Let’s travel back in time to the Golden Age of Athens and take a stroll around the city. There are so many new buildings going up, it’s getting hard to remember what Athens looked like just a few years ago! It's not only new temples and theaters that are popping up—new ideas are everywhere as well.
Actually, the Greeks had been asking questions about the old ways of thinking even before the Golden Age. Many people believed that events in nature were caused by gods and goddesses. But some important thinkers began to wonder if there were other reasons for why things happened. Philosophers, or “lovers of wisdom,” like Hippocrates, Socrates, and Plato gathered in Athens. They studied the world carefully to understand how it really worked. Their ideas had a powerful influence on scientists for centuries.
