
The works collected in this volume form the true foundation of Western philosophy
- the base upon which Plato & Aristotle & their successors would eventually build Yet the importance of the Pre-Socratics thinkers lies less in their influence
- great though that was
- than in their astonishing intellectual ambition & imaginative reach Zeno's dizzying 'proofs' that motion is impossible; the extraordinary atomic theories of Democritus; the haunting & enigmatic epigrams of Heraclitus; & the maxims of Alcmaeon fragmentary as they often are the thoughts of these philosophers seem strikingly modern in their concern to forge a truly scientific vocabulary & way of reasoning