In ancient Greece, a profound shift occurred that would lay the foundation for Western philosophy and science. This transition, spanning from the 6th to 4th centuries BCE, marked a move away from mythological explanations of the world toward a rational, systematic investigation of reality. Before this period, natural events were commonly attributed to the whims of gods and mythic forces, as seen in the works of Homer and Hesiod, where deities controlled the fates of men and nature.
The pivotal change began with the pre-Socratic philosophers, who sought to explain the universe not through divine narratives, but through logic, observation, and reasoning. Thinkers such as Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, and Heraclitus questioned traditional myths and proposed that natural phenomena could be explained by underlying principles, such as water, the “boundless” (apeiron), or the unity of opposites. Thales, for instance, argued that water was the fundamental substance of all things, a shift toward seeing the world in material, not spiritual, terms.
This intellectual evolution intensified with philosophers like Pythagoras, who sought to understand the universe through mathematics, and Democritus, who posited the existence of indivisible particles, or atoms, long before modern science would confirm atomic theory.
By the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, this movement toward rationalism and empiricism was well-established. Socrates focused on ethical inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge through dialectical methods, while Plato introduced the theory of Forms, asserting that reality was governed by eternal truths rather than myth. Aristotle, in particular, laid the groundwork for scientific inquiry through his studies of biology, logic, and physics, promoting the idea that the world could be understood through observation and reason.
This era in ancient Greece thus marked a critical turning point in human thought. The shift from mythology to rational inquiry transformed not only how people understood the world but also how they engaged with it, giving rise to philosophy and science as we know them today.