|
Pherecydes Of Syros
Pherecydes of Syros (; grc-gre, Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύριος; fl. 6th century BCE) was an Ancient Greek mythographer and proto- philosopher from the island of Syros. Little is known about his life and death. Some ancient testimonies counted Pherecydes among the Seven Sages of Greece, although he is generally believed to have lived in the generation after them. Others claim he was either a student of Pittacus, the teacher of Pythagoras, or a well-traveled autodidact who had studied secret Phoenician books. Pherecydes wrote a book on cosmogony, known as the "Pentemychos" or "Heptamychos". He was considered the first writer to communicate philosophical ideas in prose as opposed to verse. However, other than a few short fragments preserved in quotations from other ancient philosophers and a long fragment discovered on an Egyptian papyrus, his work is lost. However, it survived into the Hellenistic period and a significant amount of its content can be conjectured indir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syros
Syros ( el, Σύρος ), also known as Siros or Syra, is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is south-east of Athens. The area of the island is and it has 21,507 inhabitants (2011 census). The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and . Ermoupoli is the capital of the island, the Cyclades, and the South Aegean. It has always been a significant port town, and during the 19th century it was even more significant than Piraeus. Other villages are Galissas, Foinikas, Pagos, Manna, Kini and Poseidonia. Ermoupoli Ermoupoli ( el, Ερμούπολη) stands on a naturally amphitheatrical site, with neo-classical buildings, old mansions, and white houses cascading down to the harbour. It was built during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s. The city hall is in the center of the town, in Miaoulis Square, ringed with cafés, seating areas, and palm trees. Dubbed the "City of Hermes", Syros has numerous churches, such as Metamorphosis, Koimisis, St. Demetriu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras (6th century BCE).. In the classical sense, a philosopher was someone who lived according to a certain way of life, focusing upon resolving existential questions about the human condition; it was not necessary that they discoursed upon theories or commented upon authors. Those who most arduously committed themselves to this lifestyle would have been considered ''philosophers''. In a modern sense, a philosopher is an intellectual who contributes to one or more branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, social theory, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. A philosopher may also be someone who has worked in the humanities or other sciences whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chronos
Chronos (; grc-gre, Χρόνος, , "time"), also spelled Khronos or Chronus, is a personification of time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature. Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan Cronus in antiquity due to the similarity in names. The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance, giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe. Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel. He is comparable to the deity Aion as a symbol of cyclical time. He is usually portrayed as an old callous man with a thick grey beard, personifying the destructive and stifling aspects of time. Name During antiquity, Chronos was occasionally interpreted as Cronus. According to Plutarch, the Greeks believed that Cronus was an allegorical name for Chronos. Mythology In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth (classical Element)
Earth is one of the classical elements, in some systems being one of the four along with air, fire, and water. European tradition Earth is one of the four classical elements in ancient Greek philosophy and science. It was commonly associated with qualities of heaviness, matter and the terrestrial world. Due to the hero cults, and chthonic underworld deities, the element of ''earth'' is also associated with the sensual aspects of both life and death in later occultism. Empedocles of Acragas proposed four '' archai'' by which to understand the cosmos: ''fire'','' air'', ''water'', and ''earth''. Plato (427–347 BCE) believed the elements were geometric forms (the platonic solids) and he assigned the cube to the element of ''earth'' in his dialogue '' Timaeus''. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) believed ''earth'' was the heaviest element, and his theory of '' natural place'' suggested that any ''earth–laden'' substances, would fall quickly, straight down, towards the center ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chthonic
The word chthonic (), or chthonian, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ''χθών, "khthon"'', meaning earth or soil. It translates more directly from χθόνιος or "in, under, or beneath the earth" which can be differentiated from Γῆ, or "ge", which speaks to the living surface of land on the earth. In Greek, chthonic is a descriptive word for things relating to the underworld and can be used in the context of chthonic gods, chthonic rituals, chthonic cults, and more. This is as compared to the more commonly referenced Olympic gods and their associated rites and cults. Olympic gods are understood to reference that which exists above the earth, particularly in the sky. Gods that are related to agriculture are also considered to have chthonic associations as planting and growing takes place in part under the earth. Chthonic deities Chthonic and ouranic, or olympic, are not completely opposite descriptors. They do not cleanly differentiate types of gods and worship in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life. The gene is the unit of heredity, whereas the cell is the structural and functional unit of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells and passes its genes onto a new generation, sometimes producing genetic variation. Organisms, or the individual entities of life, are generally thought to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hellenistic Period
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. The Ancient Greek word ''Hellas'' (, ''Hellás'') was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the word ''Hellenistic'' was derived. "Hellenistic" is distinguished from "Hellenic" in that the latter refers to Greece itself, while the former encompasses all ancient territories under Greek influence, in particular the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great. After the Macedonian invasion of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC and its disintegration shortly after, the Hellenistic kingdoms were established throughout south-west Asia ( Seleucid Empire, Kingdom of Pergamon), north-east Africa ( Ptolemaic Kingdom) and South Asia ( Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the form consists of verse (writing in lines) based on rhythmic metre or rhyme. The word "prose" first appears in English in the 14th century. It is derived from the Old French ''prose'', which in turn originates in the Latin expression ''prosa oratio'' (literally, straightforward or direct speech). Works of philosophy, history, economics, etc., journalism, and most fiction (an exception is the verse novel), are examples of works written in prose. Developments in twentieth century literature, including free verse, concrete poetry, and prose poetry, have led to the idea of poetry and prose as two ends on a spectrum rather than firmly distinct from each other. The British poet T. S. Eliot noted, whereas "the distinction between verse and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosmogony
Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of the cosmos or the universe. Overview Scientific theories In astronomy, cosmogony refers to the study of the origin of particular astrophysical objects or systems, and is most commonly used in reference to the origin of the universe, the Solar System, or the Earth–Moon system. The prevalent cosmological model of the early development of the universe is the Big Bang theory. Sean M. Carroll, who specializes in theoretical cosmology and field theory, explains two competing explanations for the origins of the singularity, which is the center of a space in which a characteristic is limitless. (One example of a singularity is the singularity of a black hole, where gravity becomes infinite.) It is generally accepted that the universe began at a point of singularity. When the singularity of the universe started to expand, the Big Bang occurred, which evidently began the universe. The other explanation, held by proponents s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autodidact
Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) is education without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). Generally, autodidacts are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. Autodidacts may or may not have formal education, and their study may be either a complement or an alternative to formal education. Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts. Etymology The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words (, ) and (, ). The related term '' didacticism'' defines an artistic philosophy of education. Terminology Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such is heutagogy, coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon of Southern Cross University in Australia; others are ''self-directed learning'' and ''self-determined learning''. In the heutagogy paradigm, a learner should ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
