Keynote Motivational Speaker - John’s Professional Experience. Keynote Speaker and Consultant, John Di Frances' professional career spans thirty years of global corporate, nonprofit, academic and government agency experience in senior executive and industry leadership positions. Developing strategic initiatives and solutions, he has worked with organizations ranging from aerospace and defense to pharmaceutical; "black" weapons programs and high technology to consumer products; engineering and construction to computers, software and systems as well as assisting religious nonprofits and philanthropic foundations.
John's client list includes the U.S. Government, major U.S. corporations such as United Defense, Merck and Medco Pharmaceutical, United Technologies, Textron Corporation and offshore corporations, trusts and foundations across the continents of Europe and Asia. Writing his own course materials, John taught seminars as a faculty member of the National Contract Management Association. Keynote Motivational Speakers. Avicenna. Ibn Sina (Persian: ابن سینا), also known as Abu Ali Sina (ابوعلی سینا), Pur Sina (پورسینا), and often known in the west as Avicenna (/ˌævɪˈsɛnə, ˌɑːvɪ-/; c. 980 – June 1037) was a Persian[4][5][6] Muslim polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age,[7] and the father of modern medicine.[8][9][10] Avicenna is also called "the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern era".[11] Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.[12] His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia[13][14][15] which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities[16] and remained in use as late as 1650.[17] In 1973, Avicenna's Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York.[18] Name[edit] Circumstances[edit] Biography[edit] Early life[edit] [edit]
Gorgias. Gorgias (/ˈɡɔrdʒiəs/; Greek: Γοργίας, Ancient Greek: [ɡorɡías]; c. 485 – c. 380 BC),[1] called "the Nihilist," was a Greek sophist, Italiote, pre-Socratic philosopher and rhetorician who was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists.
Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists he was an itinerant, practicing in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies His chief claim to recognition resides in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric from his native Sicily to Attica, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose.
Life[edit] Gorgias: the Nihilist[edit] Asclepius. Asclepius (/æsˈkliːpiəs/; Greek: Ἀσκληπιός, Asklēpiós [asklɛːpiós]; Latin: Aesculapius) was a god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek religion. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters are Hygieia ("Hygiene", the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation), Iaso (the goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (the goddess of the healing process), Aglæa/Ægle (the goddess of beauty, splendor, glory, magnificence, and adornment), and Panacea (the goddess of universal remedy). He was associated with the Roman/Etruscan god Vediovis. He was one of Apollo's sons, sharing with Apollo the epithet Paean ("the Healer").[1] The rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today. Those physicians and attendants who served this god were known as the Therapeutae of Asclepius.
Etymology[edit] The etymology of the name is unknown. Mythology[edit] Birth[edit] He was the son of Apollo and a human woman, Coronis. Porphyry (philosopher) Porphyry of Tyre (/ˈpɔrfəri/; Greek: Πορφύριος, Porphyrios, AD c. 234 – c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre.[1] He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics.[2] His Isagoge, or Introduction, is an introduction to logic and philosophy,[3] and in Latin translation it was the standard textbook on logic throughout the Middle Ages.[4] In addition, through several of his works, most notably Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians, he was involved in a controversy with a number of early Christians,[5] and his commentary on Euclid's Elements was used as a source by Pappus of Alexandria.[6] Imaginary debate between Averroes (1126–1198 AD) and Porphyry (234–c. 305 AD).
Monfredo de Monte Imperiali Liber de herbis, 14th century.[9] The Introduction was translated into Arabic by Abd-Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ from a Syriac version. Ad Gaurum ed. K. Avempace. Abû Bakr Muḥammad Ibn Yaḥyà ibn aṣ-Ṣâ’igh at-Tûjîbî Ibn Bâjja Al-tujibi (Arabic أبو بكر محمد بن يحيى بن الصائغ), known as Ibn Bājjah (Arabic: ابن باجه), was an Andalusian polymath: an astronomer, logician, musician, philosopher, physician, physicist, psychologist, botanist, poet and scientist.[1] He was known in the West by his Latinized name, Avempace. He was born in Zaragoza in what is today Aragon, Spain around 1085,[2] and died in Fes, Morocco in 1138. Avempace worked as vizir for Abu Bakr ibn Ibrahim Ibn Tîfilwît, the Almoravid governor of Zaragoza. Avempace also wrote poems (panegyrics and 'muwasshahat') for him.
