Pre-Socratic Philosophers
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- Thales
- held that the basic stuff out of which all else is composed is water
- Anaximander
- held that the original source of all things is a boundless, indeterminate element.
- Anaximenes
- said that the underlying principle of all things is air.
- Pythagoras
- maintained that enumerability constitutes the true nature of things.
- Heraclitus
- held that the only reality is ceaseless change and the underlying substance of the universe is fire.
- Parmenides
- said that the only reality is permanent, unchanging, indivisible, and undifferentiated being and that changes and motion are illusions of the senses
- Zeno
- divised clever paradoxes seeming to show that motion is impossible.
- Empedocles
- held that apparent changes in things are in fact in the positions of basic particles, of which there are four types: earth, air, fire, and water. Two forces cause these basic changes: love and strife.
- Anaxagoras
- mantained that all things are composed of infinitely divisible particles; the universe was caused by mind (nous) acting on matter.
- The Atomists
- (especially Leucippus and Democritus) said that all things are composed of imperceptible, indestructible, indivisible, eternal and uncreated atoms. Motion needs no explanation.