Thursday, June 29, 2017

Reccomended Reading

RECCOMENDED READING:


Tools of Titans- Tim Ferris
Man's Search for Meaning- Viktor Frankl
The Power of Myth- An Interview with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell; often transcribed.
The Joseph Campbell Companion-
The Einstein Factor- Win Wenger

The Enchridion- Epictetus
Sun Tzu's Art of War- (such as the Samul B. Griffith translation)
Dao de Ching- Lao Tzu

Re-invention- A book by Brian Tracy (Self-improvement)

The Mongol Warlords-
Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world-

Science and Civilization in China- Joseph Needham



RECCOMENDED WEBSITES:  azquotes.com

ancestry.com (study your ancestral past and your genealogy)

youtube and wikipedia

Monday, June 19, 2017

Top ten Roman scholars!

1. Columella- Agricultre

2. Varro- Agriculture

3. Cicero- Roman philosopher, lawyer and politician.

4. Seneca the younger- philosophy (stoic philosophy)

5. Boethius- Stoic philosopher (more of a medieval one but could be classified as a Roman)

6. Tacitus- history

7. Vitruvius- Roman architect who was "rediscovered" in western Europe around 1414.

8. Pliny the Elder- Natural historian, wrote an Encyclopedia; perhaps the first to remain intact until modern times. 

9. Pliny the Younger

10.   Horace- Roman lyric poet.

Carpe Diem!


HONORARY MENTIONS:

Sallust- Roman historian

Vegetius- who wrote on warfare and veterenary science. Not sure whether to classify him as a Roman or a byzantine or whomever.

Juvenal- Roman Poet

Lucretius-Another Roman poet

Plautus- Roman playwright

Ovid

Livy- Roman historian

Virgil- Roman poet

Martial

Suetonius

Terrence-

Aelian- Roman teacher or rhetoric, who spoke Greek fluently, and wrote a beastiary and some history.

Martianus Capella- From Roman Carthage.

Top Ten Greek scholars!

1. Aristotle- His individual contributions to science, logic, and humanities might be overrated individually; but collectively they are significant.

2. Archimedes- Greek Mathematician, physicist, engineer, and astronomer.

3. Pythagoras- Philosopher, astronomer, geometer.  often considered the first to propose or popularize the notion of a spherical Earth. 

4. Claudius Ptolemy- Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer.  Most notable work was his Almagest.   Lived in Alexandria, wrote in Koine Greek and held Roman citizenship (according to Wikipedia.)

5. Eratosthenes- Made a measure of the Earth's circumference

6. Hipparchus- noted Greek scholar in Trigonometry; the invention of the Astrolabe is often attributed to him

7. Theophrastus- Botany

8. Euclid-  A Greek geometer

9. Hippocrates-

10. Diophantus- noted Alexandrian Greek scholar in the field of Algebra

HONORARY MENTIONS:

Apollonius of Perga- Greek geometer and astronomer and Greek scholar in the field of conics.


Menelaus of Alexandria- Greek astronomer and mathemetician.


Aristarchos of Samos- (astronomy)

Megasthenes- An ethnic Greek Indologist

Hero of Alexandria- Greek mathemetician and engineer. Often said to have invented the wind-wheel.

Plutarch- Historian, wrote "Plutarch's lives" and "Rise of Rome"

Sophocles- Greek playwright

Pedanius Dioscorides- Greco-Roman pharmocologist

Galen- Greco-Roman scholar in the field of medicine

Xenophon of Athens- Greek historian, soldier, and mercenary.

Philo of Byzantium- Greek engineer and writer on mechanics

Thucydides- Greek historian and general.

 Dionysius of Halicarnassus- Another of the more notable Greek historians.

Soranus of Ephesus-Greek gynecologist. But let it also be noted that the Greeks got a lot of their medicine from the Egyptian Papyruses. 

 Demosthenes-  Greek statesman and orator


Paul of Aegina (Byzantine)- noted medieval surgeon

John Philoponus- (Byzantine, unclear extraction)- Wrote a critique of Aristotle long before Ibn Sina or Galileo did. Marginalized in his own time; hence why he is even less famous than the Arab scholars.

Thales of Miletus-

Solon- Athenian statesman

Pericles-Athenian Statesman
Aeschylus- A Greek playwright (often considered a father of tragedy), though only 7 of his plays are still intact (and the authorship of these is often disputed as well). 

