Think
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An overview of Greek philosophers that shaped the world by teaching us how to think. Covers the teachings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Used in university philosophy class to creatively teach these men's ideas in a meaningful and impacting way.
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Think
- 134. Scientific Method
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Think.A presentation by Matthew Redmond of Oral Roberts University.
- A look at the Greek philosophers that shaped modern thinking today. But before we begin….
- …I want you to imagine. Imagine that you are walking along a beautiful beach…
- You are walking along with a great man of wisdom whom you greatly respect. As you walk, you to turn to him and ask, “Teacher, how can I find wisdom?” The wise man, seeing that you genuinely mean your question, leads you out into the ocean and gently pulls your head beneath the waves…
- At first you assume the wise man is trying to make some point, perhaps that the secret to gaining wisdom is to emerge one’s self in a vast body of wisdom. However, as the teacher continues to hold your head under, you feel the need for air and struggle to rise to the surface. Yet the teacher only increases the force of his grip and does not allow you to rise. So you struggle even harder. However even then, the teacher still does not release his powerful hold on your head…
- Soon, becoming absolutely desperate for air and, fearing that you might drown, you fight with all the strength you possess to break free from the wise man’s grasp in order to save your very life. Finally, you wrench his hands from your head, break through to the surface, and gasp in a deep, life-restoring breath of air. As soon as you recover yourself, you turn to the wise man and demand him, in a well-justified anger, to explain why he had nearly drowned him…
- However, the teacher simply turns to you and calmly says, “When you desire wisdom as much as you just desired the air that brings you life, then you shall find it.” So what’s the story mean? The wise man in that story is Socrates, and the story is a true account he had with one of students. This was the beginning of the modern practice to…
- Think. Our total modern conception of thinking was shaped by the old guys of antiquity such as Socrates. But before we look at how what they taught shaped our thinking, what do we think about thinking today?
- “Think”…
- …is a verb that means…
- ….“to employ one’s mind rationally” or…
- …“to form or conceive a belief or idea.” This definition of “think” was passed down to us by men such as Socrates. So…
- …Who were these guys?
- We can find the three primary shapers of modern thinking in a painting by Raphael Sanzio called “The School of Athens”…
- …As mentioned before, the first of these guys was Socrates. You can see him here talking to some dude about something that was probably intelligent.
- The second was Plato. He is just chilling here pointing up into the air.
- The last of these guys, Aristotle, is standing next to Plato and pointing out to the earth. We’ll look at why later.
- And where were these guys?
- As you might have already guessed, these boys are from the wonderful, the beautiful, the Ancient land of Greece!
- This is Greece…
- Athens. This is where these guys did their primary work. Hence, the painting was called “The School of Athens.” Socrates was born here, and Plato might also have been born here.
- Athens was a Greek City-States.Greece was not unified at this time. It was composed of individual city-states. To give you some reference, here are some other city-states…
- Sparta. This was Athens’ rival city-state, which defeated it in the Peloponnesian War.
- Aegina. This is a small city-state in which Plato might have been born,but it is unclear.
- Marathon. This is the city from which we derive our modern foot-race word “marathon.” Legend has it that a Greek messenger ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek’s defeat of the Persians. Supposedly, the runner had also fought in the battle, and he died upon reaching Athens. However, other accounts claim that this messenger ran all the way from Athens to Sparta to ask for help in the war with the Persians, and all the way back to Athens when Sparta refused. As you can see, this distance is just a wee bit further than the traditional 26.2 miles of the Marathon run. That distance is over 300 miles. It would have sucked for runners today if that had been the account that went down in legend…
- Stageira. Aristotle was born here.
- Pella.Aristotle was appointed the head of the royal academy here, and he instructed several great Macedonian kings.
- And just as a point of reference, this is the island of Ithaca, which is the legendary home of the great Odysseus.
- And when were these guys?
- …
- …Socrates lived from 469 BC to 399 BC.
- Plato lived from 427 BC to 347 BC.
