solar eclipse happened, as predicted by Thales of Miletus on this day in 586 BC. This solar eclipse happened to lead to truce between the Lydians and the Medes, a truce that would be in effect until Croesus of Lydia was conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia in 546 BC. But that is another story.
Why would a solar eclipse begin philosophy? Because under the paradigm of Greek mythology, the religion of the Greeks, he should not have been able to do it. Under Greek mythology every event takes place because of the gods. Consider the cause of the plague in Homer's Iliad that is distressing the Greeks as the epic opens. "Apollo, who in anger at the king drove the foul pestilence along the host, and the people perished, since Atreus' son had dishonoured Chryses, priest of Apollo" (Il. i.9-11). Typically, as in Homer, events have an immediate course in the wrath of the gods. Thales usurps the possibility of the gods by predicting something. Prediction implies one of two things for the Greek worldview. Either the gods to not exist or Thales is a prophet with the mind of the gods.
This involves just a just brief foray into causality. In human experience (shut up Hume), causes always precede events. In Greek mythology, all events had supernatural causes with immediate causes. By predicting an event, Thales called into question the immediate supernatural causes of this event, and thus all events. If Thales can predict the effect, the cause is known or knowable. But Greek mythology held that the causes of storms, plagues, even the seasons are known only to the gods. The consequences of Thales prediction are obvious. Either the gods did not really control events like the eclipse Thales predicted or they planned the event do far beforehand that Thales was able to deduce it or discover it. But either of these negates the traditional understanding of causality according to the worldview of the Greek mind.
Thus Thales, by using reason and science, began philosophy by predicting an event that the gods did not cause.