216 ideas
| 11461 | 323 (roughly): Euclid wrote 'Elements', summarising all of geometry [PG] |
| 11390 | 1000 (roughly): Upanishads written (in Sanskrit); religious and philosophical texts [PG] |
| 11391 | 750 (roughly): the Book of Genesis written by Hebrew writers [PG] |
| 11392 | 586: eclipse of the sun on the coast of modern Turkey was predicted by Thales of Miletus [PG] |
| 11395 | 570: Anaximander flourished in Miletus [PG] |
| 11396 | 563: the Buddha born in northern India [PG] |
| 11398 | 540: Lao Tzu wrote 'Tao Te Ching', the basis of Taoism [PG] |
| 11400 | 529: Pythagoras created his secretive community at Croton in Sicily [PG] |
| 11403 | 500: Heraclitus flourishes at Ephesus, in modern Turkey [PG] |
| 11404 | 496: Confucius travels widely, persuading rulers to be more moral [PG] |
| 11408 | 472: Empedocles persuades his city (Acragas in Sicily) to become a democracy [PG] |
| 11412 | 450 (roughly): Parmenides and Zeno visit Athens from Italy [PG] |
| 11414 | 445: Protagoras helps write laws for the new colony of Thurii [PG] |
| 11417 | 436 (roughly): Anaxagoras is tried for impiety, and expelled from Athens [PG] |
| 11535 | 170 (roughly): Marcus Aurelius wrote his private stoic meditations [PG] |
| 11537 | -200 (roughly): Sextus Empiricus wrote a series of books on scepticism [PG] |
| 11541 | 263: Porphyry began to study with Plotinus in Rome [PG] |
| 11545 | 310: Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire [PG] |
| 11549 | 387: Ambrose converts Augustine to Christianity [PG] |
| 11555 | 523: Boethius imprisoned at Pavia, and begins to write [PG] |
| 11557 | 529: the emperor Justinian closes all the philosophy schools in Athens [PG] |
| 11421 | 427: Gorgias visited Athens as ambassador for Leontini [PG] |
| 11425 | 399: Socrates executed (with Plato absent through ill health) [PG] |
| 11432 | 387 (roughly): Plato returned to Athens, and founded the Academy [PG] |
| 11433 | 387 (roughly): Aristippus the Elder founder a hedonist school at Cyrene [PG] |
| 11440 | 367: the teenaged Aristotle came to study at the Academy [PG] |
| 11443 | 360 (roughly): Diogenes of Sinope lives in a barrel in central Athens [PG] |
| 11445 | 347: death of Plato [PG] |
| 11454 | 343: Aristotle becomes tutor to 13 year old Alexander (the Great) [PG] |
| 11456 | 335: Arisotle founded his school at the Lyceum in Athens [PG] |
| 11459 | 330 (roughly): Chuang Tzu wrote his Taoist book [PG] |
| 11465 | 322: Aristotle retired to Chalcis, and died there [PG] |
| 11468 | 307 (roughly): Epicurus founded his school at the Garden in Athens [PG] |
| 11470 | 301 (roughly): Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism at the Stoa Poikile in Athens [PG] |
| 11483 | 261: Cleanthes replaced Zeno as head of the Stoa [PG] |
| 11486 | 229 (roughly): Chrysippus replaced Cleanthes has head of the Stoa [PG] |
| 11492 | 157 (roughly): Carneades became head of the Academy [PG] |
| 11509 | 85: most philosophical activity moves to Alexandria [PG] |
| 11513 | 78: Cicero visited the stoic school on Rhodes [PG] |
| 11516 | 60 (roughly): Lucretius wrote his Latin poem on epicureanism [PG] |
| 11528 | 65: Seneca forced to commit suicide by Nero [PG] |
| 11531 | 80: the discourses of the stoic Epictetus are written down [PG] |
| 11564 | 1090: Anselm publishes his proof of the existence of God [PG] |
| 11558 | 622 (roughly): Mohammed writes the Koran [PG] |
| 11559 | 642: Arabs close the philosophy schools in Alexandria [PG] |
| 11560 | 910 (roughly): Al-Farabi wrote Arabic commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11562 | 1015 (roughly): Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes a book on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11566 | 1115: Abelard is the chief logic teacher in Paris [PG] |
| 11573 | 1166: Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
| 11581 | 1266: Aquinas began writing 'Summa Theologica' [PG] |
| 11586 | 1280: after his death, the teaching of Aquinas becomes official Dominican doctrine [PG] |
| 11591 | 1328: William of Ockham decides the Pope is a heretic, and moves to Munich [PG] |
| 17916 | 1347: the Church persecutes philosophical heresies [PG] |
| 11593 | 1470: Marsilio Ficino founds a Platonic Academy in Florence [PG] |
| 11596 | 1513: Machiavelli wrote 'The Prince' [PG] |
| 11599 | 1543: Copernicus publishes his heliocentric view of the solar system [PG] |
| 11601 | 1580: Montaigne publishes his essays [PG] |
