[Revised entry by Boudewijn de Bruin, Lisa Herzog, Martin O’Neill, and Joakim Sandberg on March 10, 2023.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Finance and philosophy may seem to be worlds apart. But they share at least one common ancestor: Thales of Miletus. Thales is typically regarded as the first philosopher, but he was also a financial innovator. He appears to have been what we would now call an option trader. He predicted that next year’s olive harvest would be good, and therefore paid a small amount of money to the owners of olive presses for the right to the next year’s use. When the harvest turned out to be as good as predicted, Thales earned a sizable…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More