- Aristotle lived from 384 BC to 322 BC.As you can see, all of these guys were alive at the same time at one point. However, Aristotle was only fifteen years old when Socrates died, so it is likely that he did not interact with him, or if he did, he interacted with him very little.
- And now, the question we have all been waiting for. What did these guys do? What did they teach? How was it that these men shaped modern thinking?
- The first of these guys, as mentioned, was…
- …Socrates. The old guy who drowns his students. (Not really.)
- Socrates is considered by most to be one of the great fathers of the art of philosophy…
- …well, Western philosophy that is. This is because his teachings introduced a new wave of thinking in people, inspired others to begin thinking more about the world around him, and those that learned from him went on to develop great works themselves.
- This is a statue of…
- …oldMr. Socrates himself. He wasn’t considered to be the most handsome man…
- …being somewhat short and fat and of disagreeable features.
- And even here, closer up, you can see, he is…
- …still not too handsome. Apparently God put all the beauty in Socrates’ brains rather than his bod. Socrates didn’t seem to mind though. He took full advantage of his brains. And apparently, rumor has it that either because of his smarts or just sheer cunning, he married a young beauty who was quite a few rungs higher on the ladder of beauty than he…
- …So who knows? Perhaps Socrates snatched a Greek beauty like this…
- …Someone had to add some beauty to the man’s brains…
- …Socrates’ wife’s name was Xanthippe, and although it doesn’t appear that she did anything to influence Socrates’ thinking, it is a testimony to the man’s intelligence to note that he married a young, beautiful woman when he himself was disagreeable in appearance. He was indeed quite a great thinker.
- However, he was not the first thinker in the world at the time. There are many notable pre-Socratic philosophers and eastern philosophers that preceded Socrates. Man had been on the earth for several thousand years before Socrates. Socrates was not the first man to think. However…
- …Socrates was one of the greatest thinkers to walk the earth at his time, and he remains one of the greatest thinkers of all time, being one those who shaped modern thinking. This is because of the unique way he approached thinking and the revolution of thinking that he inspired in the world.
- Socrates was not satisfied with simply accepting the world as it was. He desired to understand it, and to understand the way people thought about it. So he began a search for truth and emphasized rational thinking, and this sparked a revolution in the world.
- We all know that in Greece, mythology was integrated into everything everyone did, but that practice was also common in the rest of the world. People did think, but for the most part, rather than examining and analyzing the world around them and trying to reach an understanding of it by thinking, people used myths to explain different phenomena in the world. For example…
- …this statue you see here is Poseidon, and the Greeks explained different things with his actions. He was the second most important god in Athens.
- Socrates didn’t deny the gods though. He believed in most of the classic Greek mythology, including…
- …Zeus here. However…
- …Socrates believed in the pursuit of truth, and he believed individuals should strive to do this by rational thinking. He believed the world could be understood and explained through thinking. Rather than just accept things as they were or were assumed to be, he began trying to understand why they were and why people thought they way they did.
- You can see Rodin’s The Thinker here doing some pretty serious, Socrates-inspired thinking.
- And this movement he started began to slowly uproot people’s long-held reliance on mythology. He certainly did not overthrow mythology as a whole, and it was not his goal to do so, but as people began to think more about the world around them, they began to find a new understanding of it and didn’t have to resort as often to mythical forces for explanations. Thus, they did not have to rely as much as places like this building here…
- …the Parthenon, which was a classical center of mythology.
- Socrates said, “To Find yourself, think for yourself.” Socrates believed one cannot just accept the world as it comes at him. He must think in order to understand and to find a true glimpse of truth and the meaning of life. This then passed down the tradition that thinking rationally was a necessary aspect of living.
