Tarnas, R. (1991). The passion of the western mind: Understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view. New York: Ballantine Books.

As the Greek world became more fragmented and open to outside influences, the philosophical movements began to reflect the need to adapt: “Hellenistic schools arose less from the passion to comprehend the world in its mystery and magnitude, and more from the need to give human beings some stable belief system and inner peace in the face of a hostile and chaotic environment (p. 76). The three most famous movements were Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Scepticism.

• Stoicism can be summarized by “inner serenity, sternness in self-discipline, and conscientious performance of duty” (p. 76). All citizens were responsible to contribute to society. Morality was of great significance.
  
  
• Epicureanism, in contrast to Stoicism, placed great value on personal pleasure “defined as freedom from pain and fear” (p. 77). The gods were considered divorced of concern for the human world and, therefore, did not require appeasement.
  
  
• Scepticism posited that all positions must be defended by criteria and that all criteria must be defended by further criteria. Nothing could be known for certain.

Also during this era, the struggle to understand the movement of bodies in the universe was discussed at length by the Greeks. According to “Aristotelian Cosmology” the Earth was the centre of the universe. This explains why bodies fall towards the ground. However, early astronomers could not explain the seemingly erratic nature of the heavenly bodies. They struggled to explain why some planets moved more slowly than others and why some would appear brighter at times. Ptolemy hypothesized that there were different spheres surrounding the Earth.

The outermost revolving sphere of fixed stars daily carried the entire heavens westward about the Earth. Within that sphere, however, each planet, including the Sun and Moon, revolved eastward at varying slower rates, each in its own large circle called a deferent. For the more complex movements of the planets other than the Sun and Moon, another smaller circle, called an epicycle, was introduced, which rotated uniformly around a point that continued to rotate on the deferent. (p. 80-81).

Whenever Ptolemy observed another aberration, he would postulate another rule including eccentrics, minor epicycles, and equants. The system became more and more complex—something about which Ockham would later have something to say. (View some diagrams and animations.) 

Anyone who reads today’s newspapers would have at one time or another consulted the horoscopes, perhaps for fun or perhaps with a secret wish for some predictive accuracy. Most realize that the names of the Zodiac signs are representative of constellations named by the Greeks. The moment of one’s birth was associated with specific positions of planets and junctions of significant astrological bodies. Interestingly, such concepts appeared in other, non-Greek. The Mayan calendar, itself a marvel of mathematical accuracy and astronomical observation, can be visualized as two gears of different sizes. Similar to the Greek cosmology, the calendar was consulted for auspicious dates for special occasions. The date of one’s birth was often a harbinger. (According to the Mayans, the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. Perhaps, this signals a time of what Greenspan refers to as creative destruction. J See Wikipedia for an interesting discussion of the Mesoamerican calendrics.) Human beings have had a long standing fascination with the heavens.

Plotinus led the integration of mysticism, the work of Plato, and the work of Aristotle. This movement is known as Neoplatonism. (See Plato vs. Aristotle in a previous entry.) To explain the apparent logic and order of the world, both Plato and Aristotle believed in a supreme Form or divine wisdom. Plotinus proposed three levels of  a single guiding entity: One, Intellect, and Soul (p. 85). The One was also known as the Good. The infinite One is the source of all things it is the ultimate transcendent Form (Plato). The Intellect was the first “creative act” and the source of the order and logic of the observable world (Aristotle). Finally, all souls emanated from the World Soul, the intermediary between the spiritual Intellect and the world we see around us. To those of us who come from a Western European heritage, we can all see where this is going.

The Roman culture flourished, I suspect this was partially the result of their ability to adopt new ideas. The syncretism of Roman and Greek mythology, philosophy, law, political organization, educational systems is still evident in our language today. Truth be told, I cannot always remember which names of gods are Greek and which are Roman! According to Tarnas, “classical Greco-Roman civilization arose, flourished, and declined in the course of a thousand years” (p. 89). In the midst of the uncertainty, the heavily persecuted Christian faith filled the spiritual void.