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The method the Greek philosophers followed in forming and transmitting their answers became just as important as the questions they asked. The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. In other words they depended on reason and observation to illuminate the true nature of the would around them, and they used rational argument to advance their views to others. And though philosophers have argued at length about the relative weights that reason and observation should have, for two and a half millennia they have basically united in the use of the very method first used by the pre-Socratics.

After the Turks conquered Crete in 1669, Crete went through a dark period of tyranny and poverty. During the 17th century, the lyre became the national instrument of Crete, though it was much different then than it is now. In the 1810s, Georgios the Cretan helped to revive Byzantine music traditions.

There have been excellent composers and performers in all kinds of music but traditional Greek music is noted as a mixture of influences from indigenous Greek culture and Western and Middle Eastern cultures. Turkish and Ottoman elements can be most clearly heard in the traditional songs, dhimotiká, as well as the modern bluesy rembétika music. The best-known Greek musical instrument is the bouzouki, which is actually a Turkish import (possibly a refined version of saz).

According to the 2001 census, Greece had a population of 10,964,020. Of those, 58.8% lived in urban areas, whereas only 28.4% lived in rural areas. The population of the two largest cities in Greece, Athens and Thessaloniki, reached almost 4 million. Although the population of Greece continues to grow, Greece faces a serious demographic problem: for the first time in 2002 the number of deaths surpassed the number of births.

Remains of ancient Greek architecture still survive or are well documented today alongside more modern examples.

Their works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ considerably in both style and substance. Plato wrote several dozen philosophical dialogues—arguments in the form of conversations, usually with Socrates as a participant—and a few letters. Though the early dialogues deal mainly with methods of acquiring knowledge, and most of the last ones with justice and practical ethics, his most famous works expressed a synoptic view of ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge, and human life. Predominant ideas include the notion that knowledge gained through the senses always remains confused and impure, and that the contemplative soul that turns away from the world can acquire "true" knowledge. The soul alone can have knowledge of the Forms, the real essences of things, of which the world we see is but an imperfect copy. Such knowledge has ethical as well as scientific import. One can view Plato, with qualification, as an idealist and a rationalist.

Greek pottery is frequently signed, sometimes by the potter or the master of the pottery, but only occasionally by the painter. Hundreds of painters are, however, identifiable by their artistic personalities: where their signatures haven't survived they are named for their subject choices, as "the Achilles Painter", by the potter they worked for, such as the Late Archaic "Kleophrades Painter", or even by their modern locations, such as the Late Archaic "Berlin Painter".

Thales is said to have died in his seat, while watching an athletic contest.