1) The Pre-Socratics: Milesians and Pythagoreans

This is the first session for PHI 251, History of Ancient Philosophy. This course is taught at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. If you are interested in more courses (including through our online degree program) please check out the following websites: In this session we explore a plausible beginning of the Wester Philosophical tradition as the movement from Mythos to Logos, starting with the Milesians and branching out to the Pythagoreans. Immediately, a possible tension emerges between accounts of the “why“ of things given in materialist terms and in terms invoking abstract form.