Nemo's Space 🍀's Key Ideas from Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder

✔️ Shift from mythical to logical explanations.

✔️ Thales: Everything is made of water.

✔️ Heraclitus: Change is constant (“You cannot step into the same river twice”).

✔️ Democritus: Everything is made of tiny atoms.

📌 Reflection: How do your surroundings influence your beliefs about reality?

✔️ Used the Socratic method to challenge assumptions.

✔️ Believed that “the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”

✔️ Sentenced to death for questioning authority.

📌 Challenge: Question a common belief in society—does it hold up?

✔️ People live in ignorance like prisoners in a cave.

✔️ The philosopher escapes, sees the real world, and struggles to convince others.

✔️ Truth is uncomfortable, but necessary for freedom.

✔️ St. Augustine: Blended Christianity with Plato’s ideas.

✔️ St. Thomas Aquinas: Tried to prove God’s existence logically.

✔️ Debate: Should faith override reason, or should they work together?

📌 Reflection: Do you rely more on logic or faith in your decisions?

✔️ Rediscovery of Greek philosophy sparked creativity.

✔️ Scientists like Copernicus & Galileo challenged religious dogma.

✔️ Humanism emphasized individual potential.

📌 Challenge: Question an old assumption—what new perspective emerges?

✔️ Focused on observation and experience.

✔️ Developed categories of knowledge still used today.

✔️ Golden Mean: Virtue lies in balance (courage vs. recklessness).

📌 Reflection: Where in your life do you need more balance?

✔️ Cynicism: Reject materialism and live simply.

✔️ Stoicism: Accept what you cannot control.

✔️ Epicureanism: Happiness comes from simple pleasures.

📌 Actionable Step: What’s one thing you’re holding onto that doesn’t serve

you?

✔️ Descartes: Truth comes from reason (“I think, therefore I am”).

✔️ Locke & Hume: Truth comes from experience.

✔️ Modern science blends both approaches.

📌 Reflection: Do you trust logic more than experience?

✔️ We don’t just see reality—we filter it through our minds.

✔️ Concepts like time and space exist because our brains impose them.

✔️ Reality is partly constructed by our perception.

📌 Challenge: What assumptions are shaping how you see the world?

✔️ History moves through contradictions:

Thesis (Idea) → Antithesis (Opposing Idea) → Synthesis (New Idea)

✔️ Every major shift in history followed this pattern.

📌 Reflection: What personal contradiction are you struggling with?

✔️ Material conditions shape how people think.

✔️ History is driven by class struggle.

✔️ Economics influences our values more than we realize.

📌 Challenge: How does money affect your choices and beliefs?

✔️ “God is dead.”

✔️ Traditional morals are human-made, not absolute.

✔️ Encouraged people to create their own values.

📌 Challenge: What beliefs have you inherited that no longer serve

you?

✔️ Our behavior is shaped by hidden psychological forces.

✔️ The id, ego, and superego battle for control.

✔️ Many of our actions are not as rational as we think.

📌 Reflection: What unconscious habit might be influencing your decisions?

✔️ Sartre: We are responsible for defining our own lives.

✔️ Kierkegaard: True faith requires a personal leap.

✔️ Camus: Life has no inherent meaning—but that’s liberating.

📌 Challenge: If life had no built-in purpose, what meaning would you create?

✔️ Reality is shaped by culture, history, and power.

✔️ Truth is not absolute, only constructed.

✔️ Derrida & Foucault challenged traditional ideas of knowledge.

📌 Reflection: What "truths" have you never questioned?

✔️ Sophie realizes she is part of a book.

✔️ Raises the ultimate question

Are we free, or are we characters in someone else’s story?

📌 Final Thought: If life is a story, who is writing yours?