Thales says that it [the nature of all things] is water, wrote Aristotle (Metaphysics, 983 b20), recording words spoken some two hundred years before he lived. Thales developed his argument on water being the origin of all things living in Miletus where the Maeander River flowed by circa 585 BC. He observed water as it shifted into many forms. He observed water flow, heat up and evaporate, rain back down and form puddles. He observed his sweat, his thirst, the plants thirst and how water gave life to everything. Thales’ recognition of this ever-changing material changed our understanding of life. His principle suggested that water guided nature, not the many gods whose stories have been narrated over the centuries. He relied on his senses to grasp nature, at a time when gods were pointed at for all phenomena and myths gave reason to nature. He is the founder of natural philosophy, the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, of reality, of existence. Thousands of years later, his words resonate in NASA’s Fact Sheet stating “About 70 percent of the human body is made up of water and, coincidentally, more than 70 percent of Earth is covered in water.” (Follow the Water: Finding a Perfect Match for Life, 2007). This is not a coincidence. Observation, whether done with modern scientific equipment or our human eyes, finds water ubiquitously.

Lets then dive into water, metaphorically and materially. Philosophy, being the nature of knowledge, informs and is informed by physics, the knowledge of nature. Niels Bohr, noted quantum physicist and philosopher, stated “We are a part of that nature that we seek to understand.”(Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 2007, p26). So what can we do with Bohr’s statement telling us that we are undoubtedly made out of matter which is the matter of the universe? Just like Thales’ statement once did, we can use it to evolve our understanding of life.

Quantum physics, in a few words, is the fundamental theory of physics. It observes nature on the subatomic level, a scale much smaller than 10–10 m (size of an atom). Eames’ visualization (check out Power of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero, dir. by Charles & Ray Eames, 1977)  leaves us at this scale, with one subatomic particle filling up the screen and this is where quantum physics begins. This is where we see matter as waves. This is where Newton’s deterministic physics is broken apart and uncertainty emerges. It emerges from the double slit experiment. An electron is sent through a membrane with two slits and doesn’t land where the two slits correspond. Continuing the experiment one electron at a time, physicists observed a pattern emerging called the interference pattern. Just like waves. This is called the wave-particle duality. An electron is a particle when measured, until then it is a wave. Wave with possibilities of being anywhere, going anywhere. Like waves in the sea, like currents of the Bosphorus. Constantly moving and always turning back around. If what makes us up is both a wave and a particle, we are matter in constant flux. We are water.

Discovering our physical reality "reawaken(s) our attention to the textures of the world that really does exist and which we inhabit together." (Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 2005, p21). Scientific findings such as the particle-wave duality trigger philosophy to be reconfigured. Liquifying boundaries around bodies and boundaries between human - non-human, living - non-living, new materialism opens up a perspective where all things are inseparable, where all things are entangled. Entanglement, yet another term from quantum physics, means that things which seem unrelated or disconnected are actually interdependent -that things cannot be separated into individual distinct parts. “For us humans, the flow and flush of waters sustain our own bodies, but also connect them to other bodies, to other worlds beyond our human selves.” (Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water : Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology, ch. Introduction: Figuring Bodies of Water, p2). Thinking with water, then becomes a method for grasping the world in this entangled configuration. Thinking with water, I feel my self, my veins, the veins of the city, his veins and the fish’s veins.

When I stand by the Bosphorus and a body suspended mid-air enters my horizon before diving into the water, I am reminded "a place is not simply a material culture, a built or natural environment: it is a myth, a series of narratives or shared cultural imaginaries." (Dr. Neil Mulholland, On Ambient Art, 2009). I am standing by the water, I am standing by a myth from centuries ago. My horizon fills up with bodies running from all around, with bodies sitting with legs wide open, with bodies massaging, stretching, guiding, not hiding. I am reminded by the myth of the Maiden Tower. A myth that is not so original in its narrative, yet definitive in its worlding. The myth, gazing upon this body of water, has the power "to represent while escaping representation" (Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, 1988, p581). It builds up the boundaries of which bodies can be seen and which bodies shall be kept away, who belongs and who is ‘other’. thirsty by the water, a serpent in front of me materializes from this place existing within this myth and me negotiating my place in this body of water. It is an act of worlding. “Worlding is a particular blending of the material and the semiotic that removes the boundaries between subject and environment, or perhaps between persona and topos.” (Helen Palmer and Vicky Hunter, https://newmaterialism.eu/ : Worlding, 2018). Playing along with the myth and turning my gaze upon the shoreline, I see a place without a horizon, without a present or a future. I see a reality stuck.

"No matter how hard we look, we see very little of what we look at." (James Elkins, The Object Stares Back, 1996, p11). I am by the same body of water and I am grasped by a bucket of water. In a bucket of water with holes at the top, fish swim. Displaced, they swim searching for oxygen molecules. Breathing, trying to breath. my lungs desire water like istavrit needs oxygen marks this encounter, it is an act of worlding. The bucket is a container, the bucket is a world. A world amongst many others lined up by the shoreline with fishing rods hanging in between. It is a world we imitate for our watery kins with a bit of water pulled up from the Bosphorus. A world of water for fish to (not) survive as -to my eyes invisible- oxygen molecules gradually decrease. Oxygen molecules float into my lungs with ease thanks to the moist vapour in the air. We are not the master of, we are of nature.

Snake, the liberator of the maiden, still meanders. Meandering from my house to yours, the snake is our drainage pipes. tightness in my throat is this snake making its way from our homes to the sea. The snake in our houses is making its way to the seas. Every time we flush or wash, we leave our houses through drainage pipes. A turbulent flow of human cells, bacteria, mucous and fiber mixed up with molecules of water flow through its corrugated surface. We are matter in constant flux. We are water.