The Sophistic epoch of Greek philosophy was, in great part, such a negative reaction against the self-confident assertion of the nature-philosophies of the preceding age.
Though scepticism as a definite school may be said to date only from the time of Pyrrho (q.v.) of Elis, the main currents of Sophistic thought were sceptical in the wider sense of that term.
And there follows the sophistic movement.
Among the pioneers of the sophistic age Socrates stands apart.
The sophists have other claims to consideration than their service to the development of logic. In the history of the origins of logic the sophistic age is simply the age of the free play of thought in which men were aware that in a sense anything can be debated and not yet aware of the sense in which all things cannot be so.