The work begins by contrasting materialists and idealists. Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists. For materialists, ideas have no primary reality as essences separate from our physical existence. His philosophy is also unique among new materialists because of its strongly historical methodology. Materialists respond to the aesthetic experience of poetry. The metabolic rift is characterized in different ways by historical materialists. The competing tradition may be the materialists (Charvaka), states Fowler. World 1 is the total world of the materialists.