Pre-Socratics:

refers to philosophy in Greece before Socrates (470-399 BC) & schools contemporary with him but NOT influenced by him.  The Greeks knew them as the physical or natural philosophers.  Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the first to clearly distinguish between these philosophers and earlier thinkers, theologians, story tellers & bards who attributed natural events to the Gods.   Diogenes Laërtius (3rd century AD) divides the natural philosophers into two groups: the Ionian, led by Anaximander (610-546 BC) and the Italiote, led by Pythagoras (570-495 BC).

 

They produced significant works but none survived; they are known only through quotations by later philosophers & a few textual fragments.  They rejected traditional mythological explanations of natural phenomena in favour of more rational accounts.  They asked questions about "the essence of things" and other fundamental issues:

• From where does everything come?

• From what is everything created?

• How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?

• How might we describe nature mathematically?

Others concentrated on defining problems & paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific & philosophic study.  Later philosophers would reject many of their answers and their cosmologies have been significantly revised & updated.  However they asked the important questions many of which are still being asked today.