According to Aristotle philosophy had come into being in the VIth century withThales just as a mere disinterested pursuit of truth a curiosity for greatproblems... » 

According to Aristotle philosophy had come into being in the VIth century withThales just as a mere disinterested pursuit of truth a curiosity for greatproblems those eventually called metaphysical ones which weresubstantially identical with those which Aristotle himself and his school werenow raising. This abstract reading is very similar to that which views Greekpoets as inspired by eternal beauty or by arts for art sake and which isnowadays completely discredited and given up by scholars of the history ofliterature. Against this view the present text proposes a new reading of thearchaic presocratic scientists in fact it is about those sages who livedon the boundaries of the Greekspeaking world before the concentration of suchpeople in Periclean Athens. They were closely linked to their native townsMiletus Ephesus Croto Vele Acragas where they held high office herethere oral teaching and the public reading of their texts were followed closelyby their fellow citizens. Thus the picture of the cosmic republic arises tothe cosmic monarchy of Homer and Hesiod the mythical world with Zeus as theking gods as the ministers and nature as the subject a different mythicalworld succeeds. Here the earth the sea the sky the human body andgenerally the existing thing all behave like isonomic republican townsor like the governing body of these towns. Philosophy will arise later inAthens of the Vth century. «