Matt McAlister's List: Squashed Philosophers

• Thales of Miletus (c580BC): Predicted eclipses, divided the year into 365 days. Said that water was the basis of all things.
• Anaximander of Miletus (c530BC): Said that the primary element was Infinity. Drew a map of the earth.
• Anaximenes of Miletus (c535BC): Said that the principle of everything was air, and the Infinite; and that the stars moved around the earth.
• Pythagoras (c526BC): Gained thousands of followers in Crotona in Italy. He understood geometry, and musical harmony, but had his disciples keep them secret. Held to many obscure sayings: do not eat beans, do not piss in the sunshine etc. He was killed by enemies when he refused to cross a field of beans.
• Xenophanes (c500BC): Wrote poems. He held there to be four elements, and that God was spherical, God being like man was just a human invention - horses would have invented horse-gods.
• Melissus of Samos (c500BC): The Universe is infinite, unsusceptible of change.
• Leucippus (c550BC): All things are infinite, and interchanged; the universe is a vacuum full of bodies. He was first to speak of atoms.
• Heraclitus (c505BC) "The Weeping Philosopher": Claimed that he knew everything. His doctrine is something to do with fire being an element, but he is very obscure.
• Parmenides of Elea (c470BC): Asserted that the earth was spherical. There are two elements, fire and earth; man was made out of clay, the mind and the soul are the same thing.
• Anaxagoras (c455BC): All things were mixed up; then Mind came and arranged them. The sun is a mass of burning iron, bigger than Peloponnesus, and the moon has houses.
• Zeno of Elea (c460BC): Opposed Nearches the tyrant, biting his ear. There are several worlds, there is no vacuum; the nature of all things is of hot and cold, and dry and moist.
• Empedocles (c460BC): A pupil of Pythagoras, who gave away his secrets and was expelled. He practiced magic and tried to pretend he was a god by faking a leap into a volcano. Said there were four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. Heaven is like crystal.
• Democritus (c400BC): Atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; everything else exists only in opinion. Nothing was created out of nothing. Atoms produced all the combinations that exist; fire, water, air, and earth.
• Protagoras (c450BC): "Man is the measure of all things"
• Diogenes of Sinope "The Cynic" (c355BC): Known as 'the dog', he lived in a barrel, and was unbelievably rude to everyone, including Alexander the Great.

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