- However, this emphasis on thinking was not the only thing Socrates contributed to the world. Through his own thinking, he developed a few other beliefs and ideas that advanced the world and shaped what it is today in different ways…
- One of Socrates’ core teachings was the idea that knowledge is virtue. One of Socrates core interests was the moral character of man. He came to the conclusion that moral actions are the result of having virtue and that virtue comes through knowledge. Prior to Socrates, people believed that what was moral was doing what was pleasing to the gods. However, Socrates saw this as weak and uncertain based on the wavering character of the gods and the whimsical wishes of the priests that represented them. He believed good was founded in a higher, more definite authority than the character of the gods. This authority he believed was immutable, unconditional truth, and virtuous action comes by knowledge of this truth.
- Socrates believed that at their heart, all people are good and want to do good. By watching people, he saw that everyone did what he saw was best. People only did what they thought would be good for themselves. Thus, Socrates concluded that at their heart, everybody wants to do good. However…
- …People just don’t know what good is. They do what they think is best, but what they think is best is not really the actual best. What they think is good is not actually the highest good. What people lack is not will power but knowledge of the truth that leads to virtue.
- Thus, wrongdoing is the result of ignorance. He did not mean that people were stupid and made stupid decisions. Rather, they had a rational ignorance, in that they made decisions they thought were good and rational, however, they had an ignorance of truth. Improper conduct is a product of our ignorance of the truth rather than a weakness of the will. As you can, Bush here wants to do what is good, he desires to make a phone call, but he just lacks the knowledge of how to make a phone call. Therefore his ignorance leads to wrongdoing.
- Thus, in order to cause people to good, you have only to teach them what good is. They have the rationale and desire to good, but they just don’t know what it is. Teach them knowledge of the truth, and they will be virtuous and do what is good.
- Yet quite ironically, Socrates claims he did not teach anyone anything, for Socrates believed he could not teach.
- He said, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” Although people considered him the wisest man to be alive, Socrates believed he actually knew nothing at all, and therefore could not teach anyone anything. Thus, instead of teaching his students lessons, he developed a different technique unique from any other “teacher” previous to his time…
- …and that technique has now come to be called “The Socratic Method.” Socrates asked his students questions to get them to discover truth. This method dramatically impacted the world, and Socrates is considered to be the first to employ it. He asked questions about people’s ideas to see if any belief they had was irrational or illogical. He even refused to answer questions with direct replies, but rather replied to questions with even deeper questions that addressed the issue at hand. He did this because of a fundamental belief he had:
- Socrates believed that all knowledge lies within all people. No one can learn anything new, and nothing can be taught because everyone already knows everything. However, we have just forgotten it and need to draw it out. We draw it out by questions. Socrates believed that souls were eternal and are reincarnated. Each time we are reborn we forget our knowledge. We must ask questions to draw out all the knowledge from our past lives. If one asks the right questions, he will find the right answers. This introduced the world to the concept of continually challenging your beliefs with questions. Because Socrates believed we will only do the right things if we know the right things, he believed it was critical to continuously question what we think we know in order to find true knowledge. Socrates also never offered any answers to his questions after questioning and tearing down a person’s ideas because he believed the answers were already within the person and he couldn’t give it to them; they could only truly find it by drawing it out themselves. Giving the answer to them would not be true knowledge.
- Unfortunately, the world can be resistant to new ideas. Socrates made many people angry by his blunt honesty, radical new ways of thinking, criticism of politics and rulers, and method of teaching. The Athenian ruling world felt threatened by the great influence Socrates had, and especially by his criticism of their government and immorality and his praise of their archrival Sparta. So..
- …the Athenian rulers that opposed Socrates put him on trial and condemned him as guilty of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth. When asked what his punishment should be, he suggested he receive a wage paid by the government and be given free dinners for the rest of his life for being the benefactor of Athens. The rulers were appalled by this, and sentenced him to death. Socrates had the opportunity to flee, but he did not, for various reasons. One of the reasons was that…
- He simply did not fear death. According to Xenophon, Socrates purposefully mocked the rulers in his suggestion of his punishment because he believed he was better off dead. He believed no philosopher or great thinker should fear death.
