Ancient Greece

===Philosophy===
{{Main|Ancient Greek philosophy}}
[[File:British Museum - Four Greek philosophers.jpg|thumb|left|The carved busts of four ancient Greek philosophers, on display in the British Museum. From left to right: [[Socrates]], [[Antisthenes]], [[Chrysippus]], and [[Epicurus]].]]

Ancient Greek philosophy focused on the role of [[reason]] and [[inquiry]]. In many ways, it had an important influence on modern [[philosophy]], as well as modern science. Clear unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and [[Hellenistic philosophy|Hellenistic philosophers]], to medieval [[Early Islamic philosophy|Muslim philosophers]] and [[Islamic science|Islamic scientists]], to the European [[Renaissance]] and [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], to the secular sciences of the modern day.

Neither reason nor inquiry began with the ancient Greeks. Defining the difference between the Greek quest for knowledge and the quests of the elder civilizations, such as the [[ancient Egypt]]ians and [[Babylonia]]ns, has long been a topic of study by theorists of civilization.

The first known philosophers of Greece were the [[pre-Socratic]]s, who attempted to provide naturalistic, non-mythical descriptions of the world. They were followed by [[Socrates]], one of the first philosophers based in Athens during [[fifth-century Athens|its golden age]] whose ideas, despite being known by second-hand accounts instead of writings of his own, laid the basis of Western philosophy. Socrates' disciple [[Plato]], who wrote ''[[The Republic (Plato)|The Republic]]'' and established a radical difference between ideas and the concrete world, and Plato's disciple [[Aristotle]], who wrote extensively about nature and ethics, are also immensely influential in Western philosophy to this day. The later [[Hellenistic philosophy]], also originating in Greece, is defined by names such as [[Antisthenes]] ([[cynicism (philosophy)|cynicism]]), [[Zeno of Citium]] ([[stoicism]]) and [[Plotinus]] ([[Neoplatonism]]).