| 11607 | 1600: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome [PG] |
| 11613 | 1619: Descartes's famous day of meditation inside a stove [PG] |
| 11614 | 1620: Bacon publishes 'Novum Organum' [PG] |
| 11619 | 1633: Galileo convicted of heresy by the Inquisition [PG] |
| 11623 | 1641: Descartes publishes his 'Meditations' [PG] |
| 11626 | 1650: death of Descartes, in Stockholm [PG] |
| 11627 | 1651: Hobbes publishes 'Leviathan' [PG] |
| 11633 | 1662: the Port Royal Logic is published [PG] |
| 11634 | 1665: Spinoza writes his 'Ethics' [PG] |
| 11643 | 1676: Leibniz settled as librarian to the Duke of Brunswick [PG] |
| 11649 | 1687: Newton publishes his 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
| 11652 | 1690: Locke publishes his 'Essay' [PG] |
| 11654 | 1697: Bayle publishes his 'Dictionary' [PG] |
| 11659 | 1713: Berkeley publishes his 'Three Dialogues' [PG] |
| 11666 | 1734: Voltaire publishes his 'Philosophical Letters' [PG] |
| 11667 | 1739: Hume publishes his 'Treatise' [PG] |
| 11675 | 1762: Rousseau publishes his 'Social Contract' [PG] |
| 11682 | 1781: Kant publishes his 'Critique of Pure Reason' [PG] |
| 11683 | 1785: Reid publishes his essays defending common sense [PG] |
| 11687 | 1798: the French Revolution [PG] |
| 11694 | 1807: Hegel publishes his 'Phenomenology of Spirit' [PG] |
| 11701 | 1818: Schopenhauer publishes his 'World as Will and Idea' [PG] |
| 11710 | 1840: Kierkegaard is writing extensively in Copenhagen [PG] |
| 11713 | 1843: Mill publishes his 'System of Logic' [PG] |
| 11715 | 1848: Marx and Engels publis the Communist Manifesto [PG] |
| 11717 | 1859: Darwin publishes his 'Origin of the Species' [PG] |
| 11721 | 1861: Mill publishes 'Utilitarianism' [PG] |
| 11724 | 1867: Marx begins publishing 'Das Kapital' [PG] |
| 11733 | 1879: Peirce taught for five years at Johns Hopkins University [PG] |
| 17907 | 1879: Frege invents predicate logic [PG] |
| 17909 | 1892: Frege's essay 'Sense and Reference' [PG] |
| 17908 | 1884: Frege publishes his 'Foundations of Arithmetic' [PG] |
| 11735 | 1885: Nietzsche completed 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' [PG] |
| 17911 | 1888: Dedekind publishes axioms for arithmetic [PG] |
| 11740 | 1890: James published 'Principles of Psychology' [PG] |
| 11742 | 1895 (roughly): Freud developed theories of the unconscious [PG] |
| 11745 | 1900: Husserl began developing Phenomenology [PG] |
| 17917 | 1953: Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [PG] |
| 17919 | 1956: Place proposed mind-brain identity [PG] |
| 11804 | 1962: Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' [PG] |
| 17921 | 1967: Putnam proposed functionalism of the mind [PG] |
| 11808 | 1971: Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' [PG] |
| 11810 | 1972: Kripke publishes 'Naming and Necessity' [PG] |
| 11813 | 1975: Singer publishes 'Animal Rights' [PG] |
| 17920 | 1975: Putnam published his Twin Earth example [PG] |
| 11820 | 1986: David Lewis publishes 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [PG] |
| 11746 | 1903: Moore published 'Principia Ethica' [PG] |
| 11747 | 1904: Dewey became professor at Columbia University [PG] |
| 17910 | 1908: Zermelo publishes axioms for set theory [PG] |
| 11752 | 1910: Russell and Whitehead begin publishing 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
| 11756 | 1912: Russell meets Wittgenstein in Cambridge [PG] |
| 11762 | 1921: Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' published [PG] |
| 11765 | 1927: Heidegger's 'Being and Time' published [PG] |
| 11768 | 1930: Frank Ramsey dies at 27 [PG] |
| 11770 | 1931: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems [PG] |
| 11773 | 1933: Tarski's theory of truth [PG] |
| 11783 | 1942: Camus published 'The Myth of Sisyphus' [PG] |
| 11784 | 1943: Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [PG] |
| 11787 | 1945: Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception' [PG] |
| 17918 | 1947: Carnap published 'Meaning and Necessity' [PG] |
| 11794 | 1950: Quine's essay 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' [PG] |
| 5082 | Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars [Aristotle] |
| 19426 | 'Nominal' definitions just list distinguishing characteristics [Leibniz] |
| 13270 | Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle] |
| 9790 | Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature [Aristotle] |
