Albert
Einstein have said: “The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential
than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental
skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from
a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.”
The impact of pictogram and alphabetic language formulated so many problems for ancient Greece that until the time of Socrates, people is still trying to solving the problem of how to express, “Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.”
The impact of pictogram and alphabetic language formulated so many problems for ancient Greece that until the time of Socrates, people is still trying to solving the problem of how to express, “Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.”
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cratylus_(dialogue)
Obviously they were still carrying on the thought of Thales
that is how to separate human language between true pictures of nature and imaginary
of mind. The only different is that Thales was trying to use mathematics to
replace language but it seemed that Socrates had never talking about
mathematics. From his talking with Hippocrates, we may guess that Socrates was
not good in math. This information may shake the rank of the number one
philosophy in our mind. And I guess many idea of Socrates was in fact formed by
Plato, for there were many things that he was hard to say and he used the mouth
of Socrates to say it.
The word ‘mathematics’ is from Greek word μάθημα（máthēma）. It had wider meanings than current meaning. The reason is
that the Greek was looking for a new tool to express the world than language in
order to defend the alphabetic system. Nearly all scholars involved this
process voluntarily. For instance Plato tried make astronomy a branch of mathematics. Aristotle expressed moving
body mathematically as F (force) is equal M (mass) multiply by V (velocity).
Although it was but a mistake, but it started the study of modern mechanics as
Newton found that F=MA (mass) (acceleration).
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