Ionian and Ionian School

Ionia includes the islands in the central west coast of Asia Minor and the central Aegean Sea. From 1200 BC to 1000 BC, an Ionian among the Greeks moved here, hence the name. There, the merchant's rule replaced the clan aristocratic politics, and there was neither a special priestly class nor a dogma that must be followed, which was very helpful for the separation of science and philosophy from religion. The activity of businessmen creates favorable conditions for the free development of ideas.

The important cities in Ionia are Ephesus, Miletus and Izmir, among which Miletus is located at the mouth of Mendels River, which is the transportation hub of East and West and the center of handicraft, navigation and culture. It is easier to absorb the experience and culture accumulated by ancient oriental countries such as Babylon and Egypt than other places in Greece.

About the 6th century BC, Thales, who lived in Miletus, founded the Ionian School, also known as Miletus School, which was the earliest school of philosophy in ancient Greece and had a very important position and influence in history:

1. Pioneer of western philosophy. They first began to replace myths and poets' imagination with abstract rational thinking, and explained nature with nature itself, from which philosophy came into being.

2. They think that there is a constant in the ever-changing of all superficial phenomena, and put forward the first philosophical category in the history of western philosophy-the issue of origin.

They look for the origin of everything from sensible material elements. This means that everything, everything in the universe, can be understood by human thoughts. Thus, the assumption that God created the world is ruled out, which is revolutionary.

4. They put forward the motivation of things and questions about opposites, which promoted the further development of later philosophy.

A brief introduction to the history of ancient Greek mathematics

As far as geographical boundaries are concerned, ancient Greece includes the southern Balkan Peninsula, the western Asia Minor Peninsula, the southern Italian Peninsula, Sicily and the Aegean Islands.

After the death of Alexander the Great, the empire he established was divided into three independent kingdoms, but it was still bound by ancient Greek culture and was called a Hellenistic country in history. PtolemytheFirst Soter, who ruled Egypt, strongly advocated learning, recruited talents in many ways, and built an unprecedented grand museum and library in Alexandria, replacing Athens as the academic and cultural center of the ancient world, which flourished for thousands of years!

There is no doubt that the ideas of the Greeks were influenced by Egypt and Babylon, but the mathematics they founded was fundamentally different from those of their predecessors, and its development can be divided into two stages: Athens and Alexandria.