Free About 1 hr1 learner Rev. 2026-10-11 0

Around 585 BCE a man in Miletus is said to have predicted an eclipse. He also taught, we are told, that everything comes from water. He was wrong about the water, but he started something: the habit of explaining the world by argument instead of by myth. This course follows that habit through a philosopher executed by his own city, a student who imagined prisoners chained in a cave, and another who catalogued sea creatures and the constitutions of Greek cities.

It is honest about the blind spots too, including Aristotle on slavery and Plato's distrust of democracy, and it ends with how the books survived, partly thanks to scholars in Baghdad and Cordoba.

Levels

  1. 1 1. From Myth to Reason: The Presocratics 5-question quiz
  2. 2 2. The Sophists and Socrates 5-question quiz
  3. 3 3. Plato: Dialogues, Forms and the Cave 5-question quiz
  4. 4 4. Plato: The Soul and the Ideal City 5-question quiz
  5. 5 5. Aristotle: Logic, Causes and Virtue 5-question quiz
  6. 6 6. Aristotle's Politics and Athenian Democracy 5-question quiz
  7. 7 7. The Hellenistic Schools 5-question quiz
  8. 8 8. Legacy: How Greek Ideas Traveled 5-question quiz

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