HackingTheUniverse

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Aristarchus was born on the island of Samos in Greece around -0310. He was a mathematician and philospher and probably the first on record to propose that the Earth circled around the Sun instead of the other way around. He wrote a work titled, “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon” which [...]

Theophrastus was a Greek biologist and botanist, who also made contributions to the fields of philosophy, logic, physics, ethics and language. He has been called “the father of taxonomy” because of his work on systematically classifying plants. He applied the same kind of methodology to a book that described moral outlines of characters in a [...]

Zeno of Elea, was born around -460 in southern Italy and influenced the thinking and work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Zeno studied under the philospher Parmenides and became famous for posing paradoxical problems. Plato wrote a dialogue called “Parmenides”, which is our primary source on the thinking of Zeno. PRECURSOR: Parmenides SUCCESSOR: Socrates Plato [...]

Born Abu Ali Sina Balkhi, or ibn Sina, in Persia around 980 and known in western history by the Latin version of his name, “Avicenna”. He was a physician and philospher and studied and taught mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, logic, geometry, geology, paleontology and more. The author of over 400 works, his major effort was [...]

Al-Farabi was a Persian born in Turkestan around 872. He wrote many books on logic and became known as the “Second Teacher” (with Aristotle being the first teacher) in part because he developed a non-aristotelian form of logic. He studied the works of Aristotle and wrote commentaries on them. He also studied and wrote on [...]

Plato was a philosopher and mathematician born in Athens, Greece around -425. Plato was a student of Socrates and founded a school known as “The Academy” at which Aristotle became a student. PRECURSOR: -0469 Socrates SUBSEQUENT: