From Mythos to Logos: The Birth of Greek Philosophy

Greek philosophy began in the sixth century BCE in Ionia, the Greek cities on the coast of what is now western Turkey. Earlier Greeks explained thunder, floods and the origin of the world through stories of gods, as in Hesiod's Theogony. The first philosophers did not necessarily reject the gods, but they tried to explain nature through general principles that anyone could examine and argue about, a shift often summarized as moving from mythos (story) to logos (reasoned account).

Several conditions helped: busy trading ports exposed Greeks to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics and astronomy, there was no powerful priesthood controlling ideas, and the culture of the polis rewarded public debate. Historians caution that the shift was gradual rather than a sudden break, since early thinkers still wrote in poetic and religious language. Its significance is that it created a tradition in which ideas are tested by criticism, the habit at the heart of both philosophy and science.