Thales

The founder of natural philosophy, Thales was a Greek pre-Socratic

philosopher from the Ionian city of Miletus (c. 620 - c. 546 B.C.). He predicted a
solar eclipse and was considered one of the seven ancient sages.
Pythagoras

was an early Greek philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician known for the
Pythagorean theorem, which geometry students use to figure the hypotenuse of a
right triangle. He was also the founder of a school named for him.
Anaximander

was a pupil of Thales. He was the first to describe the original principle of the
universe as apeiron, or boundless, and to use the term arche for beginning. In
the Gospel of John, the first phrase contains the Greek for "beginning"—the same
word "arche."
Anaximenes

was a sixth-century philosopher, a younger contemporary of Anaximander who

believed that air was the underlying component of everything. Density and heat
or cold change air so that it contracts or expands. For Anaximenes, the Earth was
formed by such processes and is an air-made disk that floats on air above and
below.
Parmenides
of Elea in southern Italy was the founder of the Eleatic School. His own
philosophy raised many impossibilities that later philosophers worked on. He
distrusted the evidence of the senses and argued that what is, cannot have come
into being from nothing, so it must always have been.
Anaxagoras
who was born in Clazomenae, Asia Minor, around 500 B.C., spent most of his life
in Athens, where he made a place for philosophy and associated with Euripides
(writer of tragedies) and Pericles (Athenian statesman). In 430, Anaxagoras was
brought to trial for impiety in Athens because his philosophy denied the divinity
of all other gods but his principle, the mind.
Empedocles was another very influential early Greek philosopher, the first to
assert the four elements of the universe were earth, air, fire, and water. He
thought there were two contending guiding forces, love and strife. He also
believed in transmigration of the soul and vegetarianism.
Zeno

is the greatest figure of the Eleatic School. He is known through the writing of
Aristotle and Simplicius (A.D. 6th C.). Zeno presents four arguments against
motion, which are demonstrated in his famous paradoxes. The paradox referred
to as "Achilles" claims that a faster runner (Achilles) can never overtake the
tortoise because the pursuer must always first reach the spot that the one he
seeks to overtake has just left.
Leucippus developed the atomist theory, which explained that all matter is made
up of indivisible particles. (The word atom means "not cut.") Leucippus thought
the universe was composed of atoms in a void.x
Born around 570 B.C., Xenophanes was the founder of the Eleatic School of
philosophy. He fled to Sicily where he joined the Pythagorean School. He is
known for his satirical poetry ridiculing polytheism and the idea that the gods
were portrayed as humans. His eternal deity was the world. If there was ever a
time when there was nothing, then it was impossible for anything ever to have
come into being.