greek civilization contribution to science and technology essay

Ancient Greek Science and Technology – From Antikythera to Pharos

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The Antikythera computer was the culmination of advanced mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy and engineering. It incorporated the philosophy and science of Aristotle, the gears of Ktesibios, the mathematics and mechanics of Archimedes, and the astronomical ideas of Hipparchos. The Antikythera computer and the infrastructure of technology that made it possible were the products of the golden age of ancient Greek science and technology in the Alexandrian Era, which came about between the late 4th century BC to the 2nd century AD.

The Antikythera Mechanism kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, is often described as the first analog computer, a feat of ancient Greek science and technology. (Tilemahos Efthimiadis /  CC BY 2.0 )

Greek Science and Technology on the Island of the Sun God Helios

The Antikythera clockwork geared device was probably made in Rhodes, Corinth or, more likely, in one of the daughter-poleis of Corinth in northern Greece, Kerkyra, Epiros, or Syracuse, Sicily. Rhodes and Syracuse are the most attractive possibilities for giving birth to the Antikythera Mechanism-like devices.

In fact, the Greek Antikythera computer came from both. On the one hand, the advantage of Rhodes is that, in the words of the Russian historian Michael Rostovtzeff, it was “a home of Greek civilization, Greek learning and Greek art.” Secondly, the fingerprints of two Rhodian astronomers, Hipparchos and Geminos, are all over the Antikythera computer, which may be the original model or copy of another standard astronomical model dating from the third century. Were that to be the case, Hipparchos and Geminos also mirrored earlier advancements in science.

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The history of Rhodes goes back to the very beginnings of Greek culture. Strabo says that before Rhodes had the name Rhodes, it was known as Ophioussa (Serpent-island) and Stadia (Strong). Then it became Telchinis , the country of Telchines who colonized it. These Telchines, Strabo recounts, were controversial people.

Some described the Telchines as “maligners” and “sorcerers” who mixed sulphur with water from the sacred River Styx to damage and kill animals and plants. However, there was an alternative view of Telchines as superb craftsmen maligned by competing workers. Telchines came to Rhodes from Crete. They were the first craftsmen who worked iron and brass. In fact, the Telchines were so ancient that, according to tradition, they manufactured the scythe for Titan Kronos , father of Zeus .

In time, the Telchines withered away or intermarried with a new group of Greek invaders of Rhodes known as the Heliadai , children of the Sun god Helios . It was also during the time of the Heliadai that Athena was born in Rhodes from the head of her father Zeus.

Silver tetradrachm from about 205 to 190 BC featuring the Sun god Helios, the chief god of Rhodes. About 205-190 BCE. (Courtesy of the Numismatic Museum of Athens / Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Archaeological Receipts Fund)

According to Pindar, Helios urged his children to build for Athena: “a shining altar and burn a sacred offering to gladden the heart of Zeus and Athena holding in her hand the spear-bolt. Care born of forethought puts success and joy within men’s reach… Zeus gathered a blond cloud and rained deep gold upon them. Athena, the bright-eyed goddess, gave them all craftsmanship to outshine mankind in the skill of their hands. Their avenues hosted works of superior cunning. They seemed to breathe and move.”

Eventually, the son of Herakles, Tlepolemos, brought his followers to Rhodes, the island of Helios. Homer tells us that Zeus blessed them with gold and wealth. Thus, Rhodes had the mythic and historical tradition of technological achievements. In the Alexandrian era, the island of Helios was a center for science and, especially, astronomical studies. Famous scientists and philosophers lived and flourished in Rhodes.

In fact, they were one of the reasons why Rhodes became one of the earliest and most important cultural centers of ancient Greece. In early 3rd century BC, Rhodes showed off its technological achievement and power with a colossal bronze statue of the Sun god Helios . Writing about three centuries after the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, Pliny the Elder thought it was a great achievement.

In addition, the first meteorological observations necessary for Greek calendars or Parapegmata took place in Rhodes. This tradition of technology was not limited to Rhodes.

The Colossus of Rhodes by Louis de Caullery. ( Public domain )

Marriage of Craftsmanship and Theory in Ancient Greece

Plato loved more than theory. He admired the craftsmanship of Hippias and his technical skills enabled him to do just about everything he needed. He engraved his own ring, made his own shoes, wove his cloak and tunic, and plaited the belt he wore around his tunic. This was also a man of words and knowledge. Plato respected men who worked with their hands because of the care demonstrated in their work and the way they used their skills and organization to give their products the best possible shape, appearance and quality.

Moreover, Plato admired the mathematical nature of craftsmanship. Without counting, measuring and weighing, Plato said, arts and crafts would be pretty much worthless. Men would have to resort to conjecture and guesses in dealing with each other and in doing things. Plato had a special liking for building. He explained its “superior craftsmanship” to the frequent use of instruments and measures. The woodworking craft in shipbuilding and house building, for example, was accurate thanks to the tools of the craftsmen: straightedge, compass, a mason’s rule, a line, and the carpenter’s square.

Aristotle also admired craftsmen and inventors for their useful devices and wisdom. In fact, of all the social classes in a polis, he considered the class of mechanics the most essential. No polis could exist without the mechanics practicing their arts and crafts. Of those arts and crafts, Aristotle said, some are “absolutely necessary” while others contribute to luxury or enrich life.

One student or follower of Aristotle wrote a work on mechanics, and that book is within the works of Aristotle. This technician focused on the lever, pulley, wedge and windlass, none of which were complicated machines but practical aids to doing necessary work like lifting water from wells and the sailing of ships. Yet, the author of this technical manual also tried to show the mathematical principles behind his machines.

Gold coin minted in Sardes, a key city of Lydia, which by the time of Alexander the Great was a province of Persia. Alexander used Sardes for his mint. The coins depict Alexander the Great on the left and a winged Nike on the right crowning Alexander. (Courtesy of Collection Saroglou, Numismatic Museum of Athens / Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Archaeological Receipts Fund)

Explosion of Objective Knowledge About the World

Greek thinkers since Thales sowed the ground for the final flowering and globalization of ancient Greek science and technology in the era of Alexander the Great. This lasted for about 300 years: from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC until the death of queen Cleopatra of Egypt in 30 BC.

However, the Greek scientific revolution that produced the Antikythera Mechanism went beyond the borders of the Alexandrian Age for another 200 years, covering the second century of our era. The 3rd and 2nd centuries BC marked the climax of the golden age of Greek science. The Greeks institutionalized their new way of constructing and construing the world.

According to Ploutarchos, Alexander put into practice the best ideas of Greek philosophers . He also abolished many abominable traditions among some of the non-Greeks in his empire. Alexander united the world for the first time, although he rejected Aristotle’ advice to treat the Greeks as the masters of barbarians.

Alexander the Great and the Pharos (Lighthouse) of Alexandria on a 1977 Greek postage stamp honoring 2,300 years since the death of Alexander in 323 BC. ( Lefteris Papaulakis / Adobe Stock)

Ploutarchos reports that Alexander implemented the following strategy for creating one world: He was certain he was a god-sent ruler and mediator for the whole world. Alexander waged war against those he could not bring over by persuasion. Integrating people from all over the world, he instructed them to consider the inhabited world to be their native land, and his camp to be their acropolis for their defense. Alexander also expected his subjects to ally with good men, and treat the wicked as strangers. The difference between Greeks and barbarians , he told them, was not a matter of arms and clothing but excellence. Wickedness marked the barbarian.

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Alexander’s successors also spread Hellenic civilization throughout Asia and the Middle East while uniting Greece for the first time. The “extremely sudden extension” of the Greek world gave an opportunity to Greeks to earn a good living almost everywhere. This encouraged the use of reason “without any traditional constraints.” Advanced educational institutions funded by Greek rulers gave a great boost to scientific research.

By this point, philosophy was so widespread that when scientific disciplines started on their road to specialization, they carried with them, in the words of Albrecht Dihle, a “valuable dowry of a well-developed consciousness of methods and problems, an awareness formed while scientific efforts had taken place within the context of philosophy.” In other words, Alexander’s vision of Greek ideas and culture spreading East and West became what Peter Bamm termed a “marvelous reality” that triumphed for several centuries after his death, building the civilization of the world.

King Ptolemy I Soter (the Savior), 305-283 BC, was a student of Aristotle. Silver tetradrachm (four drachmas). (Courtesy Numismatic Museum of Athens / Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Archaeological Receipts Fund)

The Ptolemies and the Spread of Ancient Greek Science and Technology in Egypt

The Greeks did spectacularly well in Egypt especially because of one of the top generals of Alexander. This was Ptolemy , son of Lagos, who lived from 367 to 282 BC. Alexander appointed him governor of Egypt. When Alexander died in 323 BC, Ptolemy consolidated his power and, in 305 BC made himself the king of Egypt, taking the name Ptolemy I Soter (Savior).

Ptolemy was fortunate to have the assistance of Demetrios of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle who was also author of philosophical works. Demetrios convinced him to replicate Aristotle’s school in Alexandria, first of all, by building a library and a Mouseion, Shrine of the Muses. Ptolemy was also a student of Aristotle. He encouraged Demetrios to go ahead with his Aristotelian proposal.

Ptolemy II depicted with Jewish savants who translated the Bible for the great library of Alexandria, by Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne. ( Public domain )

Around 295 BC, King Ptolemy founded the Mouseion for the cultivation of Greek culture, the sciences, and literature. The library also thrived very quickly. That way, the methods and science of Aristotle took deep roots in Alexandria, becoming the intellectual infrastructure of the golden age of Greek science.

Ptolemy I died in 283 BCE, only to be succeeded by Ptolemy II Philadelphos (of Brotherly Love), who ruled from 285 to 246. Ptolemy II continued his father’s tradition and lavished money and political support to the Mouseion and its staff, while famous scientists, poets, and scholars were recruited from all over the Greek world. He also built the Pharos or Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The Pharos was symbolic of the enlightenment of the Greek kings of Egypt. But there was more enlightenment emanating from the scholars advising the Ptolemies. They did independent research and writing, advancing ancient Greek science and technology. These scholars received handsome salaries and paid no taxes; they even ate and lived in the Broucheion, which was part of the palace.

The Great Library of Alexandria was part of the Mouseion. ( Erica Guilane-Nachez / Adobe Stock)

The Ptolemies also established a library in the Mouseion: a main Library of about 500,000 volumes in the palace and a sister library of probably 42,000 volumes in the temple of Zeus Serapis or Serapeion . One of the librarians, Kallimachos, compiled the Pinakes , Πίνακες, a 120-volume catalogue of the collections of the library. The staff from their library combed Greece for manuscripts, while books found in ships coming to the harbor of Alexandria were copied for inclusion in their collection.

The Greek kings of Alexander’s empire, especially the Ptolemies of Egypt, created the foundations for a rational commonwealth characterized by scientific exploration , state-funded research, the scholarly study of earlier Greek culture and the editing of the Greek classics. The scholars of Alexandria pioneered the “techniques of painstaking study and exegesis,” which spread all over the civilized world. These ancient Greek scholars continue to be the model for classical and scientific studies even today.

The above article is an extract from the book The Antikythera Mechanism : The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and its Demise .

Top image: Ancient Greek science and technology represented by a 3D image of Athens landmark the Parthenon emerging from a smartphone screen. Source: scaliger

By Evaggelos Vallianatos, Ph.D.

Dr Evaggelos Vallianatos is the author of The Antikythera Mechanism: The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and its Demise

Aristotle. No date. Metaphysics.

Aristotle. No date. Politics .

Austin, M. (Ed). 2006. The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bamm, P. 1968. Alexander the Great: Power as Destiny . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Dihle, A. 1994. Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire . New York: Routledge.

