Jonathan Barnes' characterization of early philosophical investigations:
"The general enterprise of the early philosophers was to tell the whole truth 'about nature': to describe, to organize, and to explain the universe and all its contents."
At "one end of the scale," we get "detailed accounts of numerous natural phenomena"
"At the other end of the scale, the Presocratic enterprise involved much larger and more obviously 'philosophical' questions [...] What, in the most general terms, is the nature and unity of the universe?"
see his Early Greek Philosophy