- He said that “Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.” Perhaps he believed this because he believed that every time we die we are reborn and have the opportunity to live a new life and again pursue the sacred quest of truth. Whatever the reason, he willingly embraced his punishment. Surrounded by a group of his students, he downed a wine mixed with the poison of a hemlock, and died. He spoke his last words to his student Crito, saying “We owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don’t forget to pay the debt.” Asclepius was the Greek god for curing illness, and it is likely that Socrates’ spoke these last words because he believed death was a cure, a freedom of the soul from the body and the opportunity to begin again. Although we as Christians do not believe Socrates was reborn in another life and privileged to live on, his ideas certainly were.
- Socrates did not write any of his ideas down, because he believed writing was inferior and corrupted truth…
- (And by the way, if you were wondering, this is an ancient Greek “pen,” called a stylus, which is where we get the term for phone styluses today. Ancient Greeks used such a device to write into wax tablets or other similar writing devices.) Yet although Socrates did not write his ideas down, many of his students remembered and practiced what he taught, and…
- …someone wrote them down for him so that they were transmitted to us today.
- And this leads us to the second one of the great thinking guys that shaped modern thinking.
- That someone who wrote Socrates was Plato, one of Socrates greatest and most well-known students…
- …who is considered by most to also be one of the great founders of modern thinking, particularly metaphysics, both in how he transmitted to us Socrates’ ideas and how he developed his own.
- This is a statue of…
- …goodol’ Mr. Plato. Check out the man’s pects!
- Tradition has it that Plato’s name was actually Aristocles, but because of his broad chest and robust figure, his wrestling coach called him “Platon”, meaning broad, and apparently the name stuck. That broad chest is clearly reflected in the fine pectoral muscles you see in this statue.
- Plato recorded Socrates’ ideas in the form of dialogues. He wasn’t the only one to write these Socratic Dialogues (Xenophon and Alexamenus did as well), but he was the most notable, both for his accuracy, depth, and number of writings. Some of these dialogues include such familiar works as Plato’s Republic¸ Apology, Meno, Sophist, Statesman, and Laws. Because Plato wrote down Socrates ideas, it is difficult to determine which are actually Socrates’ and which are uniquely Plato’s. It’s unclear whether Plato was really recording Socrates’ ideas or just using him as a character to give credibility to his own. However, given the history provided by other contemporaries, it does appear that Plato stays fairly true to Socrates’ original beliefs. Plato wrote over 35 of these dialogues, and scholars have determined three classes within Plato’s Socratic dialogues—early, middle, and later—and the later dialogues have a shift in style that enables us to differentiate between Plato’s teachings and those of his master. These later dialogues have Socrates’ performing more direct teaching rather than asking questions, and this has led scholars to conclude that Plato was using these unique dialogues to record his own beliefs rather than those of his teacher. In fact, Plato wrote so much about such a wide variety of topics that the modern philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has said that all philosophy since Plato has just been commentary on his works.
- One of Plato’s greatest contributions to metaphysics and thinking as a whole was the idea of his Perfect Platonic Forms. Plato believed there is a division of reality between the irreconcilable and warring worlds of the material and the immaterial.
- The true reality lies above the world we observe around us. True reality is spiritual, abstract, and distant. Plato believed the truth is absolute and immaterial and exists in its own immaterial world beyond this material world. The forms of perfect things and truth exist in this immaterial world. He believed this world was not just an idea, but an actual state of existence above and beyond our own and was eternal and unchangeable.
- This world is but a shadow. The world we observe around us is but a shadow of the true forms that lie above in the eternal, perfect platonic world. Plato denied the reality of the material world. Everything we observe is always changing, inconsistent, and untrue. Thus, it is but a shadow of perfect, unchanging truth.
- Therefore our body, being material, is an inferior shadow. It is evil because it limits us in perceiving the true forms. We are distracted by our physical senses. Plato believed we are blinded by the sight of our eyes. We think that what we observe with our sense is real and true, but it is really just a shadow. Also, the body is always changing and eventually dies, and therefore can’t be perfect or eternal.
