- Lived:
- c. 494–434 BCE · Acragas (modern Agrigento), Sicily
- Tradition:
- Pre-Socratic Greek; the pluralist rescue of nature from Parmenides' frozen logic
- The Big Idea:
- Nothing is ever truly born and nothing truly dies. Everything around you is a temporary mixture of four everlasting "roots" — earth, air, fire, and water — stirred together and pulled apart by two cosmic forces, Love and Strife.
- In their words:
- "I go about among you an immortal god, no longer mortal, honored by all as I deserve."
- If you remember one thing:
- The four elements that ruled science and medicine for two thousand years began as one flamboyant Sicilian's answer to a logic puzzle — and legend says he died leaping into a volcano to prove he was a god.