How Did The Ancient Greek Contribution To Western Intellectual History?

The ancient Greeks were pivotal to western intellectual history. The western philosophical tradition started in ancient Greeks and would paint the pathway to future discoveries and knowledge. As the Greeks would improve the idea of the alphabet when the Phoenicians passed it onto them and would begin recording their ideas. These recorded ideas would finally be documented and help spread the ideas of philosophy. In addition, the ancient Greeks would set up the basic categories of philosophy to give people a understanding of philosophy. Uniquely, Greek philosophy actually began in Ionia (western coast of modern day Turkey). Ancient Greek was the center point of western intellect because of their ability to read and write. They inherited the
The basic categories would begin with metaphysics, the aspect of asking questions. When people decide to question stuff around them, it tends to lead to new discoveries and answers. Two types of answers would be given materialism and idealism. Materialism would be the physical answers while idealism was the mental answers. The second aspect is epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology was essentially figuring out if a theory was true or false. Once again, the Greeks outline two possible ways to approaching the problems of knowledge, empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism is a theory that says all knowledge is deprived through the senses and rationalism is a theory that says all knowledge should be based on reason. The third aspect is ethics, which most likely is the most important aspect because ethics is the understanding of right and wrong. Ethics stops morally and ethically wrong experiments. These basic aspects would be used by the Greek
One of the most famous Ionian was Pythagoras, who resided in Cortona, Italy. Cortona was a seaport located in southern Italy, that was referred as greater Greece (Magna Grecia) and was the place where he setted up his famous school. His philosophy focused on mathematics and was credited for creating the pythagorean theorem and many other geometric proofs. However, Pythagoras was considered an idealist because most of his ideas were only in the mind and was never tested. Although most of his ideas were never tested, he had a profound influence on all of this students, most notably Plato. Other Greek philosophers would spread the ideas of philosophy and make people question what is right or wrong. People like Leucippus, the man who invented the ideas of the atom. Although he could came up with the theory, he did not develop the idea. His student, Democritus would take this theory and develop them into a true philosophy. In a matter of fact, Democritus was considered on the same level of Plato and Aristotle. However, he never founded a school, which means his ideas was not impactful as Plato and Aristotle in later