| 22962 | Two is the least number, but there is no least magnitude, because it is always divisible [Aristotle] |
| 18090 | Without infinity time has limits, magnitudes are indivisible, and numbers come to an end [Aristotle] |
| 22929 | Aristotle's infinity is a property of the counting process, that it has no natural limit [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| 22930 | Lengths do not contain infinite parts; parts are created by acts of division [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| 18833 | A continuous line cannot be composed of indivisible points [Aristotle] |
| 9974 | Ten sheep and ten dogs are the same numerically, but it is not the same ten [Aristotle] |
| 5105 | The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time [Aristotle] |
| 16115 | Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle] |
| 22960 | The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle] |
| 17262 | Aristotle's formal and material 'becauses' [aitiai] arguably involve grounding [Aristotle, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| 16656 | The separation from here to there is not the same as the separation from there to here [Aristotle] |
| 16644 | The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle] |
| 5117 | Heavy and light are defined by their tendency to move down or up [Aristotle] |
| 17041 | Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants, and the simple elements [Aristotle] |
| 16172 | Substance is not predicated of anything - but it still has something underlying it, that originates it [Aristotle] |
| 16623 | We only infer underlying natures by analogy, observing bronze of a statue, or wood of a bed [Aristotle] |
| 16174 | A nature is related to a substance as shapeless matter is to something which has a shape [Aristotle] |
| 17043 | Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle] |
| 16970 | A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle] |
| 16104 | Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle] |
| 11255 | In feature-generation the matter (such as bronze) endures, but in generation it doesn't [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| 9071 | We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle] |
| 16791 | There is no whole except for the parts [Aristotle] |
| 16972 | The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| 5084 | A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle] |
| 16173 | Coming to be is by shape-change, addition, subtraction, composition or alteration [Aristotle] |
| 17042 | Natural things are their own source of stability through change [Aristotle] |
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| 16574 | Coming-to-be may be from nothing in a qualified way, as arising from an absence [Aristotle] |
| 11254 | Matter is potentiality [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| 19424 | Knowledge needs clarity, distinctness, and adequacy, and it should be intuitive [Leibniz] |
| 8331 | To know something we need understanding, which is grasp of the primary cause [Aristotle] |
| 5080 | We know a thing if we grasp its first causes, principles and basic elements [Aristotle] |
| 16969 | Science refers the question Why? to four causes/explanations: matter, form, source, purpose [Aristotle] |
| 11250 | Four Explanations: the essence and form; the matter; the source; and the end [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| 12045 | Aristotle's four 'causes' are four items which figure in basic explanations of nature [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| 16968 | There are as many causes/explanations as there are different types of why-question [Aristotle] |
| 13109 | Chance is inexplicable, because we can only explain what happens always or usually [Aristotle] |
| 19427 | True ideas represent what is possible; false ideas represent contradictions [Leibniz] |
| 9789 | You can't abstract natural properties to make Forms - objects and attributes are defined together [Aristotle] |
| 9788 | Mathematicians study what is conceptually separable, and doesn't lead to error [Aristotle] |
| 5107 | Predicates are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection [Aristotle] |
| 20042 | We assign the cause of someone's walking when we say why they are doing it [Aristotle] |
| 5110 | Goodness is when a thing (such as a circle) is complete, and conforms with its nature [Aristotle] |
