SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY 5 From the extremely limited information that survives about them one may obtain the impression that their intellectual achievement was rather trivial. Compared to the sophistication that Greek philosophy itself attained soon after them—and compared specially to the new horizons of knowledge and power being opened by the natural sciences in our times—what the early lonians have actually to say looks extremely naive. But that is hardly the way of judging their real contribution to world civilization. Assessing the Contribution of the Early lonians How then are we to judge it? In 1935., two French historians of ancient science, Brunet and Mieli, give an admirably clear answer to this, and it is worth quoting them. The early lonians, they say, "observe the phenomena which present themselves to their eyes, and putting aside all supernatural or mystical intervention, they endeavour to give strictly natural explanations for them. It is in this sense, and by their rejection of all magical intervention, that they make the decisive step towards science and mark the beginning, at least the conscious and systematic beginning, of a positive method applied to the interpretation of the facts of nature.991 If there is any objection to this understanding of the contribution of the lonians, 'I hope those who object, would not include serious historians of science. In different language, the point being made is that the decisive step to science was taken by the early lonians, because they strove after that ^simple conception of nature just as it is without alien addition.9' This in the words of Frederick Engels, constitutes the essential aspect of the materialist outlook.2 Unless, therefore, the very names of Marx and Engels are anathema to our modern pundits, the implication for philosophy of this change in expression is quite significant. If it is impossible to doubt the fact that the first conscious step to science is also the first step to genuine philosophy, the latter is not to be understood in the sense of an indiscriminate adventure of ideas, inclusive of ideas wanting to undermine the very reality of nature and the material world. What unites science with philosophy at the point when they come into being is some kind of instinctive materialism.8 It remains for us to see if science can ever do without this instinctive materialism, howsoever spectacular may be its eventual career. For the present, let us try to understand the ancient Greek experience a little more fully. The Difference between Science and Pro-Science Though the early lonians pioneered science.one needs also to note that they did not start from scratch. On the contrary, as is being increasingly realised,4 they are heavily indebted to the ancient Egyptians