The origin of Western philosophy

Let us go back to the beginning of philosophy.

To Thales? No!

Thales who said that all was water left little behind, and besides a claim as fatuous as his is nowhere to begin. There's nothing to grasp on.

Let us return to Anaximander who in 7th-century BCE sought the source of all things in the Infinite.

Was this a mistake, to seek the nature of all entities in an Infinite Source? Is it premature to ask the question? Or does the question now come too late? Would any answer to the question posed now be irrelevant?

And what is this Infinite Source? Is it a being itself, the Being par excellence? We with Anaximander cannot say. What it is, we know not what.

Anaximander conceived the Infinite Source as endless, limitless, primordial, free of age and decay and yet infinitely and perpetually yielding the Elements, from which everything in the known world is derived.

The Elements make matter through interaction, combinations, reconstitution. When the Elements dissolve, they return to the Source.

Whence things have their origin,

Thence also their destruction,

According to necessity:

What they give to each other in desert and recompense

In indifference they return

In conformity with the ordinance of time.

And that is all we know of Anaximander's metaphysics.

ADDENDUM. In addition to his metaphysics, we know of Anaximander's philosophical method. He proposed a method to improve the collective body of knowledge, which amounts to the following: acknowledge past teachings, yes, but question them rigorously and improve upon them. No wonder Hellenes gave birth to Athens. Such thinking not only smacks of an incipient scientific method but the very nature of democracy.