The history of Philosophy in the west begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre- Socratics. This is not to say that there were not other pre- philosophical rumblings in Egyptian, Semitic, and Babylonian cultures. Certainly there were great thinkers and writers in each of these cultures, and there is evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonian thought. However, the early Greek thinkers add at least one element which differentiates their thought from all those who came before them. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the way the world is ordered -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world. Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
