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Early Greek philosophy

Chapter 2: PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
By John Burnet
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About This Book

The volume surveys the origins and development of early Greek thought, concentrating on cosmological inquiry that preceded formal logic and ethics. It opens with a discussion of primitive views and the Milesian school, then examines major pre-Socratic figures and movements—Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, Leucippus and atomism—and treats themes such as the tension between scientific explanation and traditional religion, the rise of logical methods, and problems of knowledge. Chapters combine critical commentary on fragmentary sources with comparative analysis of doctrines and an appendix summarises the ancient authorities used.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

It has been no easy task to revise this volume in such a way as to make it more worthy of the favour with which it has been received. Most of it has had to be rewritten in the light of certain discoveries made since the publication of the first edition, above all, that of the extracts from Menon’s Ἰατρικά, which have furnished, as I believe, a clue to the history of Pythagoreanism. I trust that all other obligations are duly acknowledged in the proper place.

It did not seem worth while to eliminate all traces of a certain youthful assurance which marked the first edition. I should not write now as I wrote at the age of twenty-five; but I still feel that the main contentions of the book were sound, so I have not tried to amend the style. The references to Zeller and “Ritter and Preller” are adapted throughout to the latest editions. The Aristotelian commentators are referred to by the pages and verses of the Berlin Academy edition, and Stobaeus by those of Wachsmuth.

J. B.

St. Andrews, 1908.