Following in Socrates’ steps: from natural science to moral philosophy

Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis David, 1787

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a scientist. Early on, an astronomer. Family lore has it that such decision was reached when I was five years old, while watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing with my grandmother. (Interesting that I didn’t go for the more obvious thing: being an astronaut.) Carl Sagan influenced me when I was in middle school, and the 1976 landing of…