- The soul is what it is good and eternal. It is an eternal form, and because it is a form, it is true and good. Only the soul can perceive the perfect forms, for it is perfect itself. However as mentioned before, the body hinders the soul from finding truth. The senses distract it from true reality. The body’s appetite causes the owner of the soul to crave evil. But after the body dies and disintegrates, the eternal soul is free to move into the realm of pure forms and lives forever. This theory of forms introduced the idea of dualism, which is prominent in Western thinking and religion today, and we can especially see it in Christianity. Some Christians have come to interpret the flesh literally as the flesh of our bodies, and they condemn it as evil, rather than interpreting it as our old nature. Christians have an idea of heaven as a separate, non-physical reality of perfect forms to which our soul migrates after departing from this evil body. But that is simply Platonic thought. The Bible clearly says that our bodies will be resurrected. This is the reality God created for us and meant for us to exist in.
- Because the body is unreliable and inferior, Plato believed knowledge is found not through experience but through deductive reasoning. He believed in an a priori approach. One begins by looking to the general forms that are overarching and independent of our sense experience. After finding the perfect eternal truth, he will be better to understand the shadows that are meager imitations of truth. Knowledge is proportionate to the realm from which it is gained, and general knowledge gained from the perfect forms is itself perfect.
- Because the world is an imperfect shadow, observation of the world will only lead to imperfect ideas. If one seeks knowledge experientially or by observation, he will find only opinions rather than true knowledge. This world is in a state of flux, so the views derived from it also will always be changing and thus instable opinions. The phenomena we perceive with our senses is imperfect and leads to imperfect knowledge.
- True knowledge is found by examining perfect forms. Perfect forms are eternal and unchanging, so the knowledge gained from looking up to them will also be stable and true. One applies the constant truths he learns from these general overarching forms to the changing physical reality. According to Plato, the body is material and a shadow, but the mind, which is a part of the immortal soul, is a perfect form that can imagine other perfect forms. Truth lies within the mind. By imagining with the mind the true form of things, we can better understand the shadows we sense around us because we will understand what those shadows are striving to be. In his dialogues, Plato says Socrates condemns people who think that something must be grasped by the senses to be real. He believes true reality is unavailable to these people. Thus, we should relate the phenomena we perceive with our senses to the ideals we find through thought. Thus, because of this and because the mind is a perfect form and the senses imperfect shadows, thought is superior to senses in discovering truth.
- One of Plato’s most famous ideas that illustrates his conception of forms versus shadows is the allegory of the cave…
- …This video illustrates that idea a little better. Those who take the world of the senses to be real are living in a den of evil and ignorance. To climb out of this cave and see the light and understand true reality is extremely difficult, and those who are able to do it are unable to explain this true reality to those still in the cave. They are scorned.The video is a bit cheesy, but bear with it. It illustrates the point, and I think it is pretty humorous.(Click on video to pull up link to youtube video content.)
- Plato also did quite a bit of geometry. He believed pure mathematics was perfect and eternal, and thus lead to true knowledge. He believed that all material was actual made up of shadows of geometrical forms. Fire was a shadow of tetrahedrons, earth was a shadow of cubes, air was a shadow of octahedrons, water was a shadow of kosahedrons, and Gaia was a shadow of decahedrons. The universe itself was a shadow of a sphere.
- To pass down all this ideas Plato had and taught, Plato established the…
- …the Academy. However, the beautiful building you see here…
- …is actually not Plato’s Academy. It is a restored rendition of the Parthenon.
