Generations of philosophers, both ancient and modern, have traced their inspiration back to the Presocratics. Part of the fascination stems from the fact that little of what they wrote survives. Here Osborne invites her readers to dip their toes into the fragmentary remains of thinkers from Thales to Pythagoras, Heraclitus to Protagoras, and to try to reconstruct the moves that they were making, to support stories that Western philosophers and historians of philosophy like to tell about their past.
This book covers the invention of western philosophy: introducing to us the first thinkers to explore ideas about the nature of reality, time, and the origin of the universe.

• 1: Lost words, forgotten worlds


• 2: Puzzles about first principles


• 3: Zeno's tortoise


• 4: Reality and appearance: more adventures in Metaphysics


• 5: Heraclitus


• 6: Pythagoras and other mysteries


• 7: Spin doctors of the fifth century


• Epilogue: a story about origins

Catherine Osborne is lecturer in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. She recently moved from her position as Reader in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool, and was previously a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea. Her publications include Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy, and Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love , as well as the chapter on Heraclitus in the Routledge History of Philosophy, volume 1 and articles on a wide range of issues in Ancient Philosophy from the Presocratics to the Early Christian period.