Plato was a philosopher who was born in Greece somewhere around 428 BCE to a family of the political

and social elite. Since Plato was somewhat associated with this group, he had the opportunity to study
many different subjects from many different teachers until he famously became a disciple of Socrates.
Plato's earlier works tend to focus on lessons directly inherited from his teacher. In fact, Socrates is
usually the main character and the subjects usually center on Socrates' lessons. The most famous of the
Socratic Dialogues is the Apology in which the character of Socrates defends his beliefs against the
charges of the Athenian court.

Socrates was born in ancient Athens, Greece. His "Socratic method," laid the groundwork for Western
systemsh of logic and philosophy. Socrates always emphasized the importance of the mind over the
relative unimportance of the human body. This credo inspired Plato’s philosophy of dividing reality into
two separate realms, the world of the senses and the world of ideas, declaring that the latter was the
only important one.Socrates pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness.
Ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the greater his or her ability
to reason and make choices that will bring true happiness.

Aristotle. Syllogism is a certain form of reasoning where a conclusion is made based on two premises.
These premises always have a common or middle term to associate them, but this binding term is
absent in the conclusion. This process of logical deduction was invented by Aristotle, and perhaps lies at
the heart of all his famous achievements. He was the first person to come up with an authentic and
logical procedure to conclude a statement based on the propositions that were at hand. These
propositions or premises were either provided as facts or simply taken as assumptions. For instance:
Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. These two premises can be concluded as “Socrates is mortal.”

The logic behind finding a reasoning based on a proposition and an inference that has something
common with the said proposition is pretty straightforward. Its deductive simplicity and ease of use
catapulted Aristotle’s theory of syllogism to have an unparalleled influence on the history of Western
logic and reasoning. However, in the post-Renaissance era leading up to the modern age we came up
with logical approaches that were based more on mathematical deductions (and were far more accurate)
and less on the uncertainty of non-plausible premises. That being said, Aristotle’s logical theory of
categorical syllogism attained a status that makes it far more than a mere historical curiosity.

See also:

Top 10 Inventions and Discoveries of Ancient Greece

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Alexander the Great

ITop 10 Important Events of Ancient Greece

2. Classification of Living Beings

In his book, Historia Animalium or History of Animals, Aristotle was the first person in human history to
venture into the classification of different animals. He used traits that are common among certain
animals to classify them into similar groups. For example, based on the presence of blood, he created
two different groups such as animals with blood and animals without blood. Similarly, based on their
habitat, he classified animals as ones that live in water and ones that live on land. In his perspective, life
had a hierarchical make-up and all living beings could be grouped in this hierarchy based on their
position from lowest to highest. He placed the human species highest in this hierarchy.

He also devised the binomial nomenclature. Using this system, all living organisms now could be given
two different sets of names defined as the organism’s “genus” and “difference.” Aristotle meant the
genus of a living being to represent its collective family/group as a whole. The difference is what makes
the living organism different to other members of the family it falls within. Aristotle is also known as the
Father of Zoology. As evident from his classification of living beings, all his classification procedures and
several other treatises primarily involved different species of the animal kingdom only. However, he
wrote a number of treatises that revolved around different aspects of zoology as well. Some of his
popular treatises such as History of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals and others
were based on the study of different land, water, and aerial animals. Unlike his predecessors who
merely documented their routine observations of nature, Aristotle worked on outlining specific
techniques that he would use to make specific observations.