- …This is the Academy. Unfortunately, this is just about all that remains of Plato’s grand Academy. As you can see…
- …there’s not too much left…
- …The Academy was destroyed by the Roman General Sulla in the First Mithridatic War in 88 BC when he laid siege to Athens, which was under the rule of King Mithridates of the Persian kingdom of Pontus. Despite how it looks now though, it was in its time a marvelous center of learning and new ideas. After traveling the Mediterranean world and learning new ideas, Plato returned to Athens at about the age of 40 in 387 BC to establish this Academy to discuss with ideas with other intellectuals. It should be noted that this “Academy” was not a formal institution of learning as we now associate the word “academy.” Our word for academy is actually derived from Plato’s Akademia. What Plato established was more of an exclusive intellectual society which first met on Plato’s property, but as it grew, began to meet in a nearby beautiful garden and gymnasium area surrounded by a sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom…
- This site was originally named Hekademiaand eventually came to be called Akademia, which is where we get the modern word “academy.” This intellectual club did not charge any membership fees, but legend has it that the one notable requirement inscribed over the entrance was, “Let none but geometers enter here.” The Academy was quite exclusive to wealthy young Greek men interested in learning and discussing ideas with great thinkers.
- Plato instructed many of these young men at his Academy after establishing it in 387 BC. He particularly focused his teachings in the fields of philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, politics, and methodology. But since it was not meant to be a strict institution of learning and since it did not have a formal curriculum, the Academy members primarily discussed different points of thinking and posed problems to be studied and solved. Also, some of the senior members may have given lectures on their ideas from time to time.
- The attendees of Plato’s Academy included many great thinkers, but the most notable, which can be seen in this engraving being taught by Plato himself, was…
- …the third guy that shaped modern thinking. That guy was…
- …Aristotle, who is considered by many scholars to be one…
- …of the fathers of natural sciences.
- This is a statue of…
- …Mr. Aristotle. As you can see, he was not so ugly as Socrates and not so huge as Plato. We was just a nice-looking smart guy with…
- …a nice beard.
- Although Aristotle was instructed by Plato at The Academy, learned how to think under him, discovered the world with him, and studied all of his ideas for nineteen years…
- …he eventually grew to disagree with Plato on his fundamental ideas…
- …and you can see him disagreeing with Plato here about what should be studied. Plato is pointing upwards, symbolizing his belief that what should be studied is the perfect forms above. However, Aristotle is motioning down to the world around him, symbolizing his most notable disagreement with Plato that what should be studied is the world we sense around us.
- Aristotle could not bring himself to think of the world in the abstract ways Plato did. Aristotle did not believe in the perfect platonic world.
- (These are the Platonic Solids that Plato believed made up the material world.)
- Aristotle just did not think that knowledge was abstract and distant. He did not think that true reality existed in some abstract world beyond the one we sense and observe. He just could not believe that such a world was real.
- Aristotle believed knowledge is empirical. Reality is what experience, the world around us, the physical world, the world we can sense, observe, measure, and describe. Knowledge is found in the world around us. Aristotle disagreed with Socrates that all knowledge lies within us and needs only to be drawn out by questions, for he believed that the world must be studied to learn truth. And he disagreed with Plato that the world to be studied is distant and abstract.
- We observe the world around us to find truth. We can trust in our senses and in fact must trust in our senses to find truth. Knowledge of truth comes by observing, studying, and experimenting with the world we are in. Through observation of the world, truth is revealed.
- Aristotle believed that everything we observe has essence and form. This sounds similar to Plato’s forms and shadows, but it is fundamentally different. Aristotle believed that the essence and form of everything were interconnected and could not be separated from each other. The essence of everything is tied to a material form, yet the form of everything has essence.
- The essence of a thing is its ultimate purpose. Aristotle believed that everything has a purpose and final state it strives to reach. That final state was its essence. The essence of a thing gives meaning to its existence and directs its life. For instance, in simple terms, the essence of a plant is to grow, to sprout, to bloom, to give life, and finally to produce more plants.
- The form of a thing is its actual material existence. Aristotle believed that there was no world beyond this material world we sense and observe, therefore all things have material form. Every form has an essence, and a thing’s form is how it fulfills its essence. For instance, the form of a plant goes down to the cellular level, and the form of a plant allows it to grow, spread life, and reach its essence.
- Aristotle developed many natural sciences because of this belief, for he believed that the only way to find knowledge, truth, and meaning was to study a form of a thing, and by studying its form, to discover its essence. Aristotle believed that to find the universal, you have to examine the particular, for the particular reaches for and points to the ultimate. In trying to discover the ultimate, Aristotle studied nearly everything and developed many sciences including…
- …Anatomy…
- …Astronomy...
