My background is in philosophy and I have studied the Presocratic philosophers quite a few separate times before reading this book. What Lloyd does very well is to present the presocratics and the reasons why they say what they say. In fact it is one of the best sources I have come across to give a synopsis of the presocratics to a philosopher. I know now that it is very hard to separate science from their philosophy. Indeed, philosophical questions are still very much en vogue in modern science, although many modern scientists don't know much about philosophy (and in my opinion they ought to, if only to spare us from redoing something already proven or disproven)
Many readers have voiced that they did not "get" this book, nor its importance. That is likely because the Ancient Greeks were largely concerned with knowledge of all things and how they interrelated. We are very compartmentalized in our current educational system. Science is science, philosophy is philosophy and they don't need to mix (or so some moderns will say). For the Greeks, they were inseparable because they aimed at one and the same thing, the truth. It's odd to think that one can mix geometry and religion, but there it is in the Pythagoreans.
There are many modern "science" books that claim theological and philosophical positions. One only need to look around for half a second to find books on godless science, creationism, universe from nothing and the like. Such questions were also asked by the presocratics. Parmenides realized that something could not come from nothing, thus implying a permanence to the universe (and likely an eternal universe as Aristotle would (comment on). These are still themes in modern science. Is the universe infinite? Is it composed of many things? What is it composed of?
The beauty of this book is that Lloyd does all this in a very short amount of space. He is lucid and to the point. There is hardly a moment of fluff in his writings, thus making it a good read. That doesn't mean you will finish it as quickly as a novel. It is filled with information that likely will require time to digest. Having been introduced to the presocratics multiple times before, I would like to think it took me less time to digest than others. I can also imagine some people who couldn't digest it at all, being unable to compare and contrast to other elements of philosophy.
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