The Western linguistic structure that originated in Greece did not spring forth fully formed. It evolved "from people who responded to the dangers of existence by inventing stories about unpredictable or disgruntled deities. For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted [because] . . . every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad" (Sagan 173-4). At about 500 BC, however, in the Greek colonial islands of Ionia, there began a systematic demythologization of the cosmos that was "one of the great ideas of the human species." Sagan continues:

The universe is knowable, the ancients argued, because it exhibits an internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. Nature is not entirely unpredictable; there are rules even she must obey (Sagan 175).

The Ionian revolution "made Cosmos out of Chaos" (Sagan 175). Thus "free inquiry"--plus refinement of the Phoenician alphabet--emerged, though by no means did it dispose of superstition (Socrates was condemned as an atheist). What survived vis-à-vis superstition was what Whi

Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free P, 1967.

It is as difficult to capture Taoist thought for analysis and explication as it is to capture the Platonic Ideal Forms, and for the same reason. Plato's dialogues, comments Whitehead, "do not bear the aspect of patient induction from the facts. They are dominated by speculation and dialectics" (136). But it turned out that his pupil Aristotle could not do enough to systematize ways of dealing with facts. Laotse's relativism, meanwhile, is radical:

The Taoist view of reality is that what changes and cannot be trusted is exactly what seems the most real: the palpable, physical universe or sentient experience. What is therefore the most authentic reality of being, is the "core," or what cannot be experienced palpably. In Chinese thought one seems therefore inclined to yield to the poetry of the incomprehensible. In Greek thought, one seems rather more inclined to figure out a good way of thinking about it.

Wells, H. G. A Short History of the World. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922.