AN OUTLINE OF HISTORY
From the point of view of science, religion, and philosophy
PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS
• Roughly 600-400 BCE
• Known only in fragments
• Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus,
Parmenides, Zeno
• Pythagoras of Samos (582-496 BCE)
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GREECE
• Socrates (469-399 BCE)
• Plato (427-327 BCE)
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
THE COLLAPSE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND
THE BEGINNING OF THE DARK AGES
• Ptolemy (127-151) Greek astronomer and
mathematician
• Augustine of Hippo (354-322 BCE)
• Perhaps the most influential thinker in the
history of the Roman Catholic Church
THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES AND THE
BEGINNING OF THE RENAISSANCE
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Rediscovery of the classics
Dante (1263-1321) – the “Sweet New Style”
Aquinas (1224-1274) – the “Angelic Doctor”
The great cathedrals were begun.
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
• Galileo (1574-1642)
• Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
• Roughly coincident with the 18th century
• New emphasis on reason, freedom, and
democracy.
• Questioning the authority of the church
• David Hume (1711-1776)
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• James Hutton (1726-1797) The father of modern
geology. “No vestige of a beginning; no prospect of
an end.”
THE 19TH CENTURY
• Charles Darwin (1809-1892)
THE 20TH CENTURY
• Modern Physics
– Quantum Mechanics
– Cosmology
– Chaos
• Biology – the Darwinian synthesis
• The rise of American fundamentalism