Still, the alphabet does not explain everything. Another thing that made the Greeks a bit more likely to start the intellectual ball rolling was the fact that they got into overseas trading early. Their land and climate was okay for agriculture, but not great, so the idea of trading for what you can t grow or make yourself came naturally. Plus, the Greece is practically all coastline and islands, so seafaring came equally naturally. What sea trading gives you is contact with a great variety of civilizations, including their religions and philosophies and sciences.
Traders are usually skeptics.
Perhaps it had to do with centralization. The Phoenicians had an authoritarian government controlled by the most powerful merchants. The Carthaginians had the same. Perhaps being surrounded by powerful authoritarian empires forced them to adopt that style of government to survive. The Greeks, on the other hand, were divided into many small city-states, each unique, each fiercely independent, always bickering and often fighting.