Answer to Question 1
Unlike the great pre-Socratic thinkers, Socrates was less concerned with the physics of the natural world than with the psychology of the mind.
- He developed his own methods of searching for knowledge based on the underlying intuition that all things have an intelligent cause directed toward what is best.
- Socrates brought philosophy out of the clouds and into the market place, into the cities and houses of people.
- He loved the exploration and interplay of ideas in discussions with others, and through these experiences, he developed the Socratic Method.
Answer to Question 2
Thales believed the primal element of the universe was water, whereas Anaximenes thought it was air; and Heraclitus said fire because All is change.
- Democritus said all matter in the universe was composed of indivisible atoms.
- Anaxagoras anticipated modern cosmology in proposing that the entire universe is composed of matter in motion.
- Pythagoras believed the fundamental principles of the universe were mathematical relations.
- Parmenides believed in a necessary, static, unchanging unity running throughout all of what is in flux in the world of experience.