Humankind 's mental engagement with nature certainly predates civilization and the record of history. Philosophical, and specifically non-religious thought about the natural world, goes back to ancient Greece. These lines of thought began before Socrates, who turned from his philosophical studies from speculations about nature to a consideration of man, viz., political philosophy. The thought of early philosophers such Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus centered on the natural world. In addition, three presocratic philosophers who lived in the Ionian town of Miletus (hence the Milesian School of philosophy,) Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, attempted to explain natural phenomena without recourse to creation myths involving the Greek gods. They were called the physikoi (natural philosophers,) or, as Aristotle referred to them, the physiologoi. Plato followed Socrates in concentrating on man. It was Plato 's student, Aristotle, who, in basing his thought on the natural world, returned empiricism to its primary place, while leaving room in the world for man. Martin Heidegger observes that Aristotle was the originator of conception of nature that prevailed in the Middle Ages into the modern era:
the miletians lived during what period in the history of western philosophy
presocratic