I am fascinated by the Pre-Socratic philosophers. Why the general tendency towards monism? Thales' water, Anaximander's eternal indeterminate, Anaximenes' air, and of course Heraclitus' fire all try to pinpoint the one thing upon which all else depends. What is the one "stuff" from which the multiplicity arises? They were, in general, materialists. Material monists, if you will. The only problem with saying they were materialists is that they had not yet developed the kind of dual (material/spiritual) understanding of reality from which contemporary ideas of materialism have their provenance. Their dualism, if we can say that they had one, was the one and the many.
