A Think Tank or a Template for University Campus: Plato's Academy

[摘要] European enquiry into the nature and meaning of the world started in ancient Greece. By the fourth century BC, a substantial body of philosophy emanated from several schools: from Thales and his followers in the city of Miletos in Ionia in Asia Minor, from the Pythagorean school in Croton (Crotone) in Calabria, and from the Eleatic School in Sicily. The Sophist philosophy of Protagoras, Hippias, Cratylus, and others was to create much controversy and opposition later. Interestingly, deliberations of the earliest philosophers focused on the physical world: in this respect they were protoscientists; with time their natural philosophy evolved into science (1).In the fifth to the fourth centuries BC the Athenian city-state, then at the peak of its political power, became the intellectual center of the Greek world. This is mainly due to the succession of three men: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (2, 3).Socrates did not leave a written legacy. We know of his philosophy through his pupil, Plato. Aristotle, who had studied with Plato (indeed he was Plato's most brilliant student, whom Plato nicknamed the Mind), had developed his own enormous body of work, which had a major impact on the philosophy of the Middle Ages and beyond (4).Plato was born in 420s BC in Athens and died there in 348 or 347 BC. Reportedly, he travelled widely and …

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