Abstract

In this chapter, Hankinson considers the contributions to the explanation of nature of each of the major Presocratic figures. Following a brief sketch of the cosmogonies of Homer and Hesiod, Hankinson discusses the Milesian thinkers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, focussing on the presence in their thought of notions such as material monism, the principle of sufficient reason, the Unlimited, and the reduction of properties. Hankinson then discusses Xenophanes of Colophon, Heraclitus, Alcmaeon, Parmenides and his followers Zeno and Melissus, as well as the movement of Pythagoreanism. The Eleatics checked the confidence of Presocratic speculation by offering powerful a priori theses on causation, and the attempt to bypass these conclusions characterize the more sophisticated theories of causation of the succeeding thinkers Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and the Atomists.