User:Cmthandazo

the emergence of philosophy was in the Ionian island in Asia minor, Miletus, Samos, Abdera. It emerged from mythology, there was an absence of a priestly class who would censor what people would write. this is the reason why Hesiod and Homer would write whatever they wanted. there was relative affluence, so they had the luxury to speculate about things. Miletus was a center of trade thus they mixed a lot with people of cross-cultural ideas. The affluence also afforded them the luxury of travel, and we hear of Thales traveling to Egypt and Babylonia. The problem with the Pre-socratics is that they left no written record, whatever is known of them comes from secondary sources that Aristotle and Herodotus who were not necessarily interested in giving an account of what Anaximenes for instance said, but they were criticizing them in their own work. J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Median Books, New York 1957