So how else can we know anything if we can’t use our senses? Well, like many others of his time, Socrates was a Pythagorean, a follower of the pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras believed that the entire cosmos worked according to mathematical principles – in other words, that there was a plan, a great cosmic dance orchestrated by a divine intelligence.
So if that's true, then certainly Socrates’ worldview (as presented by Plato) was very Pythagorean, and the Pythagorean worldview was very much founded on the power of math. And you can find Socrates demonstrating math in some of the dialogues.
Graham believes the early philosophers were encouraged by the progress in maths. But was there really much progress before Euclid's Elements...?
See http://people.hsc.edu/drjclassics/texts/socrates.shtm:
So how else can we know anything if we can’t use our senses? Well, like many others of his time, Socrates was a Pythagorean, a follower of the pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras believed that the entire cosmos worked according to mathematical principles – in other words, that there was a plan, a great cosmic dance orchestrated by a divine intelligence.
So if that's true, then certainly Socrates’ worldview (as presented by Plato) was very Pythagorean, and the Pythagorean worldview was very much founded on the power of math. And you can find Socrates demonstrating math in some of the dialogues.