Tired of falling into holes, someone in a country where everyone is blind from birth dreams of the ability to avoid falling into holes. Unfortunately, nothing is foolproof and Thales, reputed to have been the very first of the Presocratic philosophers and someone who, I imagine, could see as well as the next person, still had his problems with holes. As an ancient and probably apocryphal anecdote would have it, one day Thales fell into a well while looking up at the stars. We know all this because a witty servant girl just happened to be on the scene, ready with a quip and eager to gossip. Late in the sixteenth century, Michel de Montaigne would include this anecdote in his Apology for Raymond Sebond. According to Montaigne, Thales does not simply fall into the well.