Lecture 2  Important ideas from Ancient Greeks

1. Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Thales(ca 600 BCE)--natural causes, critical analysis.
Pythagoras (ca 550 BCE)--use of mathematics as an explanatory devise, love of wisdom
Heraclitus (ca 500 BCE)-- "One cannot step twice into the same river" Controlled change.
There is a connection between opposites.
Sense perception may not be valid;

2. More early Greeks
Parmenides (ca 450 BCE) change is illusory
Democritus (ca 400 BCE) There is only atoms and the void.
Protagoras (ca 430 BCE) "Man is the measure of all things" One of the first sophists. An important part of establishing truth is the development of rhetoric to facilitate convincing others.

3. Socrates (469-399 BCE)
Socratic method--dialectic or careful interrogation and logical argumentation,
knowledge is drawn out by deliberate reflection on ones ideas and beliefs.

4. Plato (427-347 BCE)
Theory of forms--reality of universals, universals exist as ideal forms in a place that the soul can visit.
Knowledge is based on contemplation and reason.
Perception can only give flawed copies of reality, and at best gives opinion not knowledge.
The soul has three parts--reason, appetite and thumos, a mediater between the two, sometimes called anger or spirit.
Plato had an implicit theory of inheritance of intellectual qualities.

5. Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Empiricist--knowledge is first in senses, then in soul.
Named five senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling)
Laws of association--contiguity, similarity, contrast
Three souls--vegetative, animal, rational
Four causes--material, formal, efficient, final
Formalized logic (syllogism). Reasoning depends on the form of an argument rather than its content.
Theory of Categories: There are many different kinds of things each having its own role in the world and in thought.
Ontology--no universals without physical exemplars
Analogues across animal species--influenced Darwin
Poetics--Theory of poetry, history and fiction.

6. Greek Physicians, Scientists and others
Hippocrates (460-377 BCE)--Illness, even mental illness due to natural causes
Health is balance of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water)
Epicurus (300 BCE) called hedonist, maximize pleasure
Stoics--accept your status in life, suffering has its rewards
Euclid (ca 300 BCE)--Geometer, formal proofs from axioms
Archimedes (287-212 BCE) mathematician and scientist)
Galen (130-200 CE) psychological traits based on biological factors (four humors

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