HackingTheUniverse

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Socrates was born in Greece around -0469 and was a famous philosopher who greatly influenced Greek thinkers after him, such as Plato and Aristotle. His method of logical reasoning by asking probing questions about an issue until the answer was revealed became known as the “Socratic method” and is considered to be a forerunner [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Hippocrates was a greek physician born around -0460. He is considered to be “the father of medicine” because of his contributions to the systematic study of illness and medicine. The Hippocratic oath that physicians take, swearing to the ethical practice of medicine, is named after him. Before Hippocrates, superstition ruled medical beliefs [...]

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
Aristotle

Anaximander was a Greek philosopher who studied under Thales and taught Pythagoras. He studied geometry and geography and may have been the first to draw a map of the world. He created a mechanical model of the universe that had Earth at its center. He attempted to explain phenomena such as lightning [...]

Bronze mettalurgy was being used for several thousand years before this. The presence of iron artifacts in a culture is evidence of the ability to melt and refine iron ore which requires higher temperatures than bronze work and usually indicates knowledge of how make a high temperature furnace. Some of the earliest ironwork [...]

Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician born around -575 on the island of Samos. He is best known for the “Pythagorean theorem” which states that in a triangle with a ninety degree angle (right angle), a square formed by the long side opposite the right angle (the hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of the squares [...]

Euclid was a greek mathmetician and scholar who worked in Alexandria during the rule of Ptolemy. Euclid is best known for his vast collection of mathematics and geometry in a series of books called, “The Elements”.