Transcript: Socrates was an enormously influential Greek philosopher even though he wrote nothing down. Socrates was not a scientist. In fact, he speculated that the most important thing to do was to understand your own thoughts and motivations. As he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and he gave the Delphic injunction to “Know thyself.” Although he was not a scientist, Socrates’ questioning nature is at the heart of modern science because he believed that it was not worth taking people’s opinion just because they were senior figures in the community or your elders. His idea of questioning everything that you hear is the basis of logic in the scientific method, and it got him into sufficient trouble that he was killed for it.