It is astonishing how ancient thinkers chanced to anticipate certain developments in our understanding of the nature of the universe. From atoms to swerves to strings, Greeks got there first — after a fashion. Ancient Greeks were the first people we know to propose that a single basic stuff lay at the heart of all
The refusal of his patients to assume responsibility for their own actions is a recurrent theme of Dr Theodore Dalrymple’s columns. He and Aristotle see eye to eye on the matter perfectly. In Nicomachean Ethics III, Aristotle (384–322 bc) begins by arguing that a man can wish for what really is good, or merely for
The Tory leader Michael Howard has published a list of his ‘beliefs’. If this was a political move, Athenians would have found it baffling. The 5th-century bc thinker Protagoras defined ‘excellence’ as ‘proper management of one’s own business … and of the city’s too, so that one can make the most effective contribution to its