History

Element · Medium · Discarded science

A word that has meant the upper air, the fifth element, and a medium for light — and was eventually abandoned by physics without quite leaving the language.

Language · Transmission · Precision

A classical Indo-European language whose grammatical precision shaped how a vast body of philosophy could be argued.

Love of wisdom · Method · Inquiry

Literally the love of wisdom: the practice of asking questions carefully enough that the answers can be examined.

Stories · Symbols · Civilization

The stories a culture tells to hold its answers to questions that resist argument.

Word · Reason · Order

A Greek word meaning word, account, ratio and reason at once — and one of the most consequential ambiguities in Western thought.

Personhood · Community · Southern Africa

A Nguni Bantu term for a view of personhood in which a person becomes a person through other people.

Ephesus · c. 500 BCE · Flux

The Greek thinker who argued that change is not what happens to reality but what reality is.