Dodds, E. R. (Ed). 1990. Plato: Gorgias . Oxford University Press

Homer. No date. Iliad.

Hopkinson, N. (Ed). 1996. A Hellenistic Anthology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pindar. No date. Victory Songs.

Plato. No date. Hippias Minor.

Plato. No date. Philebos .

Pliny the Elder. No date. Natural History .

Rostovtzeff, M. “Rhodes, Delos and Hellenistic commerce” in S.A. Cook et al. (Eds). 1965. The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VIII, Rome and the Mediterranean 218-133 B.C. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pinotsis, A. D. 2008. Astronomy in Ancient Rhodes . Unpublished paper. Section of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics, Department of Physics, University of Athens.

Pinotsis. 2005. “Kleovoulos of Lindos: The Precursor of Science in Ancient Rhodes” in Dodecanesian Chronicles , Vol. 18, pp. 332-351 (in Greek)

Pliny the Elder. No date. Natural History

Strabo. No date. Geography. Book 14, Chapter 2, section 7.

Evaggelos G.

Evaggelos G. Vallianatos studied zoology and history at the University of Illinois and received his history doctorate at the University of Wisconsin; did postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard; worked on Capitol Hill and the US Environmental... Read More

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Science and Technology’ Development in Ancient Civilizations Essay

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For centuries, national economies and social changes have been driven by science and technology activities. Today, current economies have been transformed from economies based on natural resources to systems that are globally integrated based on knowledge and information. It is important to note that this could not have occurred without incorporation of scientific principles or most important, implementing innovative technology.

The activities of science and technology have accelerated national growths and have caused social change through various avenues, such as; communication, transport in terms of movement, and enhanced capacities to generate (Cooper 99)). This paper provides an overview in the development of science and technology in European civilization, thus, discussing the following: civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greek.

Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek Civilizations

The foundation of Western civilization was laid by Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Both Mesopotamians and Egyptians developed cities and coped with challenges of organized states. They also pioneered writing to maintain records and establish literature (Perry 26). Egyptians were able to build magnificent and complex pyramids aimed at appeasing their gods. Their architecture also indicated their power and authority in the kingdom. The basic spheres of Egyptian life, that is, political, social, religious, and others tackle challenges that exist in humans (Perry 29).

These observations on Egyptian civilization assisted many in understanding the daunting challenges human beings experienced in terms of: the nature of human relationships; the nature of the universe; and the role of the divine forces in the universe (Perry 29)). Although later citizens of the Western civilizations would offer different views from those of Mesopotamians and Egyptians, it was they who first posed, gave solutions, and recorded them down. In essence, human memory starts with these two civilizations (Perry 28).

Mesopotamia Civilization

The accomplishments of Mesopotamian civilization played a great part in the development of science and technology in Western Civilization. The word Mesopotamia was extracted from Greek meaning the land between the rivers (Postgate 6). The first civilization began in Mesopotamia an area in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Sumerians were the first to develop an urban civilization in Mesopotamia. They colonized the marshlands of the lower Euphrates, which together with Tigris flows in the Gulf of Persia. The origin of Sumerians is obscure, although scholars speculate that they migrated from the east, perhaps northern India (Bottero 10).

Through imagination and constant toil, Sumerians transformed the swamps into fields’ barley and groves of date palms (Wildwood 21). Gradually, their hut settlements evolved into twelve independent city states, each consisting of a city and its surrounding countryside at around 3000 B.C. among these tremendous achievements of the Sumerians were a system of symbol writing, in which pictograms and signs for numbers were engraved with a reed stylus on clay tablets to represent ideas; elaborate brick houses, palaces, and temples; bronze tools and weapons; irrigation works; trade with other people; an early form of money; religious and political institutions; schools; religious and secular literature; varied art forms; codes of law; medicinal drugs; and lunar calendar (Postgate 20).

Although Sumerians spoke common language and shared same customs and gods, their city sates engaged in frequent rivalry principally over boundaries and water rights. The water rights meant the canals built upriver reduced the water available to the cities down river. Due to this warfare, Sumerians were weakened and exposed them to foreign domination. Sumerian cities were incorporated into various kingdoms and empires in succeeding centuries. Semitic tongue replaced Sumerian language as official language in these territories (Postgate 18). However, their cultural achievements endured. The Babylonians, Akkadians, and others adopted Sumerian religious, legal, literary and art forms. The Sumerian legacy served as the basis for a Mesopotamian civilization that maintains a distinct style of 3000 years (Bottero 40.

Government, Law and Economy

Central to Mesopotamian society, was kingship; bestowed on a man by gods. There was a tendency of Mesopotamian Kings to regard themselves as gods, that is, they were selected by gods as their representatives on earth. The kings ruled through gods who reported about conditions in their land; which was the god’s property and petitioned the gods for advice (Wildwood 6). All the laws were administered by the king, laws which came from gods (Wildwood 8). These laws provided Mesopotamia with a measure of security and orderliness.

The famous code of Hammurabi was the principle collection of laws in ancient Mesopotamia. The code has provided invaluable insights into Mesopotamian society (Perkins 59). The laws were inscribed on a stone slab near the top of which Hammurabi was depicted, standing reverently before the throne of Shamash, the sun god and patron of justice. Hammurabi, just in typical Mesopotamian fashion, claimed that his code rested on the authority of the gods; a violation of it was a contravention of the divine order (Bottelo 16).

The social status was revealed by these codes. Men were held as head of families; although efforts were made to protect women and children from mistreatment and poverty. For instance, if a man divorced his wife because they could give him a son, he had to provide her with finances. There were severe punishments. For instance, the code prescribed death on housebreaking, kidnapping, assisting in the escape of slaves, receiving stolen goods; and hearing false witnesses. Class differences were expressed in the code (Wildwood 24).

Penalties varied in with the status of both accuser and the victim. For example, harming a noble received huge punishment than harming a commoner. Heavy penalties were imposed on government officials who engaged in extortion or bribery. The provisions of the code relating to business transactions indicate the significance of trade to Mesopotamian life. Mesopotamian economy was solely dependent on foreign and domestic trade. It had great opportunities for private enterprise. Even their temple priests besides their merchants engaged in trade since they possessed surplus produce collected as rents from farmers using temple land (Postgate 11).

Writing, Mathematics, and Astronomy and Medicine

Sumerians formed schools, which taught the sons of the upper class in the art of cunciform writing. There are many discovered tablets on which Sumerian students practiced their lessons. This testifies their years of their disciplined and demanding work demanding them to master the scribble art. All scribbles were virtually men; however, women scribes are also mentioned at times in Mesopotamian writings. Literacy in particular, was extended to noble women (Bottero 5).

To aid their students, teachers prepared textbooks of word lists and mathematical problems with solutions. Sumerians compiled probably the first dictionary when they translated Sumerian words to Akkadian language. Students who finished the course of study successfully were employed as archivists, secretaries or accountants by the temple, the law courts and the palace or merchants. The Sumerian system of cunciform writing spread to other parts of world (Wildwood 12).

Impressive advances in mathematics were also made by Mesopotamians. They devised multiplication and division tables, including cubes and cube roots. They were able to determine the area of right angles, triangles and rectangles, divided a circle into 360 degrees, and ha some understanding of the principles that centuries later would be developed into the Pythagorean theorem and quadratic equations (Postgate 13).

Egyptian Civilization

The Egyptian set towards the path of civilization in the fertile valley of the Nile during the early of Mesopotamia civilization. The Greek historian Herodotus termed Egypt as the gift of the Nile, for good reason (Bell 5). This is because without this mighty river, which flows more than four thousand miles from central Africa northward to the Mediterranean, virtually all of Egypt would be a desert. When the Nile broke its banks, as it did reliably and predictably, the floodwaters deposited a layer of fertile black earth, which, when cultivated, provided abundant food to support Egyptian civilization. The Egyptians learned how to control the river; a feat that needed cooperation effort and ingenuity, as well as engineering and administrative skills (Perry 19).

Religion was the essence of Egyptian civilization. The overall Egyptian practices in terms of art, literature, health and others were based on religious beliefs. The great Egyptian pyramids, which took decades to be constructed to finish and demanded labour of thousands of people, were pharaohs tombs. In addition, Egyptian health care system is laced with utterances which bode to magic. For instance, all ailments were associated to occur as a result of the gods.

The field of astronomy grew in Egypt as a result of Egyptians seeking exact time of doing religious rites and sacrifices. Literary examples of early Egyptian life are full of themes related to religion. Pharaohs were revered as royalty that acted as a bridge between Egyptian gods and its citizens. The justice system followed strict religion and justice was administered a revered creator god. Egyptians appealed to gods to provide them victory during times of war, provide abundant harvest, and protect them from sicknesses and misfortunes. They also established codes of ethics they thought were sanctioned by the gods they worship. In a number of treaties formulated by high officials, Egyptians were urged to speak the truth and to treat others fairly (Waddel 171).

Devine Kingship

Devine kingship presented the basic institution of Egyptian civilization. The needs of Egyptian environment perhaps assisted forge the idea of the pharaoh as a living god because a ruler with supernatural authority, and held in favour by the gods, could hold together the large kingdom and draft the mass labour needed to maintain the irrigation system. The pharaoh authority was enhanced by numerous priests and standing army.

Science and Mathematics

Similar to Mesopotamians, Egyptians made practical development in mathematics and science. They demonstrated magnificent skills in constructing pyramids. The pyramid of Khufu for instance, is still the largest stone building ever constructed. The Egyptians fashioned a system of mathematics that was effective including geometry for measurements that enabled them to solve relatively simple problems.

In Egypt, the control of floodwaters of Nile needed meticulous planning. It was therefore, important to know when the Nile would begin to overflow. Marking that the Nile flooded after the star Sirius emerged in the sky, Egyptians developed a calendar by which they could predict the time of flood. They fashioned a calendar of twelve months eventually. Each of these months had thirty days. To complete the solar year, they added a separate period of five days after the last month. Egyptian calendar based on the sun was more accurate than the Babylonian lunar calendar (Perry 20).

In the field of medicine, Egyptian physicians were more capable than their Mesopotamian colleagues. They were able to diagnose illnesses; they recognized that in hygiene encouraged contagion. Egyptians had knowledge of anatomy and performed operations; circumcision and perhaps removing of abscessed teeth. There is evidence that Egyptian doctors examined the body in a scientific way, although the progress of medicine was derailed by the belief that supernatural forces caused illnesses. In scroll, Smith surgical papyrus omitted all references to divine intervention in his advice for treating wounds and fractures. He described fractures n a way and recommended healing them with splints and casts. In another papyrus document, the writer identified various snakes, analyzed the effects of their bites, and listed treatments, including the use of specific drugs; and he did so with only minimum references magical incarnations (Bell 20).

Greek Civilization

Science and technology presents organized views of the universe developed with the rise of the Greek civilization, starting 600 BCE. The Greeks developed institutions such as museums, the Lyceum, and the Academy in resemblance to universities today. When the Academy and the Lyceum were closed in 529 CE, and the Museum was destroyed about same period, the Greek era in science was over, although Greek writings continued to have great influence for thousand years more (Stadler 36).

The earliest Greeks were seafarers and traders. As a result, they needed skills for navigation as important in predetermining their practice in science especially geometry. Prior to Greek civilization, scholars from Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization had already learnt scientific results (Bell 12). However, these were mainly commonly observations and recipes for specific applications. For instance, although the Egyptian Imbotep may be termed as a scientist for his knowledge of medicine and architecture, the Greeks were the first to believe that humans could understand universe using reason alone rather than through mythology or religion (Stadler 35).

They looked for explanations for all natural phenomena. No personal gods were involved, only impersonal natural processes. These early searchers were referred to as philosophers rather than scientists. However, since few are known to have performed specific experiments. Greek philosophers were the first to seek for general principles beyond observation. Some of the Greek philosophers known to have performed experiments include; Pythagoras, Aristotle and Archimedes (Stadler 36).

Philosophy as a Precursor to Science

Greek science and mathematics starts with Ionian school of natural philosophy briefly after 600 BCE (Rosenberg 1). Thales of Miletus is regarded as founder of Ionian school. He studied in Egypt where he was exposed to new ideas. It is likely that he learned the craft of land surveying, from which he deduced geometry. He also studied astronomy in Mesopotamia, and it is believed that he predicted a solar eclipse (Stadler 36).

Thales started the search for a unifying principle and identified this essence as water. Anaximander is believed to have written the earliest scientific book. He formulates a theory of the origin and evolution of life. He believed that life originated in the sea from the moist element which was evaporated by the sun (Rosenberg 4).

Ionian philosophers and their followers introduced earliest form of scientific method, which was based on reasoning and observation with little experimentation. They established differing theories about the causes of natural phenomena and the nature of matter. The atomics such as Democritus and Leucippus believed reality to be embodied in matter, while the Pythagoreans viewed the universe as form and number.

Plato became central to Greek science as he was influenced by Pythagorean and Aristotle. Plato’s academy promoted pure form of mathematics (Taylor 89). Aristotle, whose school was Lyceum, became the most scholars in Greek Antiquity. He introduced the inductive method, aversion of the scientific method that still plays a role in scientific thinking today. Significant advances in science and technology include; astronomy, biology, medicine, and communication (Rosenberg 4).

The Greeks developed a multitude of cosmological models, although they were less accurate observers of celestial events than the Babylonians. For instance, Thales assumed that earth to be floating in water, while Anaximander believed earth to be a disk suspended freely in space. The Pythagoreans believed that is a sphere in space. Eudoxus of Cnidus on the other hand, proposed that stars are attached to a larger sphere that rotates around earth. The Greek and Hellenistic philosophy came to generally accept the idea of the universe as nesting spheres came to be accepted generally in Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, with earth at the centre of the universe (Stadler 34).

Hellenistic astronomers such as Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy calculated correctly the size of earth and the distance of the moon. Astronomy was dominated by an explanation of planetary motion established by Hipparchus and refined by Ptolemy until it was replaced by the system of Copernicus, Keppler and Newton.

Classification of living organisms on grand scale was first undertaken by Aristotle, covering the range from the most imperfect to, that is, plants to the most perfect, that is, man; as he viewed the hierarchy. Animals were classified by Aristotle as vertebrates and invertebrates. This classification continues to function today. Aristotle’s anatomy was often good, but in some instances far wrong. For instance, he believed that the heart is the centre of intelligence.

He observed and described the development of embryos, becoming the founder of comparative embryology. Contributions of both the mother and father are equally important. This was an important discovery by Aristotle at the time. Lyceum and Theophrastus succeeded Aristotle in advancing biology and classification especially with regard to plants (Stadler 28).

Among the Greek philosophers interested in medicine were; Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Philolaus. Philosopher Hippocrates and his followers became the most renowned for a more scientific approach to medicine and for their explanation of health and disease by balance of humours (Rosenberg 4). The theory remained static for many centuries and hampered the understanding the role of pathogens. When the Greek medical teaching spread Galan merged as the best common physician, his theories dominated medicine for 1300 years. Misconceptions were abounding the anatomy for some time. It was easy to observe that the larger veins and arteries are tubes that can carry some sort of fluid through the body. Therefore, it was assumed that the nerves are also fluid carrying tubes (Perry 20).

Communication

Systems for dispatching signals quickly over long distances that were developed during this period may have been significant for the armies and empires. However, Antiquity’s greatest advance in communication was the establishment of the library at Alexandria. At Alexandria, nearly all the knowledge collected to that day was stored. The library was however destroyed during the war due to the rise in Christianity which depicted much of the contents of the library as heretical. This may have set civilization back by several centuries (Rosenberg 2).

The essence of Western civilization was impacted much by the Greeks cultural and political practices. The initial Greek civilization occurred around 1600 B.C. the city states had become the main focus of Greek life by the 8 th century B.C. loyalty to the city states created a community that was close knit but also split Greece into a host of independent states. The Greeks accomplishments informed the core of Western culture (Taylor 89). The strong Western literature adopted Greek poetry and drama (Stadler 38). Western art is littered with harmony, proportion, and beauties which were key attributes practiced by the Greeks.

Modern science in Greece was established as a rational technique of inquiry. Most political terms in western culture originated from the Greeks. The concept designs of rights and duties of the citizenry in the West followed practices in Athens. As Greek city states pursued their squabbles; they were conquered by a powerful kingdom called Macedonia. The Greek culture remained strong despite defeat by Macedonians. Non Greeks and Greeks established series of kingdoms which were named Hellenistic kingdoms. This period, referred to as Hellenistic era was vibrant as new cities arose and flourished (Hughes 180).

Accomplishments of Greeks in Mathematics

The Greeks had a mentality totally different from Egyptians and Babylonians. They revealed this in plans they had for application of mathematics. The application of arithmetic and algebra to computation of interest, taxes or commercial transactions and geometry to computation of volumes of granaries was as far from their minds as most distant stars (Heath 1). In many respects, the Greeks found mathematics valuable in many respects especially in the aid it rendered to study of nature; and of all phenomenon of nature, the heavenly bodies attracted them most. Astronomy was the key scientific interest for Greeks. However, they also studied, light, sound and body motions on earth (Taylor 89).

In probing nature, the Greeks sought no material gain and no power over nature. They merely wanted to satisfy their minds. Since they enjoyed reasoning and because nature availed the most imposing challenge to their understanding, the Greeks undertook the purely intellectual study of nature. In essence, the Greeks are the founders of science in the correct sense (Hughes 187). The conception of nature by Greeks was arbitrary and terrifying.

They believed that magic and rituals would propitiate mysterious and feared forces. This made them dare face nature without fear. The Greek endeavoured to prove that nature was rational and followed mathematical design. The Greek mind turned down traditional doctrines, dogma, superstitions, authority, and others (Hughes 188).

The Greeks were also interested in geometry. Pythagoras and other philosophers built up enormous logical structure embodied by Euclid in his elements. This geometry is still studied in high schools to date. Accomplishments in mathematics by Greeks had importance of supplying the first evidence of power of human reason to deduce new truth (Hughes 189).

Why Greek science become sterile after the 2nd century B.C

The immediate effect of Aristotle’s rejection of Platonist mathematics was one he certainly neither foresaw nor intended. It was to make a breach between philosophy and science. Mathematical science was still in the vigour of its first youth, whether Aristotle realized it or not (Livingstone 62). Mathematicians were stirred by the achievements of the last generation to attempt the solution of still higher problems. If the Lyceum turned away from them, they were prepared to carry on the academic tradition by themselves, and they succeeded for a time beyond all expectation (Livingstone 63).

The third century B.C. was the golden age of Greek mathematics, and it has been suggested that this was due to the emancipation of mathematics from philosophy. The great mathematicians of the third century were certainly carrying on the tradition of their predecessors who had been philosophers as well as mathematicians. It is plain fact is that Greek mathematicians became sterile in a comparatively short time, and that no further advance was made till the days of Descartes and Leibniz, with whom philosophy and mathematics once more went hand in hand (Livingstone 89).

The Technological Achievements of the Middle Ages

During the middle ages, scholastic philosophers advanced mathematical and physical thinking in numerous ways. However, the subjection of these thinkers to a strict theological framework and their unquestioning reliance on a few ancient authorities, especially Aristotle and Galen, limited where they can go. Medieval scientists preferred refined logical analysis to systemic observations of the natural world (Oesterhoff 64). Numerous changes and advances in the 15 th and 16 th centuries played a great role in assisting philosophers leave their old views and develop new ones (Spielvogel 484).

The middle ages (15 th and 16 th centuries) witnessed a proliferation of literature concentrating on machines and technology. All of these espoused the belief that innovation in techniques or methods was necessary. Relating technology to scientific revolution is not an easy task, for many technological experts did not did not believe in abstract or academic learning. Technological innovations of the middle ages and renaissance were accomplished outside the universities by individuals who emphasized practical rather than theoretical knowledge. Thus, the invention of new instruments and machines such as telescopes and microscopes made scientific discoveries possible (Spielvogel 485).

Mathematics was very fundamental to the scientific achievements of the middle ages. The status of mathematical discipline was enhanced in the renaissance through the influence of Plato and resuscitation of ancient mathematicians. They had emphasized importance of math in describing the universe. Mathematics was necessary in understanding the nature of things. Mathematics was also applied in military science, navigation and geography (Spielvogel 483).

Influence of the Church and of Antiquity

Christian teachings and traditions of the early church laid the foundation that prepared Europe for scientific revolution. However, there were also other factors. For instance, the role played by the middle ages which transmitted to modern age the belief in a rational, orderly cosmos as well as scholastic tradition of carefully logical reasoning. Modern early scientists benefited immensely from the work of medieval scholars who transmitted the natural philosophy of the Greeks, and from achievements of 14 th century scientists (Oesterhoff 64).

The decline of the Roman Empire saw emergence of Christianity across the Mediterranean world. The success of Christianity in Roman lands in the middle ages constituted a new phase in Western history. In ancient times, the locus of Roman civilization was the Mediterranean Sea. The pillar of medieval civilization shifted to the north, to regions of Europe that Roman civilization had barely penetrated (Westermann 156).

Common civilization evolved with Christianity at the centre during the early middle ages. Christianity acted as the integrating principle during this period, and the church was dominant institution. Medieval transmission of ancient science was characterized by a dominant attitude. In the middle Ages, the individual did not tech, rather it was the Church through the clergy. The corporate transmission of traditional wisdom was done through clerical science. Monastic teachers had the obligation to the service of God and centred on understanding of God’s word as recorded in sacred writings and interpreted by fathers (Westermann 157).

In sum, science and technology has resulted to the development of sophisticated instruments and procedures. Technology offered a stimulus for the development of science through: technical metaphors used in developing scientific theories; offering firsthand experience with technological objects, which encouraged the development of scientific thought and knowledge; and influencing experimental methods of science through the development of apparatus and instruments (Monsma 89).

Basically, science solely relied on technology through the centuries before emergence of new technology in the nineteenth century. Dependence of technological progress upon science has substantially risen during the course of industrialization (Monsma 90). The revolution of science in the 15 th and 16 th century emerged in the fields dominated by ideas of the Greeks; astronomy, mechanics and medicine (Spielvogel 484).

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• Ancient Indian and Roman Civilizations
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Inventions and Discoveries of Ancient Greek Scientists

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Ancient Greek scientists have many inventions and discoveries attributed to them, rightly or wrongly, especially in the areas of astronomy , geography, and mathematics.

The Greeks developed philosophy as a way of understanding the world around them, without resorting to religion, myth, or magic. Early Greek philosophers, some influenced by nearby Babylonians and Egyptians, were also scientists who observed and studied the known world—the Earth, seas, and mountains, as well as the solar system, planetary motion, and astral phenomena.

Astronomy, which began with the organization of the stars into constellations, was used for practical purposes to fix the calendar. The Greeks:

• Estimated the size of the Earth
• Figured out how a pulley and levers work
• Studied refracted and reflected light, as well as sound

In medicine, they:

• Looked at how the organs work
• Studied how a disease progresses
• Learned to make inferences from observations

Their contributions in the field of mathematics went beyond the practical purposes of their neighbors.

Many of the ancient Greeks' discoveries and inventions are still used today, although some of their ideas have been overturned. At least one—the discovery that the sun is the center of the solar system—was ignored and then rediscovered.

The earliest philosophers are little more than legend, but this is a list of inventions and discoveries attributed through the ages to these thinkers, not an examination of how factual such attributions may be.

Thales of Miletus (c. 620 - c. 546 BCE)

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Thales was a geometer, military engineer, astronomer, and logician. Probably influenced by Babylonians and Egyptians, Thales discovered the solstice and equinox  and is credited with predicting a battle-stopping eclipse thought to be on 8 May 585 B.C. (the Battle of Halys between Medes and Lydians). He invented abstract geometry , including the notion that a circle is bisected by its diameter and that the base angles of isosceles triangles are equal.

Anaximander of Miletus (c. 611- c. 547 BCE)

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The Greeks had a water clock or klepsydra, that kept track of short periods of time. Anaximander invented the gnomon on the sundial (although some say it came from the Babylonians), providing a way to keep track of time. He also created a map of the known world .

Pythagoras of Samos (Sixth Century BCE)

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Pythagoras realized that the land and sea are not static. Where now there's land, there once was sea and vice versa. Valleys are formed by running water and hills are eroded by water.

In music, he stretched the string to produce specific notes in octaves after having discovered the numerical relations between the notes of the scale.

In the field of astronomy, Pythagoras may have thought of the universe as rotating daily around an axis corresponding to the axis of the Earth. He may have thought of the sun, moon, planets, and even the earth as spheres. He is credited with being the first to realize the Morning Star and Evening Star were the same.

Presaging the heliocentric concept, a follower of Pythagoras, Philolaus, said the Earth revolved around the "central fire" of the universe.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (born about 499 BCE)

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Anaxagoras made important contributions to astronomy. He saw valleys, mountains, and plains on the moon. He determined the cause of an eclipse —the moon coming between the sun and Earth or the Earth between the sun and the moon depending on whether it's a lunar or solar eclipse. He recognized that the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Mercury move.

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460-377 BCE)

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Previously, illness had been thought to be a punishment from the gods. Medical practitioners were priests of the god Asclepius (Asculapius). Hippocrates studied the human body and discovered there were scientific reasons for ailments . He told physicians to watch especially when fever peaked. He made diagnoses and prescribed simple treatments like diet, hygiene, and sleep.

Eudoxus of Knidos (c. 390–c. 340 BCE)

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Eudoxus improved the sundial (called an Arachne or spider) and made a map of the known stars.  He also devised:

• A theory of proportion, which allowed for irrational numbers
• A concept of magnitude
• A method for finding areas and volumes of curvilinear objects

Eudoxus used deductive mathematics to explain astronomical phenomena, turning astronomy into a science. He developed a model in which the earth is a fixed sphere inside a larger sphere of the fixed stars, which rotate around the earth in circular orbits.

Democritus of Abdera (460-370 BCE)

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Democritus realized  the Milky Way was composed of millions of stars. He was the author of one of the earliest parapegmata tables of astronomical calculations . He is said to have written a geographical survey, as well. Democritus thought of the Earth as disk-shaped and slightly concave. It was also said that Democritus thought the sun was made of stone.

Aristotle (of Stagira) (384–322 BCE)

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Aristotle decided the Earth must be a globe. The concept of a sphere for the Earth appears in Plato's Phaedo , but Aristotle elaborates and estimates the size. 

Aristotle classified animals and is the father of zoology . He saw a chain of life running from the simple to more complex, from the plant through animals.

Theophrastus of Eresus - (c. 371–c. 287 BCE)

Theophrastus was the first botanist we know of. He described 500 different types of plants and divided them into trees herbs and shrubs.

Aristarchus of Samos (? 310-? 250 BCE)

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Aristarchus is thought to be the original author of the heliocentric hypothesis . He believed the sun was immovable, like the fixed stars. He knew that day and night were caused by the Earth turning around on its axis. There were no instruments to verify his hypothesis, and evidence of the senses—that the Earth is stable—testified to the contrary. Many did not believe him. Even a millennium and a half later, Copernicus was afraid to reveal his heliocentric vision until he was dying. One person who did follow Aristarchus was the Babylonian Seleucos (fl. mid 2nd century BCE).

Euclid of Alexandria (c. 325-265 BCE)

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Euclid thought that light travels in straight lines or rays . He wrote a textbook on algebra, number theory, and geometry that is still relevant.

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287-c. 212 BCE)

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Archimedes discovered the usefulness of the fulcrum and lever . He began the measurement of the specific gravity of objects. He is credited with having invented what is called the screw of Archimedes for pumping up water, as well as an engine to throw heavy stones at the enemy. A work attributed to Archimedes called The Sand-Reckoner , which Copernicus probably knew, contains a passage discussing Aristarchus' heliocentric theory.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276-194 BCE)

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Eratosthenes made a map of the world, described countries of Europe, Asia, and Libya, ​created the first parallel of latitude, and measured the circumference of the earth .

Hipparchus of Nicaea or Bithynia (c.190-c.120 BCE)

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Hipparchus produced a table of chords, an early trigonometric table, which leads some to call him the inventor of trigonometry . He cataloged 850 stars and accurately calculated when eclipses, both lunar and solar, would occur. Hipparchus is credited with inventing the astrolabe . He discovered the Precession of the Equinoxes and calculated its 25,771-year cycle.

Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria (c. 90-168 CE)

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Ptolemy founded the Ptolemaic System of geocentric astronomy, which held for 1,400 years. Ptolemy wrote the Almagest , a work on astronomy that provides us with information on the work of earlier Greek astronomers. He drew maps with latitude and longitude and developed the science of optics . It is possible to overstate the influence of Ptolemy during much of the next millennium because he wrote in Greek, while western scholars knew Latin.

Galen of Pergamum (born c. 129 CE)

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Galen (Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus) discovered nerves of sensation and motion and worked out a theory of medicine that doctors used for hundreds of years, based on Latin authors like Oribasius' inclusion of translations of Galen's Greek in their own treatises.

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Ancient Greek Inventions

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The ancient Greeks are often credited with building the foundations upon which all western cultures are built, and this impressive accolade stems from their innovative contributions to a wide range of human activities, from sports to medicine , architecture to democracy.

Like any other culture before or since, the Greeks learnt from the past, adapted good ideas they came across when they met other cultures, and developed their own brand new ideas. Here are just some of the ways ancient Greeks inventions have uniquely contributed to world culture, many of which are still going strong today:

• Human Sculpture
• Jury System
• Mechanical Devices
• Mathematical Reasoning

Olympic Games

Columns & Stadiums

Just about any city in the western world today has examples of Greek architecture on its streets, especially in its biggest and most important public buildings. Perhaps the most common features invented by the Greeks still around today are the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns which hold up roofs and adorn facades in theatres, courthouses, and government buildings across the globe. The Greeks used these architectural orders primarily for their temples, many of which are still standing today despite earthquake , fire, and cannon shots - the Parthenon , completed in 432 BCE, is the biggest and most famous example. The collonaded stoa to protect walkers from the elements, the gymnasium with baths and training fields, the semi-circular theatre with rising rows of seats, and the banked rectangular stadium for sports, are just some of the features of Greek architecture that any modern city would seem strange indeed without.

HUman Sculpture in Art

Greek innovations in art are perhaps seen most clearly in figure sculpture. Previous and contemporary ancient cultures had represented the human figure in a simple standing and rather static pose so that the people represented often looked as lifeless as the stone from which they were carved. Greek sculptors, though, inched towards a more dynamic result. In the Archaic period the stance becomes a little more relaxed, the elbows a little more bent and both tension and movement are thus suggested. By the Classical period statues have broken away from all convention and become sensuous, writhing figures that seem about to jump off the plinth. Greek sculpture and art, in general, began a preoccupation with proportion, poise, and the idealised perfection of the human body that was continued by the Romans and would go on to influence Renaissance art and many sculptors thereafter.

Democracy & Jury System in Law

One of the big ideas of the Greeks was that ordinary citizens should have an equal say in not just who governed them but also how they governed. Even more importantly, that input was to be direct and in person. Consequently, in some Greek city-states, 5th-4th-century BCE Athens being the most famous example, citizens (defined then as free males over 18) could actively participate in government by attending the public assembly to speak, listen, and vote on issues of the day. The Athenian assembly had a physical capacity of 6,000 people, and one can imagine that on many days only the most enthusiastic of the demos (people) would have turned up but when the big issues were on the table the place was packed. A simple majority vote won the day and was calculated by a show of hands.

On top of this already startling idea of direct democracy, all citizens could, and indeed were expected to, participate in government by serving as magistrates, jurors, and any official post they were capable of holding. Further, anyone seen to abuse their public position, which was usually only for a temporary term anyway, could be kicked out of the city in the secret vote known as ostracism .

Part and parcel of the democratic apparatus was the jury system - the idea that those accused of crimes were judged by their peers. Nowadays a jury system usually consists of twelve people but in ancient Athens, it was the entire assembly and each member was picked at random using a machine known as the kleroterion . This device randomly dispensed tokens and if you got a black one then you had to do jury service that day. The system made sure that nobody knew who would be the jurors that day and so could not bribe anyone to influence their decision. In a carefully considered system that thought of everything, jurors were even compensated their expenses.

Engineering & Mechanical devices

The Romans might have grabbed all the accolades for best ancient engineers but the Greeks did have their own mechanical devices which allowed them to move massive chunks of marble using the block and tackle, winch, and crane for their huge temples and city walls. They created tunnels in mountains such as the one-kilometre tunnel in Samos , built in the 6th century BCE. Aqueducts was another area the Greeks were not lacking in imagination and design, and so they shifted water to where it was most needed; watermills, too, were used to harness nature's power.

Perhaps the area of greatest innovation, though, was in the small-scale production of mechanical devices. The legendary figure of Daedalus , architect of King Minos' labyrinth , was credited with creating life-like automata and all manner of mechanical wonders. Daedalus may never have existed, but the legends around him indicate a Greek love of all-things magically mechanical. Handy Greek devices included the portable sundial of Parmenion made from rings (c. 400-330 BCE), the water alarm clock credited to Plato (c. 428- c. 424 BCE) which used water dropping through various clay vessels which eventually caused air pressure to sound off a whistle-hole, Timosthenes' 3rd-century BCE anemoscope to measure the wind direction, and the 3rd-century BCE hydraulic organ of Ktesibios. Then there was the odometer which measured land distances using a wheel and cogs, the suspended battering ram to provide more punch when breaking down enemy gates, and the flamethrower with a bellows at one end and a cauldron of flammable liquid at the other which the Boeotians used to such good effect in the Peloponnesian War .

Mathematical Reasoning & Geometry

Other cultures had shown a keen interest in mathematics but perhaps the Greeks' unique contribution to the field was the effort to apply the subject to practical and everyday problems. Indeed, for the Greeks, the subject of maths was inseparable from philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and science in general. The great achievement in the field was the emphasis on deductive reasoning, that is forming a logically certain conclusion based on the reasoning of a chain of statements. Thales of Miletus , for example, crunched his numbers to accurately predict the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BCE, and he is credited with calculating the height of the pyramids based on the length of their shadow. Undoubtedly, the most famous Greek mathematician is Pythagoras (c. 571- c. 497 BCE) with his geometric theorem which still carries his name - that in a right triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the short sides added together.

The early Greeks considered illness a divine punishment, but from the 5th century BCE a more scientific approach was taken, and both diagnosis and cure became a lot more useful to the patient. Symptoms and cures were carefully observed, tested, and recorded. Diet, lifestyle, and constitution were all recognised as contributing factors to disease. Treatises were written, most famously by the 5th-4th-century BCE founder of western medicine Hippocrates . A better understanding of the human body was achieved. Observation of badly wounded soldiers showed, for example, the differences between arteries and veins, although dissection of humans would only come in Hellenistic times. Medicines were perfected using herbs; celery was known to have anti-inflammatory properties, egg-white was good for sealing wounds, while opium could provide pain relief or work as an anaesthetic. While it is true that surgery was avoided and there were still many wacky explanations floating about, not to mention a still strong connection to religion , Greek doctors had begun the long road of medical enquiry which is still being pursued to this day.

Sporting competitions had already been seen in the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations of the Bronze Age Aegean , but it was in Archaic Greece that a sporting event would be born which became so popular and so important that it was even used as a reference for the calendar. The first Olympic Games were held in mid-July in 776 BCE at Olympia in honour of the Greek god Zeus . Every four years, thereafter, athletes and spectators gathered from across the Greek world to perform great sporting deeds and win favour with the gods. The last ancient Olympics would be in 393 CE, after an incredible run of 293 consecutive Olympiads.

There was a widely respected truce in all conflicts to allow participants and spectators to travel in safety to Olympia. At first, there was only one event, the stadion - a foot race of one circuit of the stadium (about 192 m) in which some 45,000 all-male spectators gathered to cheer on their favourite. The event got bigger and bigger over the years with longer footraces added to the repertoire and new events held such as the discus, boxing, pentathlon, wrestling, chariot racing, and even competitions for trumpeters and heralds.

Specially trained judges supervised the events and dished out fines to anyone breaking the rules. The winners received a crown of olive leaves, instant glory, perhaps some cash put up by their hometown, and even immortality, especially for the winners of the stadion whose name was given to that particular games. The Olympic Games were revived in 1896 CE and, of course, are still going strong, even if they have another thousand years to go to match the longevity of their ancient version.

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The great Greek thinkers attacked all of the questions that have ever puzzled humanity. Figures such as Socrates , Plato, and Aristotle in the 5th and 4th century BCE endlessly questioned and debated where we come from, how we have developed, where we are going to, and should we even be bothering to think about it all in the first place. The Greeks had a branch of philosophy to suit all tastes from the grin-and-bear-it Stoics to the live for the minute, live simply and live happily Epicureans. In the 6th century BCE, Anaximander provides the first surviving textual reference of western philosophy and he considered that “the boundless” was responsible for the elements - so we have still not made very much progress since that statement.

Collectively, all of these thinkers illustrate one common factor: the Greek's desire to answer all questions no matter their difficulty. Neither were Greek philosophers limited to theoretical answers as many were also physicists, biologists, astronomers, and mathematicians. Perhaps the Greek approach and contribution to philosophy, in general, is best summarised by Parmenides and his belief that as the senses cannot be trusted, we must apply our minds to cut through the haze of superstition and myth and use whatever tools at our disposal to find the answers we are looking for. We may not have found many more solutions since the Greek thinkers provided theirs but their unbounded spirit of enquiry is perhaps their greatest and most lasting contribution to western thought.

Science & Astronomy

As in the field of philosophy, Greek scientists were keen to find solutions which explained the world around them. All manner of theories were proposed, tested and debated, even rejected by many. That the earth was a globe, that the world revolved around the sun and not vice versa, that the Milky Way was composed of stars, that humanity had evolved from other animals were just some of the ideas the Greek thinkers floated around for contemplation. Archimedes (287-212 BCE) in his bath discovered displacement and cried “Eureka!”, Aristotle (384-322 BCE) developed logic and classified the natural world, and Eratosthenes (276-195 BCE) calculated the circumference of the globe from the shadows cast by objects at two different latitudes. Once again, though, it was not the individual discoveries that were important, it was the general belief that all things can be explained by deductive reasoning and the careful examination of available evidence.

It was the ancient Athenians who invented theatre performance in the 6th century BCE. Perhaps originating from either the recital of epic poems set to music or rituals involving music, dance and masks to honour the god of wine Dionysos , Greek tragedies were first performed at religious festivals, and from these came the spin-off genre of Greek comedy plays. Performed by professional actors in purpose-built open-air theatres, Greek plays were popular and free. Not only a fleeting pastime performance, many of the classic plays were studied as a staple part of the education curriculum.

In the tragedies, people were engrossed in the twists presented on familiar tales from Greek mythology and the no-win situations for the heroic but doomed characters. The cast might have been very limited but the chorus group added some musical oomph to the proceedings. When comedy came along, there was fun in seeing familiar politicians, philosophers, and foreigners lampooned, and playwrights became ever more ambitious in their presentations, with all-singing, all-dancing chorus lines, outlandish costumes, and special effects such as actors dangling from hidden wires above the beautifully crafted sets. As in many other fields, the entertainment industry of today owes a great debt to the ancient Greeks.

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Bibliography

• Bagnall, R.S. The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012
• Boyes-Stones, G. The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies. Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Hornblower, S. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Kinzl, H. A Companion to the Classical Greek World. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
• Kotsanas, K. The Inventions of the Ancient Greeks. Kostas Kotsanas, 2017.
• Oleson, J.P. The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. Oxford University Press, 2009.

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The birth of natural philosophy

Aristotle and archimedes.

• Science in Rome and Christianity
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There seems to be no good reason why the Hellenes, clustered in isolated city-states in a relatively poor and backward land, should have struck out into intellectual regions that were only dimly perceived, if at all, by the splendid civilizations of the Yangtze, Tigris and Euphrates, and Nile valleys. There were many differences between ancient Greece and the other civilizations, but perhaps the most significant was religion. What is striking about Greek religion , in contrast to the religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt, is its puerility. Both of the great river civilizations evolved complex theologies that served to answer most, if not all, of the large questions about humankind’s place and destiny. Greek religion did not. It was, in fact, little more than a collection of folk tales, more appropriate to the campfire than to the temple. Perhaps this was the result of the collapse of an earlier Greek civilization, the Mycenaean , toward the end of the 2nd millennium bce , when the Dark Age descended upon Greece and lasted for three centuries. All that was preserved were stories of gods and men, passed along by poets, that dimly reflected Mycenaean values and events. Such were the great poems of Homer , the Iliad and the Odyssey , in which heroes and gods mingled freely with one another. Indeed, they mingled too freely, for the gods appear in these tales as little more than immortal adolescents whose tricks and feats, when compared with the concerns of a Marduk or Jehovah, are infantile. There really was no Greek theology in the sense that theology provides a coherent and profound explanation of the workings of both the cosmos and the human heart. Hence, there were no easy answers to inquiring Greek minds. The result was that ample room was left for a more penetrating and ultimately more satisfying mode of inquiry. Thus were philosophy and its oldest offspring, science, born.

The first natural philosopher, according to Hellenic tradition, was Thales of Miletus , who flourished in the 6th century bce . We know of him only through later accounts, for nothing he wrote has survived. He is supposed to have predicted a solar eclipse in 585 bce and to have invented the formal study of geometry in his demonstration of the bisecting of a circle by its diameter . Most importantly, he tried to explain all observed natural phenomena in terms of the changes of a single substance, water, which can be seen to exist in solid, liquid, and gaseous states. What for Thales guaranteed the regularity and rationality of the world was the innate divinity in all things that directed them to their divinely appointed ends. From these ideas there emerged two characteristics of classical Greek science. The first was the view of the universe as an ordered structure (the Greek kósmos means “order”). The second was the conviction that this order was not that of a mechanical contrivance but that of an organism: all parts of the universe had purposes in the overall scheme of things, and objects moved naturally toward the ends they were fated to serve. This motion toward ends is called teleology and, with but few exceptions, it permeated Greek as well as much later science.

Thales inadvertently made one other fundamental contribution to the development of natural science. By naming a specific substance as the basic element of all matter , Thales opened himself to criticism , which was not long in coming. His own disciple , Anaximander , was quick to argue that water could not be the basic substance. His argument was simple: water, if it is anything, is essentially wet; nothing can be its own contradiction. Hence, if Thales were correct, the opposite of wet could not exist in a substance, and that would preclude all of the dry things that are observed in the world. Therefore, Thales was wrong. Here was the birth of the critical tradition that is fundamental to the advance of science.

Thales’ conjectures set off an intellectual explosion, most of which was devoted to increasingly refined criticisms of his doctrine of fundamental matter. Various single substances were proposed and then rejected, ultimately in favour of a multiplicity of elements that could account for such opposite qualities as wet and dry, hot and cold. Two centuries after Thales, most natural philosophers accepted a doctrine of four elements: earth (cold and dry), fire (hot and dry), water (cold and wet), and air (hot and wet). All bodies were made from these four.

The presence of the elements only guaranteed the presence of their qualities in various proportions. What was not accounted for was the form these elements took, which served to differentiate natural objects from one another. The problem of form was first attacked systematically by the philosopher and cult leader Pythagoras in the 6th century bce . Legend has it that Pythagoras became convinced of the primacy of number when he realized that the musical notes produced by a monochord were in simple ratio to the length of the string. Qualities (tones) were reduced to quantities (numbers in integral ratios). Thus was born mathematical physics , for this discovery provided the essential bridge between the world of physical experience and that of numerical relationships. Number provided the answer to the question of the origin of forms and qualities.

Hellenic science was built upon the foundations laid by Thales and Pythagoras. It reached its zenith in the works of Aristotle and Archimedes. Aristotle represents the first tradition, that of qualitative forms and teleology. He was himself a biologist whose observations of marine organisms were unsurpassed until the 19th century. Biology is essentially teleological—the parts of a living organism are understood in terms of what they do in and for the organism—and Aristotle’s biological works provided the framework for the science until the time of Charles Darwin . In physics , teleology is not so obvious, and Aristotle had to impose it on the cosmos. From Plato , his teacher, he inherited the theological proposition that the heavenly bodies (stars and planets) are literally divine and, as such, perfect. They could, therefore, move only in perfect, eternal, unchanging motion, which, by Plato’s definition, meant perfect circles. The Earth, being obviously not divine, and inert, was at the centre. From the Earth to the sphere of the Moon, all things constantly changed, generating new forms and then decaying back into formlessness. Above the Moon the cosmos consisted of contiguous and concentric crystalline spheres moving on axes set at angles to one another (this accounted for the peculiar motions of the planets) and deriving their motion either from a fifth element that moved naturally in circles or from heavenly souls resident in the celestial bodies . The ultimate cause of all motion was a prime , or unmoved, mover (God) that stood outside the cosmos.

Aristotle was able to make a great deal of sense of observed nature by asking of any object or process: what is the material involved, what is its form and how did it get that form, and, most important of all, what is its purpose? What should be noted is that, for Aristotle, all activity that occurred spontaneously was natural. Hence, the proper means of investigation was observation. Experiment , that is, altering natural conditions in order to throw light on the hidden properties and activities of objects, was unnatural and could not, therefore, be expected to reveal the essence of things. Experiment was thus not essential to Greek science.

The problem of purpose did not arise in the areas in which Archimedes made his most important contributions. He was, first of all, a brilliant mathematician whose work on conic sections and on the area of the circle prepared the way for the later invention of the calculus. It was in mathematical physics, however, that he made his greatest contributions to science. His mathematical demonstration of the law of the lever was as exact as a Euclidean proof in geometry. Similarly, his work on hydrostatics introduced and developed the method whereby physical characteristics, in this case specific gravity , which Archimedes discovered, are given mathematical shape and then manipulated by mathematical methods to yield mathematical conclusions that can be translated back into physical terms.

In one major area the Aristotelian and the Archimedean approaches were forced into a rather inconvenient marriage. Astronomy was the dominant physical science throughout antiquity, but it had never been successfully reduced to a coherent system. The Platonic-Aristotelian astral religion required that planetary orbits be circles. But, particularly after the conquests of Alexander the Great had made the observations and mathematical methods of the Babylonians available to the Greeks, astronomers found it impossible to reconcile theory and observation. Astronomy then split into two parts: one was physical and accepted Aristotelian theory in accounting for heavenly motion, and the other ignored causation and concentrated solely on the creation of a mathematical model that could be used for computing planetary positions. Ptolemy , in the 2nd century ce , carried the latter tradition to its highest point in antiquity in his Hē mathēmatikē syntaxis (“The Mathematical Collection,” better known under its Greek-Arabic title, Almagest ).

The Greeks not only made substantial progress in understanding the cosmos but also went far beyond their predecessors in their knowledge of the human body . Pre-Greek medicine had been almost entirely confined to religion and ritual. Disease was considered the result of divine disfavour and human sin, to be dealt with by spells, prayers, and other propitiatory measures. In the 5th century bce a revolutionary change came about that is associated with the name of Hippocrates . It was Hippocrates and his school who, influenced by the rise of natural philosophy, first insisted that disease was a natural, not a supernatural , phenomenon. Even maladies as striking as epilepsy, whose seizures appeared to be divinely caused, were held to originate in natural causes within the body.

The height of medical science in antiquity was reached late in the Hellenistic period. Much work was done at the museum of Alexandria, a research institute set up under Greek influence in Egypt in the 3rd century bce to sponsor learning in general. The heart and the vascular system were investigated, as were the nerves and the brain. The organs of the thoracic cavity were described, and attempts were made to discover their functions. It was on these researches, and on his own dissections of apes and pigs, that the last great physician of antiquity, Galen of Pergamum , based his physiology . It was, essentially, a tripartite system in which so-called spirits—natural, vital, and animal—passed respectively through the veins, the arteries, and the nerves to vitalize the body as a whole. Galen’s attempts to correlate therapeutics with his physiology were not successful, and so medical practice remained eclectic and a matter of the physician’s choice. Usually the optimal choice was that propounded by the Hippocratics, who relied primarily on simple, clean living and the ability of the body to heal itself.

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Collection Finding Our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond

Ancient greek astronomy and cosmology.

As the stars move across the sky each night people of the world have looked up and wondered about their place in the universe. Throughout history civilizations have developed unique systems for ordering and understanding the heavens. Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers developed systems that became the basis for Greek astronomy, while societies in the Americas, China and India developed their own.

Ancient Greek astronomers' work is richly documented in the collections of the Library of Congress largely because of the way the Greek tradition of inquiry was continued by the work of Islamic astronomers and then into early modern European astronomy. This section offers a tour of some of the astronomical ideas and models from ancient Greece as illustrated in items from the Library of Congress collections.

The Sphere of the World

By the 5th century B.C., it was widely accepted that the Earth is a sphere. This is a critical point, as there is a widespread misconception that ancient peoples thought the Earth was flat. This was simply not the case.

In the 5th century B.C., Empedocles and Anaxagoras offered arguments for the spherical nature of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, they identified the shadow of the Earth on the moon. As the shadow moves across the moon it is clearly round. This would suggest that the Earth is a sphere.

Experiencing the Sphere of the Earth

Given that opportunities for observations of a lunar eclipse do not come along that often, there was also evidence of the roundness of the earth in the experiences of sailors.

When a ship appears on the horizon it's the top of the ship that is visible first. A wide range of astronomy texts over time use this as a way to illustrate the roundness of the Earth. As the image suggests this is exactly what one would expect on a spherical Earth. If the Earth were flat, it would be expected that you would be able to see the entire ship as soon as it became visible.

Measuring the Size of the Earth

Lunar eclipses also allowed for another key understanding about our home here on Earth. In 3rd Century B.C., Aristarchus of Samos reasoned he could figure out the size of the Earth based on information available during a lunar eclipse. The diagram at the right illustrates a translation of his work. The large circle is the sun, the medium circle is the Earth and the smallest circle is the moon. When the Earth is in-between the sun and the moon it causes a lunar eclipse and measuring the size of the Earth's shadow on the moon provided part of the information he needed to calculate its size.

Eratosthenes estimated Earth's circumference around 240 B.C. He used a different approach, measuring the shadows cast in Alexandria and Syene to calculate their angle relative to the Sun. There is some dispute on the accuracy of his calculations as we don't know exactly how long the units of measure were. The measurement however was relatively close to the actual size of the Earth. The Greeks were applying mathematics to theorize about the nature of their world. They held a range of beliefs about nature and the world but they were, in many cases, working to ground those beliefs in an empirical exploration of what they could reason from evidence.

Aristotle's Elements and Cosmology

In the tradition of Plato and Empedocles before him, Aristotle argued that there were four fundamental elements, fire, air, water and earth. It is difficult for us to fully understand what this meant as today we think about matter in very different terms. In Aristotle's system there was no such thing as void space. All space was filled with some combination of these elements.

Aristotle asserted that you could further reduce these elements into two pairs of qualities, hot and cold and wet and dry. The combination of each of these qualities resulted in the elements. These qualities can be replaced by their opposites, which in this system become how change happens on Earth. For example, when heated, water seemingly turns steam which looks like air.

The Elements in Aristotle's Cosmic Model

In Aristotle's Cosmology, each of these four elements (earth, water, fire and air) had a weight. Earth was the heaviest, water less so, and air and fire the lightest. According to Aristotle the lighter substances moved away from the center of the universe and the heaver elements settled into the center. While these elements attempted to sort themselves out, to achieve this order, most of experience involved mixed entities.

While we have seen earth, fire, air and water, everything else in the world in this system was understood as a mixture of these elements. In this perspective, transition and change in our world resulted from the mixing of the elements. For Aristotle the terrestrial is a place of birth and death, based in these elements. The heavens are a separate realm governed by their own rules.

The Wandering and Fixed Stars in the Celestial Region

In contrast to the terrestrial, the celestial region of the heavens had a fundamentally different nature. Looking at the night sky the ancient Greeks found two primary kinds of celestial objects; the fixed stars and the wandering stars. Think of the night's sky. Most of the visible objects appear to move at exactly the same speed and present themselves in exactly the same arrangement night after night. These are the fixed stars. They appear to move all together. Aside from these were a set of nine objects that behaved differently, the moon, the sun and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter each moved according to a different system. For the Greeks these were the wandering stars.

In this system the entire universe was part of a great sphere. This sphere was split into two sections, an outer celestial realm and an inner terrestrial one. The dividing line between the two was the orbit of the moon. While the earth was a place of transition and flux, the heavens were unchanging. Aristotle posited that there was a fifth substance, the quintessence, that was what the heavens were made of, and that the heavens were a place of perfect spherical motion.

The Unchanging Celestial Region

In Aristotle's words, "In the whole range of time past, so far as our inherited records reach, no change appears to have taken place either in the whole scheme of the outermost heaven or in any of its proper parts." It's important to keep in mind that in Aristotle's time there simply were not extensive collections of observational evidence. Things that looked like they were moving in the heavens, like comets, were not problematic in this model because they could be explained as occurring in the terrestrial realm.

This model of the heavens came with an underlying explanation. The celestial spheres were governed by a set of movers responsible for the motion of the wandering stars. Each of these wandering stars was thought to have an "unmoved mover" the entity that makes it move through the heavens. For many of the Greeks this mover could be understood as the god corresponding to any given entity in the heavens.

Ptolemy's Circles on Circles

Claudius Ptolemy (90-168) created a wealth of astronomical knowledge from his home in Alexandria, Egypt. Benefiting from hundreds of years of observation from the time of Hipparchus and Eudoxus, as well as a set of astronomical data collected by the Babylonians, Ptolemy developed a system for predicting the motion of the stars that was published in his primary astronomical work, Almagest . Ptolemy's success at synthesizing and refining ideas and improvements in astronomy helped make his Almagest so popular that earlier works fell out of circulation. Translated into Arabic and Latin the Almagest became the primary astronomy text for the next thousand years.

Ptolomaic Data

The Almagest is filled with tables. In this sense the book is a tool one can use to predict the locations of the stars Compared to earlier astronomy the book is much more focused on serving as a useful tool than as presenting a system for describing the nature of the heavens. Trying to accurately predict the place of the stars over time resulted in creating a much more complicated model.

The Ptolemaic Model

By the time of Ptolemy Greek astronomers had proposed adding circles on the circular orbits of the wandering stars (the planets, the moon and the sun) to explain their motion. These circles on circles are called epicycles. In the Greek tradition, the heavens were a place of perfect circular motion, so the way to account for perfection was with the addition of circles. This resulted in disorienting illustrations.

To escape the complicated nature of this extensive number of circles, Ptolomy added a series of new concepts. To accurately describe planetary motion, he needed to use eccentric circles. With the eccentric circle the center of the planets orbit would not be Earth but would instead be some other point. Ptolemy then needed to put the epicycles on another set of circles called deferents. So the planets moved on circles that moved on circular orbits. Ptolomy also needed to introduce equants, a tool that enabled the planets to move at different speeds as they moved around these circles. The resulting model was complex, but it had extensive predictive power.

Ptolemy and Aristotle's Cosmic Legacy

Ptolemy came to represent a mathematical tradition, one focused on developing mathematical models with predictive power. Aristotle came to be known for putting forward the physical model of the heavens. Ptolemy was also interested in deploying his model of the heavens to describe its physical reality. However, his most important work was the mathematical models and data he used for predicting the motion of heavenly bodies. For a long time his name was synonymous with the model of the heavens.

Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture

William wians , merrimack college. [email protected].

The excellent collection of essays edited by Tuplin and Rihll (hereafter TR) reflects two major changes that the history of ancient science has experienced in the last thirty years. First is the great broadening of materials considered relevant to the field. Whereas in the not so distant past scholarship would concentrate on a few great works by a few great men, the modern historian of ancient science takes advantage of a much wider range of sources, including, for instance, materials documenting connections between magic and medicine or astrology and astronomy. The second major development has been an increased attention paid to the broader social context out of which scientific practices emerged. Economic and political forces have come to be recognized as important determinants of scientific activities, as have the close connections between practical achievements and theoretical innovation.

Both developments are central to the aims and achievements of TR’s anthology. Its sixteen papers (and a substantial introduction) arise from a 1996 conference in Liverpool that sought to bring together scholars working in diverse areas of ancient science, including mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, chemistry, medicine, and technology. The aim was not just for participating scholars to share their findings with one another but to demonstrate the relevance and value of historical studies of ancient science to what the editors term “mainstream” classicists and ancient historians. On the whole, the papers succeed in doing this by emphasizing precisely the two trends that have transformed the field. Because so many different and complex papers cannot be adequately treated in a limited review, I shall highlight what seem to me the contributions of greatest interest to the readers for whom the collection is intended.

Several essays offer new insights by crossing old, restrictive borders. Andrew Barker’s “Words for Sounds” succeeds brilliantly in showing how scientific terminology in Greek acoustic theory never fully loses metaphorical connotations that go back to Homer. As early as the first efforts to treat sound scientifically in Archytas and Aristotle, and as late as Ptolemy, key acoustic terms surrounding concepts of such as those of pitch ( ὀξύς ) always carried connotations of what is perceived as physically piercing.

