THE PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS The term "Presocratic" is commonly used to refer to those early Greek thinkers who lived before the time of Socrates from approximately 600 to 400 B.C. These thinkers attempted to find the arch, the origin, or ultimate source of the whole of everything. The assumption they all shared is that there must be one origin of the universe. Thus, the first philosophical problem can perhaps be stated as the question, “What is the One behind the Many?” When we look upon the world and observe things with our senses we see a multitude of different kinds of things. These early thinkers began to think that there must be some one thing, one substance, or perhaps one process, that underlies all the changing, multifarious things we see with the senses. Each of these early philosophers came up with a different answer to this fundamental first question. Is this question still asked today, do people still seek a One behind the Many?