An Outline of Intellectual History in 26 Centuries

(Representative figures chosen by John Rose and Steve DePangher, 1/2007-9/2009.)

Century	Key Figure	Others	Other Events
500’s BC	Pythagoras (d496BC)	Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Thales Cyrus the Great of Persia (d529BC) *Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah	Babylonian Captivity Jerusalem besieged by Nebuchadnezzar (c588BC)
400’s BC	*Socrates (470-399)	Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Nehemiah Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides Herodotus, Thucydides	Jerusalem rebuilt under Artaxerxes I (445BC)
300’s BC	*Plato (427–347BC)	*Aristotle (384–322BC) *Alexander the Great (356–323BC)
200’s BC	Euclid (d275BC)	Archimedes (d212BC) Eratosthenes (d194BC)
100’s BC	Judas Maccabaeus (164BC)	Scipio Africanus destroys Carthage (Third Punic War, 146BC)	Restoration of Jewish Temple (Hanukkah)
00’s BC	Augustus Caesar (63BC-14 AD)	*Julius Caesar (d44BC) *Virgil (70-19BC)	Rubicon crossed 49BC Empire and Pax Romana
00’s AD	*Jesus Christ	*Paul of Tarsus, Philo, Josephus Ignatius 3rd Bishop of Antioch Clement I 4th Bishop of Rome *the Didache (ca. 50-120)
100’s	Irenaeus, 2nd Bishop of Lyons	*Polycarp (d.c.155) *Justin Martyr (d. c. 162) *Marcus Aurelius (d.180) *Plutarch, Ptolemy	codex (= paged book) begins to replace the scroll, esp. among Christians
200’s	*St. Antony of the desert	Origen, Tertullian Plotinus, Mani of Persia	final persecutions under Diocletian (284-305)
300’s	*St. Athanasius (298-373)	Constantine, Arius *St. John Chrysostom (347-407) Theodosius I (last Emperor of East and West, d395)	First Council of Nicaea (325) and of Constantinople (381) Canon of New Testament (Athanasius festal letter 367, Carthage synod 397)
400’s	*St. Augustine, Doctor Gratiae (354-430)	St. Jerome, St. Patrick *St. Leo the Great (400-461) Western Emperor Romulus Augustus deposed by Odoacer (September 4, 476)	Council of Ephesus (431, ag. Nestorianism; “theotokos”) Council of Chalcedon, (451 ag. monophysitism) Leo confronts Atilla (452)
500’s	*Boethius (d.c.524)	Gregory the Great (Pope, 540-604) Emperor Justinian (r.527-565) *St. Benedict (480-543) *King Arthur (history uncertain)	Second Council of Constantinople (553) Hagia Sophia (cathedral) Corpus Juris Civilis (law code)
600’s	*Muhammad (570-632; 1st proph. 610, leaves Mecca 622)		Third Council of Constantinople (680, ag. Monothelitism)
700’s	*Charlemagne (r.771-814)	Charles Martel St. Bede the Venerable (d735), Alcuin East: St. John Damascene (d749)	Battle of Poitier (Tours, 732) Second Council of Nicaea (787, ag. iconoclasm)
800’s	King Alfred the Great (c849-899)	East: Cyril and Methodius
900’s	Pope Sylvester II (c950-1003)	Hugh Capet (d996) East: Vladimir I, Prince of Kievan Rus, baptised a Christian in 988	Medieval Warm Period begins height of Byzantine Empire
1000’s	*St. Anselm, Doctor Magnificus (c1033- 1109)	Pope Urban II (d1099) William the Conqueror, Edward the Confessor East: Al-Ghazali (1058-1111)	Great Schism (1054) Battle of Hastings (1066) East: Turks defeat Byzantine Empire (Manzikert, 1071)
1100’s	*Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198)	Bernard of Clairvaux (d1153), Francis of Assisi (d1226), Peter Abelard (d1142)	The Crusades Nominalism vs. Platonism
1200’s	*Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274)	St. Albertus Magnus, Doctor Universalis (1193-1280)
1300’s	*Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)	*Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400) William of Ockham (d1347)	Black Death Little Ice Age Avignon Papacy
1400’s	*Johann Gutenberg (prints Bible 1455)	Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Michelangelo (1475-1564)	East: Fall of Constantinople (Constantine XI, 29 May 1453) Henry V (at Agincourt, 1415)
1500’s	*John Calvin (1509-1564)	Martin Luther (1483-1546), Erasmus Elizabeth I (1533-1603), Shakespeare Sir Thomas More (d.1535) St. John of the Cross (d1591)	Reformation, Renaissance Greek New Testament printed (by Erasmus, 1516)
1600’s	*René Descartes (1596-1650)	*Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) J. Kepler (d1630), Galileo (d1642) Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Leibniz (d1716), Spinoza (d1677) Thomas Hobbes (1648 Leviathan) *John Locke (1632-1704)	Galileo tried for heresy (1633, rehabilitated by Church 1741)
1700’s	*Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)	*Rousseau, Voltaire, Goethe *David Hume, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham Bach, Mozart, Handel East: Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab	American, French Revolutions Diderot’s encyclopedia Samuel Johnson’s dictionary Carl Linnaeus taxonomy Longitude Problem solved
1800’s	*Friedrich Nietzsche (1843-1900)	Charles Darwin (1809-1882) *Karl Marx (1818-1883) Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Gauss, Cantor, Maxwell, Mendel	Wellington defeats Napoleon (Waterloo, 1815) 2nd Industrial Revolution Victorian Era U.S. Civil War
1900’s	Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein	(many & various) Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao Churchill, John Paul II, Reagan, Thatcher *Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell *G.K. Chesterton, *Lewis & Inklings L. von Mises, F. Hayek, Milton Friedman Gödel, Turing, Hubble, Crick & Watson Gershwin, Elvis, Beatles, U2 Chaplin, Bergman, Capra, Disney	World Wars I & II Hiroshima and Cold War decolonization, Israel Nobel Prizes, Olympics antibiotics, transplants quantum physics, microchips Hubble telescope, cosmoology human genome sequenced petroleum energy economy sexual revolution, abortion global mass communication

Instructions: Memorize the men in the second column, with their centuries. Then begin to learn all the connections. (It will take years.) Stars mark key readings for a two-year intensive Intellectual History course.