Arché (ἀρχή) — “Principle” or “beginning.” For the pre-Socratics, the arché is the primordial element or substrate from which everything comes and to which everything returns: water (Thales), apeiron (Anaximander), air (Anaximenes), fire (Heraclitus), number (Pythagoras). The concept inaugurates philosophical investigation of physis and anticipates the ontological question: “What is being as such?”
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