39. The Wolf’s Footprint: Indian Naturalism

Interesting point and question. I think the first thing to say here is that materialism was pretty unusual: you have the Hellenistic schools and Carvaka but really in both cases the mainstream was non-materialist. Also it is not random what was lost and what survived: as often emphasized on the podcast, Greek philosophy reaches us through late antiquity and the Byzantine tradition which is strongly marked by Neoplatonism. So it isn't, like, a coincidence that what materialist thought there was did not reach us. On the other hand the rise of materialism in the 17th century was triggered at least in part by recovery and renewed interest in Epicureanism and Hellenistic materialism. So you could actually argue that materialist ideas survived well enough to have all the influence that they would have been likely to exert anyway.