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The history of philosophy in the west begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre-Socratics. This is not to deny the occurrence of other pre-philosophical rumblings in Egyptian, Semitic and Babylonian cultures. Certainly great thinkers and writers existed in each of these cultures, and we have evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonian thought. However, the early Greek thinkers add at least one element which differentiates their thought from all those who came before them. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the ordering of the world -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world.
As it turns out, nearly all of the various cosmologies proposed by the early Greek philosophers are profoundly and demonstrably false, but this does not diminish their importance. For even if later philosophers summarily rejected the answers they provided, they could not escape their questions:
And the method the Greek philosophers followed in forming and transmitting their answers became just as important as the questions they asked. The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. In other words they depended on reason and observation to illuminate the true nature of the would around them, and they used rational argument to advance their views to others. And though philosophers have argued at length about the relative weights that reason and observation should have, for two and a half millennia they have basically united in the use of the very method first used by the pre-Socratics.
Difficulties often arise in pinning down the ideas of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and in determining the actual line of argument they used in supporting their particular views. This problem arises not from some defect in the men themselves or in their ideas, but simply from their separation from us in history. While most of these men produced significant texts, we have no complete versions of any of those texts. We have only quotations by later philosophers and historians, along with the occasional textual fragment.
Thales Anaximander Pythagoras Heraclitus of Ephesus Xenophanes ParmenidesParmenides of Elea ( 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the Southern coast of Italy. He is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers. He argued that the common-sense belief in the reality of t and the other Eleatic philosophers LeucippusThis article is about the philosopher. There was also a Greek mythological Leucippus (mythology Leucippus or Leukippos ( 5th century BC) was the originator of atomism, the philosophical belief that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable,, DemocritusDemocritus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace around 460 BCE; lived to be very old and died in 370 BCE). Democritus was a student of Leucippus, and co-originator of the belief that all matter is made up of various imperishable and the other AtomistsAtomism is the theory that all the objects in the universe are composed of very small particles that were not created and that will have no end. The word atomism derives from the ancient Greek word atomos which meant "that which cannot be cut into smaller ProtagorasProtagoras (in Greek ) was born around 481 BC in Abdera in Ancient Greece. He was a pre-Socratic philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato, who in his dialog of the same name credits him with having invented the role of the professional and the Sophists EmpedoclesEmpedocles ( 490 BC 430 BC) was a Greek philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum also known as Acragas, a Greek colony in Sicily. He maintained that all matter is made up of four classical elements (which he called roots) water, earth, air and fire. In add