Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. The pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, meaning the beginning and the substance of the universe, but their inquiries also reached the workings of the natural world as well as human society, ethics and religion, and they sought explanations based on natural law rather than the actions of gods. Their own writing has been almost entirely lost, so knowledge of their views comes from later authors who discussed their work. The tradition began in the sixth century BC with the three Milesians, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who attributed the origin of the world to water, the unlimited and air respectively.