Euripedes-  Another Greek playwright in the field of tragedy.  Perhaps 18 of his plays are still intact.   


Euphorion- Son of Euripides; it is not certain if any of his plays are still around.  Often speculated to be author of the play "Prometheus bound".  


Pyrrh-  Perhaps the founder of Greek skepticism

Sextus Empiricus- Greco-Roman scholar in the field of skepticism


 Polybius- Greek historian who studied the second Punic war.

 Cassius Dio- A Greco-Roman scholar from Bythinia and historian. 
 

Strabo- Greco-Roman geographer. Did other fields (such as geology, philosophy, and history) though I am not sure if those works survived in their entirety. I'd say his geography was rediscovered in the Catholic west around 1469.

Crates of Mallus- Stoic philosopher and grammarian, though lots of his work has been lost. But he is often said to have made the first globe of the Earth.

Crates bay in Antarctica is named after him.

Appollonius Dyscolus- Greek Grammarian, some of his works have actually survived in their completion.

Aretaeus of Cappadocia- A greek medical scholar. I don't think he was rediscovered in the west until 1552 though (by which his medical work was probably superseded IMO).

Chrysippus- Stoic philosopher in ethics and logic. His logic was either mostly lost or not that influential in the west until the 19th century. Stoic logic was marginalized in favor of Aristotlean logic; though stoic logic was perhaps and influence on muslim logicinas such as Al-Farabi.

Posidonius- Noted Greek polymath, a respected source on his day, particularly in reference to study of the celts. His works have been lost though.

Selueucus of Selucia- Greek astronomer; also proposed a heliocentric thesis.

Appian- Greco-Roman scholar, thought not all of his histories have survived. 


-------------------------------------------
And of course, Greek and Greco-Roman philosophers such as:

Socrates
Zeno of Citium- Founder of stoicism
Epicurus- Epicurean hedonism. Good philosopher though
Diogenes- More or less the most noted Cynic; and one of my favorites.
Epictetus- More or less the most noted stoic philosopher

Panaetius- stoic philosopher

Antisthenes- Arguably the founder of cynic philosophy

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Top 50 philosophers in history

1. Thomas Jefferson
2. Noam Chomsky
3. Joseph Campbell
4. Ben Franklin
5. Edmund Burke
6. Viktor Frankl
7. Baltasar Gracian
8. Sun tzu
9. Epicurus
10. Epictetus
11. Buddha
12. Pythagoras-quite notable as a philosopher as well as a mathematician and astronomer.
13. Aristotle
14. Socrates
15. Lao-tzu
16. Diogenes
17.   Voltaire
18. Willliam James- American psychologist and philosopher
19.  Ramana Maharshi- Hindu sage...
20. John Stuart Mill
21. Sophocles
22.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
23. Seneca the younger 
24. Confucius
25. Musashi Miyamoto
26. John Taylor Gatto 
27. Edward Gibbon

28.   Ibn Taymiyyah
   
29. Will Durant-US historian and philosopher
30. Mahavira- A founder of Jainism
31.Bertrand Russell
32. Plutarch
33. Boddhidharma-  Chinese zen philosopher who trained Shaolin monks according to legend
34. Zeno of Citium- Founder of stoic thought
35. John Dewey- Another American educator
36.  Samuel Johnson
37.  Gore Vidal
38. Montesquieu
39.   Diderot
40.  Pierre Gassendi
41.   Zhuangzi
42. Al-Farabi- Perhaps the most notable philosopher to come out of the Islamicate
43.  Eckheart Tolle
44.  Jordan Peterson
45.  Tacitus
46.   Thucydides
47.  Swami Vivekananda
48. Peter Drucker
49.  Albert Ellis
50.  Henry Maslow
-----------------------

HONORARY MENTIONS:

Ibn Battuta- More of a scholar and traveler than a philosopher....

Poets such as Rumi and Hafez and Charles Bukowski.

You can read quotes by all these philosophers and intellectuals at:

http://www.azquotes.com/

OTHER: Those in the field of self improvement such as Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Steve Pavlina, Brian Tracy,  and Elliott Hulse, Og Mandino, James Allen, (who wrote as a Man thinketh) Earl Nightingale, Jack Canfield, Napoleon Hill, Jocko Willink and stuff.   Also Leo (of Actualised.org).

Tim Ferris and his noted book "Tools of Titans" is also worth a read.

Religious Texts:  The Vedas, the Zoroastrian Avesta