NationStates Jolt Archive

hi im doing an assignmen on how ancient philosophers how they changed our thinking today and what affect they had on society so any info on: plato. anixamander, socrates, pythagoras etc would be appreaciated thanks!

hi im doing an assignmen on how ancient philosophers how they changed our thinking today and what affect they had on society so any info on: plato. anixamander, socrates, pythagoras etc would be appreaciated thanks!

I think you might be better asking a somewhat more specific question or two, rather than just asking for info - for example, I can tell you that the cult of Pythagoras forebade its members to eat beans, and this does count as truthful info, but is hardly useful.

the question was how they changed our thinking today and what affect they have on society?

Let's see....Plato founded his own school, The Academy in 385 after his teacher (Socrates) died. And no one can forget The Republic. I think its Plato's most famous bit. It spoke about how to live a good life, justice in the state, what the perfect State would be like, etc. Goes on about what kind of arts and stuff should be promoted...

Pythagoras, I hate him, creator of....Pythagorean Theorem...Math...I despise math class...It's a snore fest...

And Socrates, well, there's some more famous bit of his, but a strange thing he once said was that true love could only be experienced with another man...I wonder if that influenced anything today...But he mostly spoke about Politics and the like, mostly recorded by other people like Plato...

Pythagoras, I hate him, creator of....Pythagorean Theorem...Math...I despise math class...It's a snore fest...


yes but without the pythagoras therom the math would have been tremendously hard plus he developed the musical scale and the note so we can thank him for music

the question was how they changed our thinking today and what affect they have on society?

The big change is that the heralded the change from attempting to explain the world in terms of mythology and religion, and instead as a system which could be understood on its own terms without invoking personified deities.

yes but without the pythagoras therom the math would have been tremendously hard plus he developed the musical scale and the note so we can thank him for music

Dammit, don't intrude on my hating! :headbang:



.....I'm done now...

Don't forget his Euthypro.

The big change is that the heralded the change from attempting to explain the world in terms of mythology and religion, and instead as a system which could be understood on its own terms without invoking personified deities.



wait a second lets not focus on that aspect to much as it only took thales to achieve this. im sure 100's of the other great minds would have produced more than reinforce this idea.

wait a second lets not focus on that aspect to much as it only took thales to achieve this. im sure 100's of the other great minds would have produced more than reinforce this idea.

Yes, but Thales description of the world was still itself couched in the language of myth: he simply declares that all things are water, and doesn't provide an argument to back this up, or go on to draw conclusions from it. We see the development of more complex methods of describing the world with the later Pre-Socratics and post-Socrates, an actual examination of the methodology which can be used to make these statements. Thus Socrates can be seen as the first real epistemologist, and Plato builds up a metaphysical view of the world which allows for the existence of truths (ie. the Forms), and then Aristotle actually gets down and looks at the nitty gritty of arguments and develops his system of syllogistic logic as a result.

EDIT: to sum that up: following Socrates we see that self-examination of ones own arguments becomes a vital part of philosophy, and this kind of rigour wasn't really present in the pre-Socratics.


...or to sum it up another way: Thales said that we didn't need Gods to explain the world, and those following him went on to examine why we didn't and how other explanations could be formed.