Gelson Silva - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The Presocratics were philosophers and scientists who lived and worked in various cities througho... more The Presocratics were philosophers and scientists who lived and worked in various cities throughout the ancient Greek world, from southern Italy and Sicily to the coast of the Black Sea, from the beginning of the sixth century bce to the time of Socrates in the late fifth century. Among a number of lesser names, some fifteen major thinkers stand out in this period. Though their work survives only in fragments and in reports from later writers, who were often unsympathetic, as well as far removed in time, enough remains for us to be able to effect a reconstruction with some degree of plausibility, and thus to see that they formed the foundations of Western scientific and philosophical thought. Most of them wrote in prose, and indeed they were among the first prose writers in the West, helping to develop the genre; but some kept to the traditional didactic medium of verse.