Humanity

Chronology

1. 800 BCE – 300 BCE (c.)

   The Upanishads are composed

   Vedic speculation turned inward: the Upanishads ask what the self (ātman) is and how it relates to ultimate reality (brahman).

2. 600 BCE – 300 BCE (c.)

   The Daodejing circulates

   The Daodejing teaches wu wei — acting with rather than against the grain of things — and distrust of rigid control.

3. 585 BCE (c.)

   Thales and the eclipse of 585 BCE

   Tradition credits Thales of Miletus with predicting a solar eclipse and with proposing a single natural substrate — water — behind all things.

4. 563 BCE – 483 BCE (c.)

   The Buddha teaches in the Ganges valley

   Siddhartha Gautama taught a path out of suffering through understanding its causes: craving and ignorance, addressed by ethics, meditation and insight.

5. 551 BCE – 479 BCE

   Confucius teaches in Lu

   Kongzi taught that social order grows from cultivated relationships, ritual propriety and moral example rather than coercion.

6. 470 BCE – 399 BCE

   Socrates questions Athens

   Socrates wrote nothing; he walked and talked, pressing Athenians to define justice, courage and the good — and died for refusing to stop.

7. 400 BCE – 300 BCE (c.)

   Zhuangzi's butterfly dream

   Zhuangzi's parable — did he dream he was a butterfly, or is a butterfly dreaming it is him? — made perspective and the limits of certainty playful and profound.

8. 387 BCE – 86 BCE

   Plato founds the Academy

   Plato's school outside Athens — 'let no one ignorant of geometry enter' — pursued definitions, mathematics and the theory of Forms for centuries.

9. 384 BCE – 322 BCE

   Aristotle classifies the world

   Aristotle systematized logic, biology, ethics, politics and poetics — the first person to organize knowledge into fields and investigate them empirically.

10. 397 CE – 400 CE (c.)

    Augustine writes the Confessions

    Augustine of Hippo invented the introspective autobiography, probing memory, time, will and desire in his search for God.

11. 1377

    Ibn Khaldun writes the Muqaddimah

    Writing in Qalat Ibn Salama, Ibn Khaldun analyzed how states rise and fall through asabiyya — group solidarity — economics, climate and cohesion.

12. 1513 – 1532

    Machiavelli writes The Prince

    Written in exile near Florence and published in 1532, The Prince analyzed power as it is practiced rather than as preachers say it should be.

13. 1641

    Descartes doubts everything

    Meditations on First Philosophy razed every belief that could be doubted, rebuilding from a single certainty: a thinking self — cogito, ergo sum.