Lecture notes

Question 1

Who was known as the father of numbers?

Answer 1

Pythagoras of Samos

Question 2

What is Pythagoras best known for?

Answer 2

The Pythagorean Theorem

Question 3

Who did Pythagorean ideas influence?

Answer 3

Plato

Question 4

According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said what?

Answer 4

“number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons”

Question 5

Pythagoras was the first man to call himself what?

Answer 5

A philosopher, a lover of wisdom

Question 6

What was Pythagoras’ first principle of reality?

Answer 6

numbers and proportion

Question 7

Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to what?

Answer 7

Everything was related to mathematics.

Question 8

Pythagoras and his students believed that everything could be predicted and measured how?

Answer 8

In rhythmic patterns or cycles

Question 9

Pythagoras’ name is associated with what?

Answer 9

Pythian Apollo (The Delphic oracle)

Question 10

Zeno of Elea is known exclusively for what?

Answer 10

For propounding a number of ingenious paradoxes, the most famous of these purport to show that motion is impossible by bringing to light apparent or latent contradictions in ordinary assumptions regarding to its occurrence

Question 11

Zeno argued against what common assumption?

Answer 11

He argued against the common assumption that there are many things by showing in various ways how it, too, leads to contradiction

Question 12

What is Zeno’s Original theory?

Answer 12

It is typically said that he aimed to defend the paradoxical monism of his Eleatic mentor, Parmenides, but the Platonic evidence on which this view has resided ultimately fails to support it

Question 13

What is Zeno’s contemporary theory?

Answer 13

Zeno’s arguments tend to problematize the the application of quantitative conceptions to the physical bodies and to spatial expanses as ordinarily conceived, his paradoxes may have originated in reflection upon Pythagorean efforts to apply mathematical notions to the natural world.

Question 14

What is The Antinomy if the Limit and the Unlimited?

Answer 14

If there are many things, it is necessary that they be just so many as they are and neither greater than themselves nor fewer. But if they are just as many as they are, they will be limited. If there are many things, the things that are are unlimited; for there are always others between these entities, and again others between those.

Question 15

What is Zeno’s Paradox of Motion?

Answer 15

The Stadium (or the Dichotomy)- this is the argument about the impossibility of motion because what moves must reach the half-way point earlier than the end. It is not possible to transverse or make contact with unlimited things individually in a limited time.

Question 16

What was Zeno’s Paradox of Motion- Achilles and the tortoise?

Answer 16

If a tortoise starts ahead of Achilles in a race, the tortoise will never be taken over by Achilles. Because during the time it takes Achilles to reach the point from which the tortoise started, the tortoise will have progressed some distance beyond that point.

Question 17

What was Zeno’s Paradox of Motion- The Arrow?

Answer 17

If everything always is resting whenever it is against what is equal and what moves is always in the now, then the moving arrow is motionless.

Question 18

Did Zeno’s arguments quickly achieve a remarkable level of notoriety?

Answer 18

Yes, they had an immediate impact on Greek physical theory.

Question 19

Zeno’s principle that spatially extended entity must be limitlessly divisible would profoundly impact the development of the subtle and powerful physical theories of which philosophers?

Answer 19

Anaxagoras, who accepts the principle and the early atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, who reject it.

Question 20

Zeno’s arguments forced Greek natural philosophers to develop properly what?

Answer 20

physical theories of composition as opposed to the essentially chemical theories of earlier thinkers such as Empedocles.

Question 21

Who were the sophists?

Answer 21

In ancient Greece, the sophists were a group of teachers of philosophy and rhetoric who professed that one could not possess knowledge of ultimate reality and that moral value was indeterminate. They claimed they could find the answers to all questions. Mercenary in practice. Wise guys.

Question 22

Who was the first Sophist?

Answer 22

Protagoras

Question 23

What eventually led to the popular resentment against sophist practitioners and the ideas and writings associated with sophism?

Answer 23

Their attitude, coupled with the wealth garnered by many of the sophists- Many of them taught their skills for a price and commanded very high fees

Question 24

Define Relativism

Answer 24

the idea that some elements of experience or culture are relative to or dependent on other elements or aspects. (that’s true for you but not me; beauty is in the eye of the beholder)

Question 25

Define Truth Relativism

Answer 25

There are no absolute truths. Truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as language or culture.

Question 26

Define Moral Relativism

Answer 26

the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances.

Question 27

Sophists were known for eristic argumentation. What is this?

Answer 27

reasoning that aims not at truth but at victory over an opponent or at making a weaker position prevail.

Question 28

Who said “man is the measure of all things”?

Answer 28

Protagoras of Abdera

Question 29

Protagora’s doctrines can be divided into what three groups?

Answer 29

Orthoepeia: the study of the correct use of words. Man is the measure statement: the notion that knowledge is relative to the knower. Agnosticism: the claim that we cannot know anything about the gods.

Question 30

Who was Thrasymachus of Chalcedon?

Answer 30

A sophist (459-400 BCE) who defined and taught moral realism- the idea that might is right, injustice pays better than justice and the good guys finish last. Justice is the advantage of the stronger, and injustice if on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice.

Question 31

Who was Gorgias of Leontini?

Answer 31

A sophist (487-376 BCE), proponent of skepticism, relativism, and nominalism- the theory that words do not refer to real objects but are merely the names of ideas, especially words signifying abstract concepts: justice, truth, humanity, wisdom, etc.

Question 32

What are the doctrines of Gorgias?

Answer 32

1-nothing exists 2- even if something exists, nothing can be known about it 3- even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.

Question 33

Who said “speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most indivisible body effects of the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity”?

Answer 33

Gorgias of Leontini (from Encomium of Helen)