1 Beginnings: From Pythagoras to Plato he history of philosophy does not begin with Aristotle, but the historiography of philosophy does Aristotle was the Wrst philosopher who systematically studied, recorded, and criticized the work of previous philosophers In the Wrst book of the Metaphysics he summarizes the teachings of his predecessors, from his distant intellectual ancestors Pythagoras and Thales up to Plato, his teacher for twenty years To this day he is one of the most copious, and most reliable, sources of our information about philosophy in its infancy T The Four Causes Aristotle oVers a classiWcation of the earliest Greek philosophers in accordance with the structure of his system of the four causes ScientiWc inquiry, he believed, was above all inquiry into the causes of things; and there were four diVerent kinds of cause: the material cause, the eYcient cause, the formal cause, and the Wnal cause To give a crude illustration of what he had in mind: when Alfredo cooks a risotto, the material causes of the risotto are the ingredients that go into it, the eYcient cause is the chef himself, the recipe is the formal cause, and the satisfaction of the clients of his restaurant is the Wnal cause Aristotle believed that a scientiWc understanding of the universe demanded an inquiry into the operation in the world of causes of each of these kinds (Metaph A 983a24–b17)