Socrates and the earliest philosophers

Carlos M. Sierra Molina

      Socrates (469B.C. - 399B.C.)  He is known has the first important Athenian philosopher. He was born in Athens in 469 B.C. His father was a stone-carver and his mother was a mid-wife. He served with some distinction as a soldier at Delium and Amphipolis during the Peloponnesian War. After war he worked has a stone-craver, not good at all, then he receives a modest fortune from his father; enough to give full-time attention to inventing the practice of philosophical dialogue.

      Besides, Socrates didn’t leave any writes; he is considerate one of the most important philosophers in history. Socrates was a Greek philosopher that uses his knowledge to interrogate normal people and make them reach the answers to his questions, by themselves. He always said: “I only know, that I know nothing” to be humble; and he like to confuse some of the sophist that think that they know everything, making them to contradict and recognize that their ideas were wrong.

      The information we know about Socrates is thanks to: the historian Xenophon, the comedian Aristophanes and his disciple Plato. The last one, talks about Socrates in his famous writes “The Plato’s Dialogues”. The Socrates that Xenophon describes in his stories is very different from the Plato’s. It is so ordinary that is difficult to imagine.  By the other hand, Aristophanes' play The Clouds portrays Socrates as a clown who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt. Most of Aristophanes' works, however, function as parodies. Thus, it is presumed this characterization was also not literal.

      Socrates was accused of being a bad influence for the young Greeks; some people say. But, he was really judge because of his social and moral critics, and for trying to improve the Greeks sense of justice. In his judgment he defends himself, unsuccessfully, and was condemned to death. In 399 B.C Socrates drank a mortal drink called “cicuta”, and died defending his believing.

      Why I choose Socrates? The article was supposed to be about physics, Socrates was a philosopher, but I think he was the motor of the study and the creation of sciences. May I explain myself,  Plato was his disciple he almost follows the same steps of Socrates, his main interests were Rhetoric, Art, Literature, Epistemology, Justice, Virtue, Politics, Education, Family, Militarism. But Plato’s student Aristotle has other interests like, Physics, Metaphysics, Poetry, Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics, Government, Ethics, Biology, Zoology. There are changes, he wanted to study the nature and his components, and how it works.

      In conclusion, Socrates with his dialogue and teaching techniques influence the people to learn by themselves and to be skeptic. Thanks to his behavior and curiosity for knowledge, and his will to share his knowledge, others persons do the same and gave birth to what I consider the first scientists; like Aristotle.  

Bibliography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/s/socrates.htm

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/socr.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/philosophy/socrates.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle