Between c. 470 and 399 BC, Socrates developed in Athens a systematic procedure of questioning to examine beliefs through chained questions that force the interlocutor to make their assumptions explicit and detect internal contradictions. The method operates in two phases: elenchus (refutation), which destroys a thesis by exposing its inconsistencies, and maieutics (the art of the midwife), which draws out latent knowledge through successive questions. It is the first documented method of proof by reduction to absurdity applied to verbal reasoning. Aristotle, Plato's disciple for twenty years at the Academy, would formalize the logical structure of the Socratic method in the Organon, producing syllogistic logic. Without the Socratic method as a direct precursor, Aristotle's systematization of formal inference lacks a verifiable antecedent.