The Presocratics

'The Presocratics' are the first philosophers of the Greek world, active in the sixth and fifth centuries BC before Socrates: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus, Pythagoras of Samos, Heraclitus of Ephesus, Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, Empedocles of Acragas, Anaxagoras, and the atomists Leucippus and Democritus. They were the first to ask about the origin and nature of the world through reason rather than myth. Their books are lost, and survive only as fragments quoted by later writers.