Avempace joined in poetic competitions with the poet al-Tutili. His beloved expressions were Gharib غريب and Mutawahhid متوحد, two approved and popular expressions of Islamic Gnostics. Astronomy[edit] In Islamic astronomy, Maimonides wrote the following on the planetary model proposed by Ibn Bajjah: Physics[edit] Text 71[edit] Psychology[edit] Music[edit] Notes[edit] Proclus. Proclus Lycaeus (/ˈprɒkləs ˌlaɪˈsiːəs/; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485 AD), called the Successor (Greek Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, Próklos ho Diádokhos), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers (see Damascius). He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism. He stands near the end of the classical development of philosophy, and was very influential on Western medieval philosophy (Greek and Latin) as well as Islamic thought. Biography[edit] Proclus was born February 8, 412 AD (his birth date is deduced from a horoscope cast by a disciple, Marinus) in Constantinople to a family of high social status in Lycia (his father Patricius was a high legal official, very important in the Byzantine Empire's court system) and raised in Xanthus.
He studied rhetoric, philosophy and mathematics in Alexandria, with the intent of pursuing a judicial position like his father. Proclus became a successful practicing lawyer. Works[edit] Themistius. Life[edit] In 377 we find him at Rome, where he appears to have gone on an embassy to Gratian, to whom he there delivered his oration entitled Erotikos.[17] On the association of Theodosius I in the empire by Gratian, at Sirmium, in 379, Themistius delivered an elegant oration, congratulating the new emperor on his elevation.[18] Of his remaining orations some are public and some private; but few of them demand special notice as connected with the events of his life.
In 384, (about the first of September), he was made prefect of Constantinople,[19] an office which had been offered to him, but declined, several times before.[20] He only held the prefecture a few months, as we learn from an oration delivered after he had laid down the office,[21] in which he mentions, as he had done even six years earlier,[18] and more than once in the interval,[22] his old age and ill-health. Works[edit] The epitomes which survive are:[29] In philosophy Themistius was an eclectic. Notes[edit] Theophrastus. Life[edit] Most of the biographical information we have of Theophrastus was provided by Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, written more than four hundred years after Theophrastus' time.[2] He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.[3] His given name was Tyrtamus (Τύρταμος), but he later became known by the nickname "Theophrastus," given to him, it is said, by Aristotle to indicate the grace of his conversation (from Ancient Greek Θεός "god" and φράζειν "to phrase", i.e. divine expression).[4] Theophrastus presided over the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years,[12] and died at the age of eighty-five according to Diogenes.[13] He is said to have remarked "we die just when we are beginning to live".[14] Writings[edit] Many of his surviving works exist only in fragmentary form.
On Plants[edit] The Enquiry into Plants was originally ten books, of which nine survive. On the Causes of Plants was originally eight books, of which six survive. Characters[edit] Physics[edit] Iamblichus. Iamblichus, also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, or Iamblichus of Apamea (Greek: Ἰάμβλιχος, probably from Syriac or Aramaic ya-mlku, "He is king", c. 245 – c. 325), was a Syrian[1][2] Neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy. Iamblichus' life[edit] Only a fraction of Iamblichus' books have survived. For our knowledge of his system, we are indebted partly to the fragments of writings preserved by Stobaeus and others. The notes of his successors, especially Proclus, as well as his five extant books and the sections of his great work on Pythagorean philosophy also reveal much of Iamblichus' system.
As a speculative theory, Neoplatonism had received its highest development from Plotinus. It is most likely on this account that lamblichus was looked upon with such extravagant veneration. Iamblichus was highly praised by those who followed his thought. Iamblichus' cosmology[edit] Another difficulty of the system is the account given of nature. Zosimos of Panopolis. Distillation apparatus of Zosimos, from Marcelin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887-1888). Zosimos of Panopolis (Greek: Ζώσιμος) was a Greek[1][2] alchemist and Gnostic mystic from the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century AD. He was born in Panopolis, present day Akhmim in the south of Egypt, ca. 300. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy, of which quotations in the Greek language and translations into Syriac or Arabic are known.
