GREEK MINDS: INTELLIGENCE BEFORE TECHNOLOGYBy: DeMario Durham

INFORMATION

• I made this artifact because I really enjoy mathematics as I am a math major and I have always been interested in Greek mathematicians and philosophers. I just never really sat down to research them!

• My target audience is anyone interested in the teachings of the Greek.

BEFORE THE CLASSICAL

• “Ancient Greece” – the time three hundred centuries before the classical age• Between 800 B.C. to 500 B.C.• A relatively sophisticated period in World History

• During this time was the emergence of city-states• City-State – Village with a common meeting place, a government with its own

set of laws, and its own army

• Each City state was thought to be protected by a patron God or Goddess to which the city owed reverence, reverence and sacrifice.

• Although there were similarities between city-states, each one was different from the next

• All of the city-states had economies based on agriculture, not trade, therefore land was the most valuable resource

• Because the nobles and aristocrats were power hungry, they monopolized the best farm land and justified it by claiming they were descendants of the Gods. Poor families had barely any political rights.

• This tension between the rich and the poor, coupled with the pressure of population growth caused many men to migrate from their home city-state and into other less populated areas surround Greece and the Aegean Sea.

• These new areas became self-governing and self-sufficient city-states.

• After Ancient Greece came Classical Greece.

CLASSICAL GREECE

• Between 480B.C. to 320 B.C

• During this time, Athens and Sparta dominated Greece.

• This period in Greece’s history produced amazing cultural and scientific accomplishments.

• Athens introduced the world to Democacy and western Governments replicated it thousands of years later.

• The thinkers of the Classical era have set the foundation for thought even to today.

• We’ll take a look at several of these thinkers.

PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS (570-495 BC)

• Some claim that we owe pure mathematics to Pythagoras and that he is the first “true” mathematician.

• He is still a controversial topic because of the fact that he never left any mathematical writings of his own.

PYTHAGORAS

• He established a school at Croton in southern Italy

• Pythagorean thought was mostly centered around math however he also inflicted his quasi-religious philosophies, strict vegetarian life style, and communal living on all of his members

• There was tension between the mathematical and scientific members and the religious and ritualistic members of his school. The tension resulted in fighting and dispersment of the Pythagoreans.

• He is most known for the Pythagorean theorem.

• Based on the 45, 45, 90 triangle, One of his students, Hippasus, tried to calculate the value of the square root of 2 and found that it was impossible to do as a fraction.

• This discovery shattered the Pythagoreans beliefs in that there existed a number that couldn’t be written as the ratio of two of God’s creations.

PYTHAGORAS

• Pythagoreans pretty much worshiped numbers and considered each number to have its own meaning.• 1- Generator of all numbers• 2 – opinion• 3 – harmony• 4 – justice• 5 – marriage• 6 – creation• Etc..• Odd numbers were females and even

numbers were males

• The holiest number was 10.

PYTHAGORAS• Pythagoras is also accredited with the discovery that intervals

between harmonious musical notes always have whole number ratios.

• However ratios that aren’t whole numbers give off a dissonant or uneasy sound.

• Pythagoras became convinced that the whole universe was based on numbers and that planets moved in correlation to math equations which were related to musical notes which produced “Music of the Spheres.”

SOCRATES• Classical Greek philosopher that

laid the fundamentals of modern Western Philosophy

• He came up with his Socratic Method which clarified the concepts of Good and Justice by breaking down any problem to a series of questions. Your answer will come from the responses to the questions. This method is still used today!

• Socrates believed that successful fathers don’t necessarily produce successful sons and that moral excellence was a matter of divine inheritance and not how one was raised.

SOCRATES

Knowledge

• He believed that wisdom was parallel to a person’s ignorance.

• Deeds were a product of the level of intelligence and ignorance.

Virtue• He believed that a person must

concentrate more on developing himself than material things.

• He encouraged friendship and loving one another.

• To act Good and truly be Good from the inside are two different things

• Virtue relates to the Goodness of the soul.

PLATO

• Plato was not only a philosopher but also an important patron of math.

• Inspired by Pythagoras he founded his Academy in Athens in 387 BC.

• He stressed math as being a way of understanding reality

• He became known as the “maker of mathematicians”

• He focused more on geometry as he thought that geometry was the key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.

PLATO

• As a mathematician he’s best known for identifying 5 regular symmetrical 3D shapes known as Platonic Solids. They were the basis for the entire universe.• Tetrahedron – represented Fire• Octahedron – represented Air• Cube – represented earth• Icosahedron – represented water• Dodecahedron – God used it for

arranging the constellations in the heavens.

EUCLID

• Not much is known about the life of Euclid

• Often referred to as the Father of Geometry

• His textbook, The Elements, was a compilation and explanation of all known math up until his time. He connected all of the ideas into what Is today known as Euclidean geometry which is still relevant today.

EUCLID

• Euclid’s five general axioms:• Things that are equal to the same

thing are equal to each other• If equals are added to equals, then

whole sums are equal• If equals are subtracted from

equals, then the differences are equal

• Things that coincide with one another are equal to one another

• The whole of something is greater than a piece of it

SUM IT UP ALREADY!

• The main essesence of this artifact is that Greek ideas have transcended through millenias.

• These ideas have even survived the wave of technology!! (So far)

• These great minds that came up with or enhanced these ideas were brilliant without the need of any technology. Their ideas helped create the technology.

• It amazes me that they figured out so much with so little at their disposal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-greece

• http://ancient-greece.org/history/classical.html

• http://www.storyofmathematics.com/greek_pythagoras.html

• http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/People/Socrates/