ABSTRACT
Theoretical science seems to have independently emerged only once in the course of history. This happened in the sixth century BC, within the Greek world, in Ionia, in Miletus. Wherever people do theoretical science, they follow the path of Ionian Greeks. Early Greek astronomy also addressed the problems related to the variation of the length of day in accordance with both seasons and different locations. In general, growing science and religious practices peacefully coexisted. Scientific ideas and scientific research are referred to in the works by Euripides, Thucydides, and Aristophanes (whose attacks on science and scientists only testify to the interest in them among the educated Athenians). Science did not enter the schools, yet the sophists disseminated scientific knowledge in fifth-century Athens and elsewhere. Science provided an essential supplement, if not a really substitute, to the traditional outlook. That was its social function.
