* Plato - 4th c. BC - was a great Greek philosopher, who first devised the object of Philosophy, which is the love for knowledge, the science in other words not as an end in itself but as a tool for the man to act aright and be wise and happy at the same time.
Without his philosophical thinking Western culture would not have been what we know nowadays. The Academy of Plato was the first philosophical and educational institution in the history of humanity worldwide. It was founded in Athens around 387 BC. by philosopher Plato, in which various scientific disciplines with subjects such as Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics and Politics were taught. The olive tree that Plato used to sit and think under its shadow, is still live and situated in the historical area of the ancient olive grove of Athens. |
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* Archimedes, 3rd c. BC, was able to solve the enigma of the king of Syracuse Ieron - if his crown made by a well-known goldsmith of the time was made of pure gold or not - using only the principles of Hydrostatic and Mathematics to avoid destroying it.
The crown was exactly the same weight as the amount of pure gold originally given by the King to the artist, but Archimedes proved that the crown was not of pure gold but of alloy gold with a cheaper and more lightweight metal. * The Antikythera Mechanism of the Hellenistic period was the first known analogue computer of antiquity. * The steam turbine, the first steam engine of history was invention of Heron, 3c. BC. * Democritus was the first philosopher, 5 c. BC, who formulated the atomic theory of the universe. * Eratosthenes of Cyrene, c.276 BC was the first person that had calculated the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis with an remarkable accuracy. Additionally, using mathematics he had accurately calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun, he invented the leap day (29 Feb) and he created the first map in the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era. * Favorite spectacle for the Greeks in history has always been the comedies and the tragedies in the theater and the athletic games at the stadium. Greeks had never performed barbaric acts in the past such as duels and tortures in arenas. * The Inquisition never appeared in the Greek world during the the Middle Ages. On the contrary Greek culture contributed significantly to the Renaissance in Europe. * The ancient Greek thinkers and philosophers had reached the pre-scientific stage, the first step in the path of the sciences of Physics, Geometry, Algebra and History. * The aesthetic value of the Parthenon is not due to the size of the ancient temple; it's due to the beauty of its sculptures and the solutions the architects had found in regard to the perspective, designing curves, an incline of the columns and the pyramidal shape of the temple. This illusion in visual perception decreases the tension by giving the sense of grace and the impression that the temple doesn't suffer from its weight and it is rectangular, perpendicular and symmetrical, while not in reality. That is why Parthenon is considered a world-wide miracle of architecture. * All the words/terms that end in -logy and -nomy are Greek. * Words like: abyss, airplane, alphabet, amnesia, analysis, anatomy, angel, archeology, architecture, astronomy, athlete, barbarian, barometer, bibliography, biology, bishop, buffalo, call, card, chaos, characterize, chart, chemistry, church, clergy, clerk, cosmopolitan, cost, crisis, criterion, democracy, diabetes, dialogue, didactic, dinosaur, diploma, diploma(t), drama, ecology, ecology, economy, episode, Europe, fantasia, father, geometry, harmony, helicopter, hero, history, idol, ironic, mathematics, mechanism, melody, mentor, (kilo/thermo,etc)meter, method, microscope, monk, mother, music, pain, panic, paper, pathology, pause, photography, physics, pilot, policy, practice, priest, prognosis, protein, psychology, scene, school, sketch, sponsor, star, stigmatize, strategy, symmetry, system, technique, telegram, telephone, turbo, as well as plenty of other words mostly of high meaning are Greek. |