In a practical-pedagogical vein, J. L. Berggren shows how an instructor may go beyond the usual reliance on texts and use “Ptolemy’s Maps as an Introduction to Ancient Science.” Beginning with maps drawn according to Ptolemy’s directions, Berggren shows how details that might appear to be of marginal importance can in fact reveal the Greek geometrical model of the cosmos and be used to measure the earth’s circumference and to determine locations of cities by their maximum length of daylight. This approach offers fresh insights into how ancient Greeks viewed the world and their place in it.

Liba Taub’s “Instruments of Alexandrian Astronomy” shows what can be gained when ancient astrological interests are taken into account by historians of astronomy. Taub attacks the mystery surrounding the Alexandrian equinoctial rings, instruments mentioned dismissively by Ptolemy, and not well understood by modern historians. She locates their function in astrological predictions used in areas of daily life ranging from weather forecasting and agriculture to medicine, throwing welcome light on neglected aspects of Alexandrian astronomical interests and practices. A similar practical grounding is found by R. Hannah for “Euctemon’s Parapegma,”an early solar calendar in use in Athens. After finding its origins in the official need to regulate Athenian religious festivals, he goes on to suggest that non-scientific needs and interests may lie behind early Greek astronomy generally.

In another major paper dealing with astronomy, Alan Bowen asks when Graeco-Latin astronomy became predictive in its intent as opposed to the explanatory emphasis of its earlier history, taking as his focus the predicting of solar and lunar eclipses. Bowen finds the motivation for the shift to prediction not in any technical scientific or mathematical problem but in a literary trope progressively elaborated by a series of Roman authors, none of whom was an astronomer.

Editor Rihll and J. V. Tucker deliver a bravura survey of ancient technical knowledge in “Practice Makes Perfect: Knowledge of Materials in Classical Athens.” Concentrating on the vast silver industry at Laurium in Attica, the authors identify a body of complex practical knowledge that was formed and maintained in almost complete isolation from theory. After exploring the technical, economic, and social dimensions of the mines, they conclude with a careful seven point comparison between practical knowledge on the one hand and theoretical knowledge on the other. The paper offers illuminating insights to practitioners in many areas of ancient studies.

Other worthwhile papers must receive more limited mention. Serafina Cuomo begins with a neat logical analysis of the argument of Hero of Alexandria’s Belopoeica (War Machines) in “The Machine and the City,” before linking this neglected work to the very practical concerns of a city’s survival in the period of Roman expansion, expressed rhetorically in terms of the Hellenistic philosopher’s pursuit of ataraxia . Reviel Netz imagines the faces that might be included in “Greek Mathematics: A Group Portrait.” Combining careful combing of sources with a good deal of plausible speculation, Netz finds an exceedingly small group of amateurish autodidacts working in a tenuous network extending over the centuries. In doing so, he provides a model for considering the place of the intellectual in a world of limited literacy and higher learning. J. R. Milton considers “The Limitations of Ancient Atomism.” He attributes the theory’s limited appeal in the ancient world in part to the status of Epicureanism as an almost secular religion, which one joined as one would join a sect, and in part to the limitations imposed by a rigid distinction between the full and the empty. As for its equivocal reception in modern science, the major factor is found in a contrast between the aims of ancient vs. modern atomism: ancient atomists, as part of their opposition to the Stoics, resisted reducing nature to a machine as an artifact of a creator, while their modern counterparts (Boyle and Newton, for instance) sought precisely to provide testimony for the existence of a creative deity which worked through a mechanized nature. Vivian Nutton devotes his essay to a survey of the revival of interest in ancient medicine in recent decades. He asks in particular why so many once standard assumptions about the field have been discarded, and answers by tracing a broadening of the subject that has made post-Hippocratic physicians, and Galen in particular, emerge into new importance. In “Galen on the Seat of the Intellect,” Tuen Tieleman considers the theoretical aspects behind Galen’s experiments to locate the bodily organ in which the soul was located. While using the philosophical tradition in at times innovative ways, Galen was also a captive of the tradition, ending up as a kind of empirical Platonist. Rihll’s excellent introduction, “Ancient Science in Context,” should also be mentioned. It is a concise overview of how Greek scientific accomplishments have come to be “not only admired, but also studied, analysed, criticized, and contextualized” (p. 21). One is reminded of her very fine Greek Science (Oxford, 1999), which is perhaps the most accessible up-to-date survey of the field available.

Other papers, while reflecting the aims of the collection, seem likely to have more limited appeal. Harry Hine surveys a wide variety of sources to determine whether a coherent scientific interest in seismology and vulcanology can be detected — poetry, history, letters, philosophical and scientific works are all considered. While Hine does show clearly the extent to which ancient philosopher-scientists relied on popular reports for their data, he resists giving a definite conclusion to his main question. J. J. Coulton describes Hero of Alexandria’s dioptra as a rather impractical surveying instrument inspired more by theoretical issues in mathematics than by practical surveying. C. Anne Wilson traces a knowledge of chemical techniques useful for “Distilling, Sublimation, and the Four Elements” to Pythagorean cultic practices.

A few papers are more narrowly, which is to say traditionally, focused, despite the aims of the conference and the volume. E. Hussey’s treatment of “Aristotle and Mathematics” is not without interest — Hussey argues that Aristotle is at once philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, and surveys Aristotelian ideas of applied mathematics in the area of force and motion along with more theoretical questions of demonstration and scientific principles. A ‘mainstream’ classicist curious about these topics will find Hussey clear and comprehensive. But he or she will not find much that reflects the new trends in history of ancient science that provide the focus for other articles in the collection. Similarly, C.M. Taisbak, in “Euclid’s Elements 9.14 and the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic,” speculates as to why neither Euclid nor any other Greek mathematician attempted to formulate let alone prove the theorem that every number is either prime or a product of primes in one way only, limiting his explanation to factors internal to Greek mathematics.

The collection is made more useful by several features. Footnotes give full bibliographic citations, sparing the reader the need to flip back and forth from an article to the end of the book. But all citations are also gathered in a comprehensive bibliography at the end as well. An index locorum and an extensive general index further add to the usefulness of the volume. In short, a collection with much to offer to a variety of readers.

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Ancient Greek Technology: The History and Legacy of the Technological Advances Made in Greece during Antiquity By Charles River Editors

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M. Meyer - G. Adornato (eds.), Innovations and Inventions in Athens c. 530 to 470 BCE – Two Crucial Generations (Vienna) 2020) 7-22

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This work is an attempt to transfer into written form short lectures normally given in places of historical interest – churches, museums, archaeological sites – or, in the open, where important events took place in the past. It is the result of requests from interested and curious listeners to these talks to be able to take away with them a written record of what was said so as to have the chance of looking at it again later, when they had returned home and been able to think over the experiences gained from the trip, in conjunction with photographs taken. The immediacy of a spoken account on the site of a monument, or in a historically significant place with a beautiful view, cannot of course be translated faithfully onto paper or the computer screen. But the writer hopes that such losses are balanced by the additional information and views which the spoken form precludes but a written version can contain.

Dylan K Rogers

Athens was an ancient city like no other. Named for a goddess, epicenter of the first democracy, birthplace of tragic and comic theater, locus of the major philosophical schools, artistically in the vanguard for centuries, it looms larger than any other ancient polis in contemporary thought from historical scholarship to tourist attractions. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens is a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the ancient city, its topography and monuments, inhabitants and cultural institutions, religious rituals and politics. Chapters in the volume link the religious, cultural, and political institutions of Athens to the physical locales in which they took place, so that readers gain a sense of the life and realia of the ancient city. Discussion of the urban plan with its streets, gates, walls and public and private buildings will give readers a thorough understanding of how the city operated, how various people flowed through it, what they saw, heard, smelled and perhaps tasted. Drawing from the newest scholarship on various aspects of the city as well as on-going excavations of its Agora, sanctuaries, and cemeteries, this volume examines how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman urbs.

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10 ancient greek inventions & discoveries still used today.

Though this post only discusses 10 ancient Greek inventions and discoveries, there are, in fact, many more attributed to them.

Greek findings range from astronomy and geography to mathematics and science. Greek interest in the scientific specification of the physical world started as far back as the 6th century BCE . They proved quite versatile in this area. Greece contributed a lot of knowledge to the modern world. Many ancient Greeks hold the title of the Father of Science , the Father of Medicine , or Zoology . Even remarkable leaders like  Alexander the Great  and  Pericles  with their innovative and philosophical ideas motivated many others to follow in their footsteps.

10. Water mill

Hydraulic wheel of Perachora

Not so long ago, water mills were a revolutionary invention used all over the world for the purpose of shaping metal, agriculture, and most importantly, milling. To mill meant to grind, and that invariably meant to grind grain. This in turn led to the production of edible staples like beaten rice, cereals, pulses, flour and so on. Ever since its origination, the water mill has seen a number of subsequent variations. These mills are still used in many parts of the rural world to serve similar purposes.

According to the contemporary Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium , this useful invention originates from the earliest known Perachora wheel, created in Greece in the 3rd century BCE. Earlier, the portions of the mechanical treatise on this particular water mill, described by Philo, were regarded to have Arab origination. But recent research by British historian M.J.T. Lewis proved that the water mill is an authentic ancient Greek invention.

9. Odometer

The odometer by Vitruvius and Heron

Odometers are one of the most widely used instruments in present day. They measure the distance travelled by any vehicle such as a bicycle or automobile. Even though modern odometers are digital, they used to be mechanical. This omnipresent instrument also originated in the time of ancient Greece. It was first described by Vitruvius around 27 BCE, and evidence points to  Archimedes of Syracuse as its inventor sometime around the first Punic war . Some historians also attribute its invention to Heron of Alexandria . Regardless of that, once invented, it was widely used in the late Hellenistic time by Romans for indicating the distance travelled by a vehicle. By accurately measuring distance and enabling its careful illustration with milestones, it helped revolutionize road building and travel.

8. Alarm clock

Ancient Greek Alarm clock

The alarm clock is one of today’s most commonly used gadgets, and it also originates from ancient Greece. The first of alarms used by ancient Greeks were nothing like the ones today. They used an integrated mechanism to time the alarm, which would sound off delicate water organs or drop pebbles into drums. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428–348 BCE) was said to possess a large water clock with an unspecified alarm signal similar to the sound of a water organ; he used it at night, possibly for signalling the beginning of his lectures at dawn. The Hellenistic engineer and inventor Ctesibius (285–222 BCE) fitted his clepsydras with a dial and pointer for indicating the time, and added elaborate alarm systems which could drop pebbles on a gong or blow trumpets (by forcing bell-jars down into water and taking the compressed air through a beating reed) at pre-set times.

7. Cartography

Harley and Woodward’s History of Cartography

Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. It has played an important role in travel and navigation since ancient times. The earliest known evidence of cartography points towards ancient Babylon , however, it was the Greeks who brought cartography into new light and discovered its possibilities. Anaximander was one of the pioneer cartographers to create a world map. Born between 611-610 BCE, this map maker of the ancient world made important contributions to astronomy and geography.

Anaximander is mentioned in Aristotle’s work, who categorized him as a pupil of the physical school of thought propounded by Thales . A reputed cartographer, Anaximander presented the inhabited regions in his map of the world. The map appeared as a tablet and featured Ionia in the center. The world map bounded on the east by the Caspian Sea. It stretched to the Pillars of Hercules in the west. Middle Europe borders the map in the north while Ethiopia and the Nile featured at the southern end of the map of Anaximander.

Anaximander made immense contributions in the field of cartography and geography, and his map of the world was indeed a marvelous achievement of the time.