| 5111 | All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain [Aristotle] |
| 5092 | Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first [Aristotle] |
| 5113 | Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order [Aristotle] |
| 5085 | 'Nature' refers to two things - form and matter [Aristotle] |
| 5089 | Nature has purpose, and aims at what is better. Is it coincidence that crops grow when it rains? [Aristotle] |
| 5086 | The nature of a thing is its end and purpose [Aristotle] |
| 5087 | A thing's purpose is ambiguous, and from one point of view we ourselves are ends [Aristotle] |
| 5091 | Teeth and crops are predictable, so they cannot be mere chance, but must have a purpose [Aristotle] |
| 5108 | Is ceasing-to-be unnatural if it happens by force, and natural otherwise? [Aristotle] |
| 5093 | Continuity depends on infinity, because the continuous is infinitely divisible [Aristotle] |
| 5095 | The heavens seem to be infinite, because we cannot imagine their end [Aristotle] |
| 16762 | Matter desires form, as female desires male, and ugliness desires beauty [Aristotle] |
| 17464 | When Aristotle's elements compound they are stable, so why would they ever separate? [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry on Aristotle] |
| 11252 | The 'form' of a thing explains why the matter constitutes that particular thing [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| 11253 | A 'material' cause/explanation is the form of whatever is the source [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| 13107 | Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally [Aristotle] |
| 19425 | In the schools the Four Causes are just lumped together in a very obscure way [Leibniz] |
| 8332 | The four causes are the material, the form, the source, and the end [Aristotle] |
| 9787 | Scientists must know the essential attributes of the things they study [Aristotle] |
| 20063 | Motion fulfils potentiality [Aristotle] |
| 5114 | If movement can arise within an animal, why can't it also arise in the universe? [Aristotle] |
| 5116 | When there is unnatural movement (e.g. fire going downwards) the cause is obvious [Aristotle] |
| 5099 | The universe as a whole is not anywhere [Aristotle] |
| 5097 | If everything has a place, this causes an infinite regress, because each place must have place [Aristotle] |
| 5098 | Place is not shape, or matter, or extension between limits; it is the limits of a body [Aristotle] |
| 20920 | If there were many cosmoses, each would have its own time, giving many times [Aristotle] |
| 5106 | Would there be time if there were no mind? [Aristotle] |
| 22967 | It is unclear whether time depends on the existence of soul [Aristotle] |
| 8590 | Time does not exist without change [Aristotle] |
| 22965 | Time measures rest, as well as change [Aristotle] |
| 22885 | For Aristotle time is not a process but a means for measuring processes [Aristotle, by Bardon] |
| 22959 | Time is not change, but the number we associate with change [Aristotle] |
| 22964 | Change only exists in time through its being temporally measure [Aristotle] |
| 5104 | Time is an aspect of change [Aristotle] |
| 22956 | How can time exist, when it is composed of what has ceased to be and is yet to be? [Aristotle] |
| 5102 | If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist [Aristotle] |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| 22961 | The present moment is obviously a necessary feature of time [Aristotle] |
| 22916 | Unlike time, change goes at different rates, and is usually localised [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| 16693 | Time has parts, but the now is not one of them, and time is not composed of nows [Aristotle] |
| 22958 | Nows can't be linked together, any more than points on a line [Aristotle] |
| 22968 | Circular motion is the most obvious measure of time, and especially the celestial sphere [Aristotle] |
| 22963 | We measure change by time, and time by change, as they are interdefined [Aristotle] |
| 22966 | The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future) [Aristotle] |
| 22957 | We can't tell whether the changing present moment is one thing, or a succession of things [Aristotle] |
| 5083 | Do things come to be from what is, or from what is not? Both seem problematical. [Aristotle] |
| 5119 | The source of all movement must be indivisible and have no magnitude [Aristotle] |