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PLATO Plato was one of the most famous philosophers of all time. A type of love (Platonic) is named for him. We know about the famous philosopher Socrates through Plato's dialogues. Plato also wrote a parable about Atlantis. He founded an institution of learning known as the Academy. Plato's theory of social structure was tripartite with a governing class, warriors, and workers as was his parallel theory of the tripartite human soul, containing reason, spirit, and appetite. Plato was born around May 21 in 428 or 427 B.C. He was related to Solon and could trace his ancestry to the last legendary king of Athens, Codrus. Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived between 427-327 B.C. In 387 B.C., he founded the Academy in Athens, a school which flourished for about 1,000 years and made many important scientific and mathematic discoveries. Although Plato made no important discoveries in mathematics himself, he played a crucial role in developing a systematic approach to mathematics, one involving rigorous proofs and accurate definitions. You see, he believed in absolute truths. And he believed that mathematics was the key to those truths. Such a belief in order and mathematical explanations was to spur the Greeks on to find an explanation for that what they saw in the sky. Many say that with teachers like Socrates and Plato, the Greeks were bound to try to explain the seemingly unordered movement of the planets.

__ Newton’s Universal Gravitation __ Isaac Newton was a famous English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in the early 1700’s. His description of universal gravitation was that gravity is the force that can hold planets in elliptical orbits around the sun and is the force of attraction between two objects due to their mass. His other work included the three laws of motion that were published in 1687. The first law stated that every object in a state of uniform motion remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. The second law stated that an object with a certain velocity maintains that velocity unless a force acts on it to cause acceleration. And the final law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton died in 1727, but contributed a lot to astronomy by providing a scientific view of the physical universe. "Newton." SDTV. PBS. 04 Mar. 2009 .

Galileo perfected the telescop which greatly imporved the science of astronomy. Two major discoveries he made with his impoved telescope were Jupiter's 4 largest moons and Venus's phases which supported the heliocentric model of the solar system. Galileo did most of his work from 1609, when he first learned about telescopes, to 1642 when he died. Many telescopic observations that he made of the sun and other planets were done in 1613. But eventually, he went blind at the age of 72. It was believed that he went blind from observing the sun through telescopes, but was determined that he went blind from cataracts and glaucoma.** Chew, Robin. "Galileo Galilei." 25 July 2008. Lucid Cafe. 5 Mar. 2009 .
 * Galileo