He is one of about 40 authors represented in a compendium of alchemical writings that was probably put together in Byzantium (Constantinople) in the 7th or 8th century AD and that exists in manuscripts in Venice and Paris. Stephen of Alexandria is another. Arabic translations of texts by Zosimos were discovered in 1995 in a copy of the book Keys of Mercy and Secrets of Wisdom by Ibn Al-Hassan Ibn Ali Al-Tughra'i', a Persian alchemist. Alchemy[edit] Visions of Zosimos[edit] Surviving Works[edit] See also[edit] H. Damascius. Damascius (/dəˈmæʃəs/; Δαμάσκιος, c. 458 – after 538), known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens.
He was one of the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the Empire. His surviving works consist of three commentaries on the works of Plato, and a metaphysical text entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles. Life[edit] In 529 Justinian I closed the school, and Damascius with six of his colleagues sought an asylum, probably in 532, at the court of Khosrau I of Persia. They found the conditions intolerable, and when the following year Justinian and Khosrau concluded a peace treaty, it was provided that the philosophers should be allowed to return.[1] It is believed that Damascius returned to Alexandria and there devoted himself to the writing of his works.
Writings[edit] Among the lost works there were: Ostanes. Ostanes or Osthanes (Old Iranian (H)uštāna)[1] was an Iranian alchemist mage in classical and medieval literature with unclear identity.[2] Origins[edit] The origins of the figure of "Ostanes," or rather, who the Greeks imagined him to be, lies within the framework of "alien wisdom" that the Greeks (and later Romans) ascribed to famous foreigners, many of whom were famous to the Greeks even before being co-opted as authors of arcanum. One of these names was that of (pseudo-)Zoroaster, whom the Greeks perceived to be the founder of the magi and of their magical arts. Another name was that of (pseudo-)Hystaspes, Zoroaster's patron. The third of les Mages hellénisés[c] was Ostanes,[3] mentioned by the 4th century BCE Hermodorus (apud Diogenes Laertius Prooemium 2) as being a magus in the long line of magi descending from Zoroaster.
In contrast to the figures of "Zoroaster" and "Hystaspes," there is as yet "no evidence of [an Ostanes] figure of a similar name in Iranian tradition Notes[edit] De virtutibus lapidum - Damigeron - Google Books. Duns Scotus. Plotinus. Biography[edit] Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality (an attitude common to Platonism), holding to the view that phenomena were a poor image or mimicry (mimesis) of something "higher and intelligible" [VI.I] which was the "truer part of genuine Being". This distrust extended to the body, including his own; it is reported by Porphyry that at one point he refused to have his portrait painted, presumably for much the same reasons of dislike. Likewise Plotinus never discussed his ancestry, childhood, or his place or date of birth. From all accounts his personal and social life exhibited the highest moral and spiritual standards.
Plotinus took up the study of philosophy at the age of twenty-seven, around the year 232, and travelled to Alexandria to study. There he was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of Ammonius Saccas. Expedition to Persia and return to Rome[edit] Later life[edit] Major ideas[edit] One[edit] Zalmoxis. Zalmoxis[pronunciation?] (Greek Ζάλμοξις), also known as Salmoxis (Σάλμοξις), Zalmoxes (Ζάλμοξες), Zamolxis (Ζάμολξις), Samolxis (Σάμολξις), Zamolxes (Ζάμολξες), or Zamolxe (Ζάμολξε), is a divinity of the Getae (a people of the lower Danube), mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories IV, 93–96. In later interpretations, which begin with Jordanes (6th century AC) and have proliferated during the 19th and 20th century, mainly in Romania, he was regarded as the sole god of the Getae or as a legendary social and religious reformer who, according to Herodotus, taught the Getae a belief in immortality, so that they considered dying merely as going to Zalmoxis.
Herodotus states that Zalmoxis was also called by some of the Getae Gebeleizis, which made some searchers conclude that Getae were actually henotheists or even polytheists. Another discussion exists about the chthonic (infernal) or uranian (heavenly) character of Zalmoxis. Herodotus[edit] Getae's religion[edit] Zalmoxian religion[edit] Al-Kindi.
Apuleius. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Eleusinian Mysteries. Al-Farabi. Empedocles.