6. Olympics

Olympics in ancient Greece

The modern Olympics are one of the greatest spectacles of sport. But when Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the international Olympic committee started the first modern Olympics in 1896, he was extensively inspired by the ancient Olympics that used to be held in ancient Greece more than 2700 years ago. According to historical records, the first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to 776 BCE. They were dedicated to the Olympian gods and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia. The Isthmian Games were staged every two years at the Isthmus of Corinth. The Pythian Games took place every four years near Delphi. The most famous games were held at Olympia, South-West of Greece, and took place every four years. People from all over the Greek world came to witness the spectacle. The victors were given olive leaf wreaths or crowns as a prize.

5. Basis of Geometry

Invention of Basic Geometry from Ancient Greece

Geometry is without a doubt one of the oldest branches of mathematics, perhaps even older than arithmetics itself. Its practical necessity demanded use of various geometric techniques long before recorded history. Indeed, the Egyptians , Babylonians and the  Indus Valley Civilization  were among the first to incorporate and use such techniques, but they were never interested in finding out the rules and axioms governing geometry. The Babylonians assumed the value of Pi to be 3 and never challenged its accuracy.

However, the age of Greek geometry changed everyone’s perception of it. The Greeks insisted that geometric facts must be established by deductive reasoning, much like how it is done these days. Thales of Miletus, regarded as Father of Geometry , set up a number of axioms and rules that were based on reasoning (called mathematical truths) in the 6th century BCE. Then there was  Pythagoras , Euclid , and Archimedes , whose geometrical axioms and rules are still taught in schools today. There were many more Greek mathematicians and geometers who contributed to the history of geometry, but these names are the true giants, the ones that developed geometry as we know it today.

4. Earliest practice of medicine

Earliest practice of medicine in Ancient Greece

The ancient world did not fare well when it came to curing diseases. Back then, diseases were supposed to be the gods’ way of punishing humans, and all possible remedies were surrounded by superstition. That all changed when Hippocrates of Cos started to collect data and conduct experiments, showing that disease was a natural process; that the signs and symptoms of a disease were caused by the natural reactions of the body to the disease. Born in 460 BCE, Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician, considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine . He was referred to as the Father of Western Medicine in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine.

The most famous of his supposed contributions is the Hippocratic Oath . It was this document that was first proposed as an ethical standard among doctors when doing their work. It brings up important concepts we still use today such as doctor-patient confidentiality.

3. Modern Philosophy

Aristotle – Ancient Greek Philosopher

Before the age of ancient Greece, the world did not see philosophy as we see it today. It was shrouded with superstition and magic, for instance, if the Nile would rise and flood, making the soil dark and fertile, the Egyptians would believe it happened because their Pharaoh commanded the river to do so. But the Greeks approached philosophy in a different way. They developed philosophy as a way of understanding the world around them, without resorting to religion, myth, or magic. In fact, the early Greek philosophers were also scientists, who observed and studied the known world, the earth, seas, and mountains, here below, and the solar system, planetary motion, and astral phenomena, above.

Their philosophy, based on reasoning and observation of the known world, played a pivotal role in the shaping of the western philosophical tradition. Philosophers like Socrates , Plato, Aristotle provided such influential philosophies that in the subsequent ages their studies were used to teach Rome and other western cultures.

2. Concept of democracy

In 510 BCE, the city-state of Athens created the first democratic government

The idea that every citizen has an equal opportunity to have his turn in the government constitutes the concept of democracy . It is one of the widely used styles of government in the modern world. Even more fascinating is the fact that democracy has its origins in ancient Greece. In fact, the concept as well the implementation of democracy can be traced back to ancient classical Athens.

Although, there is evidence that democratic forms of government, in a broad sense, may have existed in several areas of the world well before the turn of the 5th century BCE, it is generally believed that the concepts of democracy and constitution were created at one particular place and time – in ancient Athens around 508 BCE. For this reason, Athens is regarded as the birthplace of democracy. This transition from the exploitation of aristocracy to a political system where all the members of the society have an equal share of formal political power had a significant impact on future civilizations.

1. Discoveries in modern science

Theophrastus – First botanist in the written history

It would be only fair to say that, given the evidence, the ancient Greeks made some outstanding contributions in various branches of science. They broke contemporary stereotypes in the fields of astronomy, biology, and physics, and excelled in mathematics. The Greeks had so much influence in the early concepts of science that most symbols often used in physics and higher math equations are derived from the Greek alphabet.

Aristotle gave us the idea of the Earth being a globe. He also classified animals and is often referred to as Father of Zoology . Theophrastus was the first botanist we know of in written history. The Pythagoreans not only made the earliest of advances in philosophy and geometry, they also proposed the heliocentric hypothesis with the Earth revolving around the Sun. This idea was so ahead of its time that it was disregarded as blasphemy. Archimedes discovered that submerging a solid object will displace an amount of liquid that matches the object’s weight.

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Ancient Greece

Science and technology.

History >> Ancient Greece

• Watermill - A mill for grinding grain that is powered by water. The Greeks invented the waterwheel used to power the mill and the toothed gears used to transfer the power to the mill.
• Alarm Clock - The Greek philosopher Plato may have invented the first alarm clock in history. He used a water clock to trigger a sound like an organ at a certain time.
• Central Heating - The Greeks invented a type of central heating where they would transfer hot air from fires to empty spaces under the floors of temples.
• Crane - The Greeks invented the crane to help lift heavy items such as blocks for constructing buildings.
• Archimedes' Screw - Invented by Archimedes, the Archimedes' screw was an efficient way to move water up a hill.
• The word "mathematics" comes from the Greek word "mathema" which means "subject of instruction."
• Hypatia was head of the Greek mathematics school in Alexandria. She was one of the world's first famous female mathematicians.
• Hippocrates is often called the "Father of Western Medicine."
• The word "biology" comes from the Greek words "bios" (meaning "life") and "logia" (meaning "study of").
• The Greeks also made contributions to the study of map making or "cartography."
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Idea: Ancient Greek Science and Technology

• Conference paper
• First Online: 21 February 2019
• Cite this conference paper

• Panagiotis Ioannidis 13 ,
• Angeliki Malakasioti 13 &
• Maria Mavrokostidou 13  

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 961))

Included in the following conference series:

• International Conference on Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage

1590 Accesses

The exhibition IDEA - Ancient Greek Science and Technology presents, in a synthetic way, the advancement of greek thought and innovation which created a series of scientific fields, parallel to the discovery of a multitude of technical and technological achievements. The Exhibition highlights all those elements that raised the Ancient Greek world at the wondrous level everyone recognizes, defining the western and consequently the modern world.

The exhibition objectives are:

Presenting to the public the connection between science and technology in Ancient Greece.

Associating Greek knowledge and innovation and their contribution to the advancement of new cognitive fields.

Showcasing the important fields of science, arts and technological achievements in the Greek world.

Showcasing the discoveries and achievements of Ancient Greeks and associating them with later developments of knowledge till the present.

Reminder of the influence and contribution of those achievements as the basis of the knowledge and the foundations of the western civilization.

The exhibition was inaugurated on September 11, 2016 at the NOESIS Technology Museum. Since March 2018 it is installed in Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center.

The modern way of presenting the exhibition and using digital media challenges visitors to get to know the world of ancient Greek science and technology in an understandable and entertaining way. The 19 themes include rich visual material, digital and physical models of technological finds, interactive and audiovisual media, three-dimensional virtual projections, achieving a multidimensional reconstruction of the technology of the ancient world.

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Φάκλαρης Β. Παναγιώτης, «Προσωπικός Οπλισμός: Η υπεροχή των αμυντικών και επιθετικών όπλων των αρχαίων Ελλήνων», Καθημερινή: Επτά Ημέρες, σσ. 2–32 (1998)

Φωκά, Ιωάννα - Βαλαβάνης, Πάνος, Ανακαλύπτω την αρχαία Ελλάδα - Αρχιτεκτονική και πολεοδομία, εκδόσεις Κέδρος, Αθήνα (1992)

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Panagiotis Ioannidis, Angeliki Malakasioti & Maria Mavrokostidou

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Ioannidis, P., Malakasioti, A., Mavrokostidou, M. (2019). Idea: Ancient Greek Science and Technology. In: Moropoulou, A., Korres, M., Georgopoulos, A., Spyrakos, C., Mouzakis, C. (eds) Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. TMM_CH 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 961. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12957-6_12

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10 Contributions of the Ancient Greeks

What Made King Louis XIV an Absolute Monarch?

The early civilization that flourished in ancient Greece had huge implications for the development of mankind. In every sector of life, from law to politics to sport, the terminology and innovations of this period are still relevant today. In fact, it's fair to say Western civilization as we know it was made possible by the advancements made by our Greek ancestors.

The Acropolis

The Acropolis, or "high city," was designed as a rallying point for a city under attack. It also housed the main temples. The Acropolis in Athens was home to the iconic Parthenon temple and its remains exist to this day. The Athenian Acropolis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Olympic Games

The greatest festival of athletics in the world dates back to an ancient Greek festival at Olympia, in honor of the god Zeus. Athletes gathered from all over the Greek world to compete for honors. Events in the original Olympic games included throwing the discus and the javelin, which are still practiced today.

Citizenship

The concept of citizenship was developed by the ancient Athenians. Citizens were the group from which the government were selected. They completed a compulsory period of military service and took part in jury service. To become a citizen, a man had to have been born to Athenian parents. Women took no part in public life during this time.

Aesop's Fables

The storyteller Aesop is said to have been a slave who entertained his master so well that he was granted freedom. Aesop's fables have been handed down the ages and are still told today. Perhaps the most famous of Aesop's fables is the story of the tortoise and the hare, in which the slower tortoise outwits the quicker hare.

The Trojan Horse

Legend has it that in order to penetrate the walled city of Troy, Greek warriors built a giant wooden horse, inside which, they concealed 30 of their men. This was a fake gift to the Trojans, who brought it into the city. At nightfall, the men who had been hidden inside the horse opened the gates and let in the Greek army.

Socrates was the original philosopher. He considered the nature of beauty, knowledge and what is right. His method was to ask questions, to try to expose the flaws in his fellow Athenians' preconceived notions. Socrates went on to teach Plato, the next great Athenian philosopher.

Plato examined the nature of philosophy and established it as a tool for examining the ethics of the day. He conceived of certain abstract ideas (for example, beauty, justice, or equality) which existed beyond our physical world. He taught that in order to be good, people must study and understand the nature of goodness itself.

Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy and tutored the future emperor Alexander the Great. He established the first ever botanical garden and the world's first zoo. Aristotle carried out philosophical inquiries into the nature of man, establishing that the greatest good in life is happiness, the goal towards which we should all aspire.

Theater was a huge part of ancient Greek culture, with theaters in every town and competitions to find the best playwrights and actors. The word theater comes from the Greek "Theatron," which described the seating section of the outdoor arenas where people watched plays. Comedies, tragedies and satirical plays were all invented by the Greeks.

Trial by Jury

Ancient Athenians invented trial by jury. Jurors had to be citizens of at least 30 years of age. A jury could consist of up to 500 people to ensure that it was impossible to bribe the majority. Having heard both sides of the case, the jury would decide on the accused person's guilt.

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2 The Evolution of Civilization

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In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries science was promoted as the key to the progress that was now associated with civilization. In Comte’s influential Cours de Philosophie Positive , society was to be reformed on a resolutely scientific basis, and two kinds of development of a Comtean programme are distinguished: Buckle’s explicitly Comtean attempt to place the historical understanding of civilization on a scientific basis, and Spencer’s attempt to account for the evolution of civilization along biological lines. In this chapter the uptake of these ideas in the East is examined, and the question of the role of technology in the development of civilization is raised.

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