at not being was impossible.One of the most important thinkers of the time and of history was Pythagorus, who not only was a philosopher but a mathematician and a poet. He was born at Samos, an island off the coast of Ionia. He spent most of his life at Crotan, in Southern Italy, where he eventually founded the brotherhood of thinkers. He was very secretive and left very little writings, most of what he said was documented by his followers. He believed that the soul was immortal and that once it's body died it moved on to another sort of living creature. He believed that nothing was absolutely new and that all animate things were akin. He was also a vegetarian because if you killed an animal he believed that you could be killing a dead relative or a close departed friend. He also believed that numbers were the principles of all things. Another thing he came up with was the Pythagorean theorem, a way to determine the hypotenuse or diagonal of squares.Socrates is often considered to be the father of modern philosophy. He wasn't interested in the course that philosophy was taking and he decided rather to investigate human nature. He was the first philosopher to live in Athens where he often held public debates with the Sophists. His chief form of philosophical reasoning was elenchus, which was the questioning of common beliefs in order to establish truths and reveal inconsistences. The oracle at Delphi once declared that no man living was wiser than Socrates. He met his demise at the hands of Greek courts on the grounds that he tainted youth and because he refused to leave Athens he was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.The next in a long tradition of great philosophers was Plato. He was born a nobleman and throughout his life he had planned to be a politician or a lawyer. But, one day he joined the sophists to improve his public speaking, which is where he first encountered Socrates. He was immediately enchanted with philosophy and b...
