1. Explain some of the proposals pre-Socratic philosophers made concerning the primary matter of the universe, including what they thought that matter was and why they thought their candidate was a good one. You don't have to cover them all--three or four is plenty--but do discuss Heraclitus and the fragments of his we looked at in class.
2. How did Pliny go about studying the natural world? Where did he get his information, and how did he judge its credibility? What is his attitude towards technical mathematical work, like that of Hipparchus?
3. Why and how did the work of Aristotle become so important in Arab/Islamic and medieval European scientific thought? What were some of the problems that Aristotelean theories posed to Muslim and Christian thinkers?