The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers tended to take reasoning to extremes. An example of these was Parmenides, who began from the concept of Being alone. If all is Being, then Being is full, and eternal, and unchangeable. Since change would have to be from Being to non-Being, and this is absurd, therefore change is impossible. All changes we observe in matter are mere appearances, mere illusions.
Since physics deals largely with the processes of change, such a science is halted in the presence of this line of reasoning.