Description: Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their idea that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus's enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic. Out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose an interest in language, and in political moral, and social philosophy. Much of the work of "the first philosophers" paved the way for Plato and Aristotle -- hence influencing the whole of Western thought.

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