- …Botany…
- …Embryology…
- …Logic…
- …Mathematics…
- …Meteorology…
- …Naturalism…
- …Physics…
- …Physiology…
- …Psychology…
- …and Zoology…Yeah. Aristotle kept busy. He did a lot.
- Aristotle wasn’t the first to practice these sciences, and he certainly wasn’t the best in them. He made major errors in physics for example that withheld progress for hundreds of years. However, his beliefs about the world and his practices in these sciences did lead to the development of the…
- …Scientific Method, which dramatically progressed all the sciences. Aristotle believed that knowledge is found by ascending from the particulars of things to the understanding of the essence of things. Although he did not specifically write out the scientific method, it is clear he practiced it in all he search for truth.
- Whenever Aristotle wondered about something or desired to find truth on a subject, he asked a question…
- …from that question, he began by observing the world…
- …he then formed an idea of what the answer to his question might be…
- …he then experimented with his observations and ideas…
- …analyzed his results…
- …and finally came to a conclusion about the answer.As you can see, this is the very framework of the scientific method.
- Thus, although Aristotle was not always accurate in his sciences and although he did not always come to correct conclusions, he did lay the groundwork for all other scientists after him to build upon. His practices began the development of the scientific method which is the foundation of modern science. And his studies in such a broad range of sciences sparked an interest in natural sciences and inspired many after him to study the world.
- Because his beliefs and methods differed greatly from Plato’s, Aristotle wanted to start his own unique school to pass down his teachings. Therefore, he established…
- …the Lyceum. The Lyceum was more of a formal institution than Plato’s Academy, and many came to learn about natural sciences, which was Aristotle’s obvious specialty.
- Unfortunately, like the Academy, the Lyceum is not around today…
- …as it also was destroyed in the first Mithridatic War by the Roman General Sulla in 88 BC. I do promise though, it…
- …used to be quite a bit nicer than this, but it’s just a bunch of rocks and rubble now. Thankfully though, some guys have erected these cool tents to do a little restoration on it…
- Not sure what they’re trying to restore though…it’s pretty desolate.
- On top of establishing the Lyceum to pass down his ideas, Aristotle also did some of this.
- Writing. We now have many of Aristotle’s writings because he wrote a vast array of works on his studies. He wrote about everything he studied. An interesting fact is that we get the word “metaphysics” because Aristotle wrote those books after he wrote his books on “physics.” Hence, “meta-physics.”
- Aristotle also taught someone you all are probably quite familiar with…
- …what? You don’t recognize this guy? This fine, young specimen is none other than…
- …
- …Alexander…
- …the…
- …Great. Yes. Aristotle was the teacher of the great emperor that changed the face of the world. I think its pretty funny though. That last statue makes Alexander the great and mighty warrior and emperor look like a wimpy, feminine guy…
- …I mean, look at that. That does not look like a mighty warrior of the ages. But anyways…
- …you can see here, Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great. So even if these old guys’ ideas did nothing to shape their world, their affect on Alexander the Great profoundly shaped the world.
- So that was quite a bit of information…
- …let’s review.
- The first of the old guys that changed the world by shaping modern thinking was…
- Socrates.
- Socrates was the father of Western philosophy…
- …he encouraged rational thinking…
- …which challenged the classical reliance on mythology…
- …he believed that knowledge is virtue, and that knowledge is drawn out of ourselves by asking questions...
- …thus, he developed the Socratic Method.
- The second guy that shaped the world was…
- Plato.
- Plato was the father of metaphysics…
- …he wrote the Socratic dialogues…
- …he believed in platonic forms and an abstract platonic world beyond our world in which all truth lies…
- …he believed knowledge comes through deductive reasoning, by examining the perfect forms and applying them to the shadow of a reality around us…
- …and to pass down his ideas, he established the Academy.
