Ancient Greek Philosophy and Mathematics

Calendar

WEEK #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1	Introduction
I. Knowing
2	A. Logos as Definition: What is “What is?” B. Knowledge as Power / Knowledge as Virtue
3	C. Definition and the Essence of Things D. The Idea of a Proof
II. Logos and Arithmos
4	Quality, Quantity, Relation, Multitude, Magnitude, Logos as Ratio The Greek Conception of Number (What’s Not a Number?)
III. Measuring the Unmeasurable
5	A. Putting the Irrational in Ratio
6	B. Fitting Ideas to the World	First Paper Due
7	C. The Pursuit of Truth and the Idea of an Idea
8 & 9	D. The Truth as a Surd	Re-write Due
10	E. Potentiality as a Way of Being
IV. The Limits of Mathematics?
11	Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
12	Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (cont.)
V. The Modern Conception of Number and the Detachment from Reality
13	Isaac Newton’s Arithmetica Universalis
14	“The World of Physics and the ‘Natural World” “The Sources of Modern Symbolic Mathematics”	Second Paper Due