Bob Filner: “I thank the gentleman, and like the previous speakers, I thank Mr. Bilirakis for this annual special order in which we…”

“I thank the gentleman, and like the previous speakers, I thank Mr. Bilirakis for this annual special order in which we take some time to remember our relationship and our debt to the people and the nation of Greece. It is a privilege and an honor to participate with him. We all know that March 25 will mark the 176th anniversary of the struggle that ultimately freed the Greek people from the Ottoman Empire. Back then, in 1821, the Greeks raised the flag of revolution against 400 years of Turkish rule and began a series of wars that lasted a full decade and resulted in freedom for the nation of Greece. We look to Greece for many of our cultural attributes, whether it is science, literature, art, architecture, philosophy. For over 2,000 years we have looked to Greece for inspiration. Before I entered this Chamber, Mr. Bilirakis, I taught a course on the history of science at the university level; spent a good part of that course on the contributions of ancient Greece. It was in the 6th and 5th century B.C. that the Athenians and the Greeks living in the Ionian cities for the first time asked rational questions about the natural world we live in and demanded rational answers. Whether it was on the structure of the universe or the nature of the human body, they invented what we call science. The process that they began back then, in fact, became the most productive and the most profound method of trying to discover truth in the world, and we owe the Greeks that.”