Socrates, science, social sciences

Socrates has crept up in a few of my posts latelly.

One thing he revolutionized was his interest in human affairs.

First a word about the orator and the alphabet which led on to the climate in 5th century BC Athens and permitted Socrate's revolution.

One interesting problem is why did philosophy develop where and when it did. There are two crucial elements I would like to highlight. First is the predominance of the forum in political regimes of the greek city states of antiquity. Secondly, there is the alphabet, that allowed Homer first to record and then surpass the bards and poets crucial to the common conceptual reality of the time. The alphabet also contributed to the writing of laws and their examination by a large number, and the greater accountability that literacy brings to book keeping and deal making in dominance relations. It is the tool of the weak against the powerful, so it is a possibility that the alphabet further allowed the forum element in the traditional tri partite political organization of the original greek tribes came to evolve.

It is no secret now that the orator culture comes from the preponderance of the forum. Orators needed to compete, and training was eventually provided by specialists best exemplified by the Sophists during Athen's time as an empire.

Onto Socrates.

Somebody could ask: was Socrates mostly adept of social sciences or pure sciences in technique and knowledge? The question is a very bad one, but can be infomative none the less.

Socrates departed fromt he previous philosophers in investigating not natural phenomenas but human and social phenomenons. The ethical question was at the center of Socrate's questioning into Plato's work. The cosmogonies from ..............