Empedocles (490 BC - 430 BC)

Lifespan: born between 492 and 490 BC - died between 432 and430 BC
Primary Base of Operations: Greek city of Agrigento
Schools of Thought: Pluralism and Pythagoreanism
Other Occupations: Poet and Mystic
Teacher: Pythagoras

- wrote his philosophy in epic verse.
- maintained in Pythagorean fashion that all matter is made up of four elements: water, earth, air and fire. Empedocles called these the four "roots"; the term "element", was used only by later writers.
- postulated something called Love (φιλία) to explain the attraction of different forms of matter, and of something called Strife (νεῖκος) to account for their separation. These ideas should not be confused with the four elements: if the elements are the content of the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony.
- was also one of the first people to state the theory that light travels at a finite (although very large) speed.
- inventor of the study of rhetoric according to Aristotle.
- Like Pythagoras, he believed in the transmigration of the soul between humans and animals and followed a vegetarian lifestyle. He also propounded a theory of struggle in the animal kingdom that in some ways prefigures natural selection.