Welcome to Ancient Greece!
Today, the Team Phoenix teachers were excited to travel with their students to Ancient Greece! The students learned, through various mediums, about Greek Mythology, astronomy, and philosophy. Specifically, in Geometry, we learned how philosophy is directly tied to mathematics and how the Greeks were the inventors of the first form of mathematics! Left to right: Mr. Szpaichler, Mrs. Lydon, Ms. Waldrop, Mr. Williams.
Mathematics is usually thought to be a subject filled with numbers that only cause confusion to an everyday individual. However, these numbers in the infancy of mathematics has only played a minor role in the development. Philosophers of Ancient Greece used their abstract thinking to challenge the route mathematics would take and also the importance in the society then, and ultimately the society we live in today.
They created the Transitive Property...WITHOUT NUMBERS!!!
i. Every Greek is a person.
ii. Every person is mortal.
iii. Therefore, every Greek is mortal.
ii. Every person is mortal.
iii. Therefore, every Greek is mortal.
Does this look familiar? If a = b, and b = c, then a = c!
We also read the Allegory of the Cave by Socrates and discussed our thoughts:
"Each number has its own personality - masculine or feminine, perfect or incomplete, beautiful or ugly. This feeling in modern mathematics has deliberately been eliminated, but we still find overtones of it in fiction and poetry." - Pythagoras
