ABSTRACT
The philosophers of the Pre-Socratic period lived at Miletus, Ephesus, Klazomenai, Kolophon, Samos. The main problem which engaged their attention was the question of the arche or principle of things, Arche means origin or beginning, but for the Pre-Socratics this was taken less in a temporal than in an essential sense. A completely different direction was taken by another group of Pre-Socratics called Mechanists. They seized on the concept of matter which the Milesians had used as a principle of being and developed it. The great ideas of Pre-Socratic philosophy depended on the quite simple natural speculations of common sense. The way in which the Pre-Socratics conducted their thinking gives a valuable insight into the nature of philosophical thought in general: philosophy is a basic human activity, and far from being the preserve of specialist sciences is something universally human and fundamentally accessible to common sense.
