A list of famous Pre-Socratics by region
Pre-Socratic philosophy is an ancient Greek school of philosophy that existed from around the 6th to 5th centuries BC, before Socrates flourished. The Presocratics' two main schools were the Ionian school of Anaximander and the Italiote school of Pythagoras, and Presocratics rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. They asked questions about "the essence of things", including from where everything came, from what everything was created, how to explain the plurality of things found in nature, and how to describe nature mathematically. Later philosophies rejected the Presocratic views, including the belief (advocated by Empedocles) that everything on Earth was made of the elements of earth, air, fire, or water. However, the Presocratic cosmologies would be updated by later developments in science.