Philosophers Educational Posters & Prints, “D...-E...-F...-G...-”
individuals who made contributions to the study of knowledge itself.

Democritus
Rene Descartes
John Dewey

Diogenes of Sinope
Empedocles
Desiderius Erasmus

Democritus 1692, Giclee Print Antoine Coypel

Democritus
b. c. 460 BC; Greece
d. c. 370 BC

Democritus, known as the ‘Laughing Philosopher’, was one the most travelled philosophers of Ancient Greece. The son of a wealthy man, Democritus was able to visited places as distant as India and Ethiopia, living in Egypt for five years.

A careful observor of nature, Democritus is considered by many to be the “father of modern science”. He is noted for his hypothesis that “everything is composed of atoms, which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible; have always been, and always will be, in motion; that there are an infinite number of atoms, and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, size, and temperature”, and works in mathematics, anthropology, biology, physics and cosmology.

Democritus quotes ~
• “Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.”
• “Raising children is an uncertain thing; success is reached only after a life of battle and worry.”
• “Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.”
• “By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.”

• Democritus: Science, The Arts, and the Care of the Soul

Rene Descartes c. 1649, Giclee Print

Rene Descartes
b. 3-31-1596; France
d. 2-11-1650

Rene Descartes quotes ~
• “I think; therefore I am.”
• “One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.”
• “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”
• “I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

• mathematician posters

John Dewey Print

John Dewey
b. 10-20-1859; Vermont
d. 6-1-1952

John Dewey, a founder of the philosophical school of Pragmatism, was an influential progressive reformer in U.S. education during the first half of the 20th century. His core concept of education was emphasizing the broadening of the intellect and the development of problem solving with critical thinking skills, rather than the memorization of lessons.

Dewey was a teacher at the University of Michigan (1884-1888 & 1889-1894), joined the faculty of the University of Chicago from 1894-1904, and from 1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at both Columbia University and Columbia University's Teachers College.

John Dewey quotes ~
• “Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”
• “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”

• John Dewey books at Amazon.com

Diogenes Giclee Print

Diogenes of Sinope
b. c. 412 BC; Greek colony of Sinope (Turkey)
d. 323 BC; Cornith

Diogenes, a founder of the philosophical school of Cynicism, had the purpose of his life to “live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature.” Learning to live by watching a mouse, Diogenes challenged the values and customs of society by avoiding common pleasures: he choose to be homeless and declared that he was a “cosmopolitan”, a citizen of the world, when where you were from provided status. Diogenes invited ridecule by carrying a lighted lamp in the day time, searching for an honest man (found only scoundrels), and challenged Plato's statement that a man was a “featherless biped” by bringing a plucked chicken to the Academy.

Diogenes quotes ~
• “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”
• “He has the most who is most content with the least.”
• “Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.”

• Diogenes The Cynic: The War Against The World

Empedocles, Greek Philosopher, Giclee Print

Empedocles
ca. 490-430 BC; Greek colony of Agrigentum, Sicily

Empedocles statement, that four elemental “roots”: fire, air, water, earth, make all the structures in the world, became dogma for two thousand years.

Empedocles also believed in reincarnation: one legend was that he threw himself into Mt. Etna in Sicily to prove to his disciples that once consumed by fire he would come back as a god.

Empedocles Quotes ~
• “The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
• “At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time, through strife's hatred, they are borne each of them apart.”
• “What is lawful is not binding only on some and not binding on others. Lawfulness extends everywhere, through the wide-ruling air and the boundless light of the sky.”
• “Happy is he who has gained the wealth of divine thoughts, wretched is he whose beliefs about the gods are dark.”

• Empedocles: The Extant Fragments

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1526, Albrecht Dürer Giclee Print

Desiderius Erasmus
b. 10-27-1466; Rotterdam
d. 7-12-1536; Basel

Desiderius Erasmus was a humanist - a teacher of grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry and history as studied via classical authors, and a theologian.

Eramus Quotes ~
• “Fortune favors the audacious.”
• “The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
• “He who allows oppression shares the crime.”
• “A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.”
• “I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.”

• The Erasmus Reader
• Hans Holbein portrait of Erasmus
• Albrecht Dürer posters

Euclid
ca. 325 BC–265 BC, Alexandria

Euclid of Alexandia, “The Father of Geometry”, was a Greek mathematician who, in his Elements, set forth his principles of geometry proving mathematical theorems from a small set of axioms or accepted principles.

• The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, Books 1 and 2

The Alchemist Geber Giclee Print

Geber
b. c. 721; southern Iran
d. c. 815; Kufa

Geber, the Latinized name of Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan, was a philosopher, astronomer, and alchemist noted for his experimental work which lead to modern chemistry. A Muslim, Ibn Hayyan was also a Sufi, believing that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life.

Geber quotes ~
• “The first essential in chemistry is that you should perform practical work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain the least degree of mastery.”

• The Alchemical Works of Geber

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
b. 8-28-1749; Frankfur am Main
d. 3-22-1832

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a polymath: novelist, dramatist, poet, painter, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and stateman. Carl G. Jung was influenced by Goethe's Faust. - “Faust is not of this world and therefore it transports you; it is as much the future as the past and therefore the most living present.” - C. G. Jung, Letters.

Goethe quotes ~
• “Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.”

• Goethe's Faust: Notes for a Jungian Commentary (Edward F. Edinger)
• Theory of Colours; Goethe
• educational color posters
• Goethe had a deep friendship with Schiller.