Many philosophers attempted to explain where everything comes from or what truly exists. They try to answer the questions of what is the basic element of everything and how it comes into existence. Four Pre-Socratic philosophers, Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, and Zeno, all give their hypotheses/theories of what really exists, and attempts to prove their assumptions to be the truth.

Thales, a pre-Socratic philosopher that was only known by report than direct evidence, according to Aristotle, held the position that water was the basis of everything in the universe. Everything is either water in one form or another, or everything comes from water. Thales also argued that the earth rests and/or floats on water. According to Aristotle, Thales may have come to this conclusion because the nourishment of all things is moist and the seeds of all things have a moist nature; water is the principle of...