Pre-Socratic philosophy facts for kids

The Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers were active before Socrates. The popular usage of the term come from Hermann Diels' work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics, 1903).

Most of what we know about the pre-Socractic philosophers come from quotations by later philosophers and historians. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts have survived in complete form.

The standard reference works in English are:

• Gompertz, Theodor 1901. The Greek thinkers: a history of ancient philosophy. Volume 1: the beginnings. London: Murray.
• Guthrie W.K. 1962. A history of Greek philosophy. Volume 1: The earlier presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Cambridge University Press.

The fundamental idea which motivated most of the presocratics (as they are called) is naturalism. This is the idea that questions about life and the world can be answered without using myths, and that "the natural world is the whole of reality".

With the Greeks we see rational thought and scientific reasoning emerge from the mists and myths of a pre-scientific age, not suddenly, but slowly and gradually.

List of philosophers and schools

• Milesian school

Thales (624–546 BC)

Anaximander (610–546 BC)

Anaximenes of Miletus (585–525 BC)

• Pythagorean Schools

Pythagoras (582–496 BC)

Philolaus (470–380 BC)

Alcmaeon of Croton

Archytas (428–347 BC)

• Heraclitus (535–475 BC)
• Eleatic School

Xenophanes (570–470 BC)

Parmenides (510–440 BC)

Zeno of Elea (490–430 BC)

Melissus of Samos (C.470 BC–unknown)

• Pluralist School

Empedocles (490–430 BC)

Anaxagoras (500–428 BC)

• Atomist School

Leucippus (5th century BC, dates unknown)

Democritus (460–370 BC)

• Sophism

Protagoras (481–420 BC)

Gorgias (483–375 BC)

Thrasymachus

Callicles

Critias

Prodicus (465–390 BC)

Hippias (485–415 BC)

Antiphon (person) (480–411 BC)

Lycophron

Anonymous Iamblichi

• Diogenes of Apollonia (c.460 BC–unknown)

Other groupings

• Seven Sages of Greece

Solon (c. 594 BC)

Chilon of Sparta (c. 560 BC)

Thales (c. 585 BC)

Bias of Priene (c. 570 BC)

Cleobulus of Rhodes (c. 600 BC)

Pittacus of Mitylene (c. 600 BC)

Periander (625–585 BC)

• Aristeas of Proconnesus (7th century BC ?)
• Pherecydes of Syros (c. 540 BC)
• Anacharsis (c. 590 BC)
• Theano (mathematician) (5th century BC, dates unknown)

Images for kids

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  Map of Greek territories and colonies during the Archaic period (800–480 BCE)

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  St. Elmo's fire (luminous plasma created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object) in a ship. Xenophanes' contemporaries attributed this phenomenon to the deity Dioscuri. Xenophanes argued that the observed illumination is due to small clouds influenced by special circumstances relating to stars—an example of naturalism and reductionism.

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  Pythagoras

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  According to Parmenides, Being, what exists, is like the mass of a perfect sphere: undifferentiated, indivisible, and unchangeable.

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  Democritus by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628. Democritus was known as the "laughing philosopher"

See also

In Spanish: Filosofía presocrática para niños