Philosophers and Great Thinkers From Ancient Greece

Certain early Greeks from Ionia (Asia Minor) and southern Italy asked questions about the world around them. Instead of attributing its creation to anthropomorphic gods, these early philosophers broke tradition and sought rational explanations. Their speculation formed the early basis for science and natural philosophy. 

Here are 10 of the earliest and most influential ancient Greek philosophers in chronological order.

01

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Thales

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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. More »

02

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Pythagoras

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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.More »

03

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Anaximander

 Circa 1493, Greek astronomer and philosopher Anaximander (611 - 546 BC). Original Publication: From Hartmann Schedel - Liber Chronicorum Mundi, Nuremberg Chronicle. Hulton Archive / Getty Images

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 archefor beginning. In the Gospel of John, the first phrase contains the Greek for "beginning"—the same word "arche."

04

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Anaximenes

 Anaximines (fl c500 BC), Ancient Greek philosopher. From Liber chronicarum mundi (Nuremberg Chronicle) by Hartmann Schedel. (Nuremberg, 1493). Print Collector/Getty Images / Getty Images

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. More »

05

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Parmenides

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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.

06

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Anaxagoras

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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.

07

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Empedocles

 Empedocles, fresco from 1499-1502 by Luca Signorelli (1441 or 1450-1523), St Britius chapel, Orvieto cathedral, Umbria. Italy. De Agostini / Archivio J. Lange / Getty Images

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.

08

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Zeno

 1st century Bust of Zeno. Found in 1823 near the Jardin des Plantes and the ampitheatre. Esperandieu, 1768. Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr [ CeCILL or CC BY-SA 2.0 fr], via Wikimedia Commons

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.

09

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Leucippus

Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

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.

10

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Xenophanes

Xenophanes, ancient Greek philosopher. From Thomas Stanley, (1655), The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect, illustrated with effigies of divers of them. See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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.