- The third and last of these guys was…
- Aristotle.
- Aristotle is the father of modern natural sciences…
- …he disagreed with Plato and emphasized inductive reasoning to find knowledge, for he believed knowledge of universal truth came by studying particulars…
- …he believed everything had a form and essence that were intertwined…
- …he developed the scientific method…
- …and he established the Lyceum to pass down his teachings and practices in natural science.
- These men not only shaped Greece by all they taught and did…
- …They also shaped the world as a whole.
- As Socrates said, “I am neither an Athenian nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” These men believed their influence and purpose was not limited to the land around them. They believed they were called to change the world. And change the world they did. They truly taught the world to…
- Think.
- So now you know.
- Thank you very much.I hope you learned. This was a presentation by Matthew Redmond.All content was derived from studies within Oral Roberts University’s philosophy program, headed by Dr. Thorpe. The presentation was made for and presented in the class “History of Quantitative Thought” taught by Dr. Halsmer and Dr. Vickery. The books read in that class (A Comprehensible Universe by Coyne and Heller, Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio, and A History of Mathematics by Luke Hodgkin) also contributed to and inspired the information in this presentation. General information about the philosophers was also found on Wikipedia Encyclopedia. Finally, all other research came from my own personal studies, and includes information learned from works by Plato and Aristotle and works on philosophy.Many of the images used in this presentation were purchased from 123RF.com, but some also came from the Flickr Creative Commons, and searches performed on Google Images.The ideas for the presentation design were inspired by Apollo Ideas, Inc. (http://www.apolloideas.com/), which is famous for its presentations “shifthappens” and “thirst,” both of which won World’s Best PowerPoint Awards. For instance, the “Now You Know” and “Definition of Think” slides were both directly taken from Apollo design ideas. Other presentation ideas came from Presentation Zen (http://presentationzen.blogs.com/) which is a great blog on creating impactingPowerPoints. Finally, I must also give much thanks to SlideShare.com for providing a center for presentation uploads, and I have looked through countless presentations which I know have contributed to my design.This presentation was used for nothing other than a class project I did and presented at my university.
- (Bonus)
- MAPS!
- …for my teacher Dr. Vickery, who loves maps oh so much.
- Map of Ancient Greece as a whole.
- Map of the area around the city of Athens. You can see the walls that lead from the city to the gulf.
- Plato’s Academy is up here at the top outside the city. As you can see, it is called “Academia” which came from its original name of “Hekademia.” If you can read Greek (or whatever this language is), maybe you can decipher the rest of the map.
- This is a map of the actual city of Athens. It is quite complex, and I don’t expect for you to make much of it.
- (The End. For Real)
- Thank you very much.I hope you learned. This was a presentation by Matthew Redmond.All content was derived from studies within Oral Roberts University’s philosophy program, headed by Dr. Thorpe. The presentation was made for and presented in the class “History of Quantitative Thought” taught by Dr. Halsmer and Dr. Vickery. The books read in that class (A Comprehensible Universe by Coyne and Heller, Is God a Mathematician? by Mario Livio, and A History of Mathematics by Luke Hodgkin) also contributed to and inspired the information in this presentation. General information about the philosophers was also found on Wikipedia Encyclopedia. Finally, all other research came from my own personal studies, and includes information learned from works by Plato and Aristotle and works on philosophy.Many of the images used in this presentation were purchased from 123RF.com, but some also came from the Flickr Creative Commons, and searches performed on Google Images.The ideas for the presentation design were inspired by Apollo Ideas, Inc. (http://www.apolloideas.com/), which is famous for its presentations “shifthappens” and “thirst,” both of which won World’s Best PowerPoint Awards. Other presentation ideas came from Presentation Zen (http://presentationzen.blogs.com/) which is a great blog on creating impactingPowerPoints. Finally, I must also give much thanks to SlideShare.com for providing a center for presentation uploads, and I have looked through countless presentations which I know have contributed to my design.This presentation was used for nothing other than a class project I did and presented at my university.