Science in Ancient Greece: Concepts, Influences, Fields | Early European History And Religion

SCIENCE IN ANCIENT GREECE

Hero's steam force pump, AD 1st century

In ancient times sciences such as chemistry, biology and physics did not exist. Philosophy and the sciences were indistinguishable and the prevailing view was that objects were made from earth, air, fire and water. John Wilford Nobel wrote in the New York Times, “By following the historical record” a group of modern-day scientists called the Archimedes researchers “have discovered that the evolution of physics — or, at least mechanics — is based in the interplay between practice and theory, The practical use comes first, theory second. Artisans build machines and use them but do not think why they work. Theorists explain the machines and derive principals that can be used to construct more complex machines.”

The ancient Greeks didn't make a distinction between philosophy and science, nor did they recognize the range of disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, etc. that we do today. There simply wasn't the depth of knowledge and range of information that later made separate disciplines practical. In the Greek era, one individual could be an expert in several fields. Nowadays, with the tendency of specialists to know more and more about less and less (i.e. intensive knowledge about a rather limited field) the ability to keep abreast of detailed research in more than one area becomes almost impossible. But in the days of Thales, Pythagoras and Aristotle that was the norm. People expected an individual knowledgeable in one area to also be proficient in others. And many were. [Source: Canadian Museum of History]

The sciences thrived during the Hellenistic period, especially in Alexandria where the Ptolemies financed a great library, quasi-university and museum. Fields of study included mathematics (Euclid's “Geometry”, 300 B.C.), astronomy (heliocentric theory of Arisrtarchus, 310 B.C., Julian calendar 45 B.C., Ptolemy's “Almagest” 150 A.D.), geography (Ptolemy's “ Geography” , world map of Eratosthenes 276-194 B.C.), hydraulics (Archimedes, 287-212 B.C.), medicine (Galen, 130-200 A.D.), and chemistry. Inventors refined uses for siphons, valves, gears, springs, screws, levers, cams, and pulleys.↕

But science remained less developed than it might have been because science and philosophy remained bound together. The Greeks were astute when it came to applying their knowledge to architecture, art and navigation but the remained locked in the belief that science could be advanced by thinking rather than by experimentation or more hands-on methods.

A surprising number of ancient scientific texts have survived to this day. The Archimedes website lists many of them, including “Mechanical Problems”, once attributed to Aristotle, and Hero of Alexandria’s Roman-era technical manual of crossbows and catapults.

Socrates was among the first speak out against new technologies. He condemned writing and said that relying on written texts over oral tradition would “create forgetfulness in the learner’s souls...they will trust to external written characters and not remember of themselves.”

Websites on Ancient Greece and Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/ British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Department of Classics, Hampden–Sydney College, Virginia hsc.edu/drjclassics ; The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization pbs.org/empires/thegreeks ;Ancient-Greek.org ancientgreece.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/greek-and-roman-art; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web

Achievements of the Ancient Greeks in Science

Hero's Aeolipile

The Greeks made great contributions in the field of astronomy. An understanding of astronomy was important in understanding and regulating the business of agriculture. It was also essential in developing an accurate calendar and critical for navigation. While the Egyptians and Babylonians had made great advances in astronomy, their work was based heavily on centuries of observation. It was the Greeks who introduced mathematics into astronomy greatly expanding the range of questions that could be asked and answered about the solar system. In the 3rd Century B.C. the Greek astronomer Aristarchus advanced the theory that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system. It took the world the better part of two millennia to come to the same conclusion. Eratosthenes, another Greek, accurately calculated the earth's circumference and its diameter. [Source: Canadian Museum of History |]

“Physics, the study of the nature of things, began seriously in Greece in the 6th Century B.C. . With few exceptions (e.g. the work of Aristotle and Pythagoras) the study was an intellectual pursuit unaided by much in the way of controlled experimentation, which is standard practice today. |

“It was Aristotle, equally at ease as a philosopher and as a scientist, whose several treatises on animals laid the foundations of zoology. Aristotle also did important work on plants, although not nearly to the same extent as his thorough publications on animal life, but he did have a strong influence on other scholars, such as Theophrastus, who laid the groundwork for the science of botany. |

Influence of Babylonian Astronomy on Ancient Greek Science

John Burnet wrote in “Early Greek Philosophy”: “The other source from which the Ionians were supposed to have derived their science is Babylonian astronomy. It is certain, of course, that the Babylonians had observed the heavens from an early date. They had planned out the fixed stars, and especially those of the zodiac, in constellations. That is useful for purposes of observational astronomy, but in itself it belongs rather to mythology or folklore. They had distinguished and named the planets and noted their apparent motions. They were well aware of their stations and retrograde movements, and they were familiar with the solstices and equinoxes.

clock of Philippoi

They had also noted the occurrence of eclipses with a view to predicting their return for purposes of divination. But we must not exaggerate the antiquity or accuracy of these observations. It was long before the Babylonians had a satisfactory calendar, and they kept the year right only by intercalating a thirteenth month when it seemed desirable. That made a trustworthy chronology impossible, and therefore there were not and could not be any data available for astronomical purposes before the so-called era of Nabonassar (747 B.C.). The oldest astronomical document of a really scientific character which had come to light up to 1907 is dated 523 B.C., in the reign of Cambyses, when Pythagoras had already founded his school at Croton. Moreover, the golden age of Babylonian observational astronomy is now assigned to the period after Alexander the Great, when Babylon was a Hellenistic city. Even then, though great accuracy of observation was attained, and data were accumulated which were of service to the Alexandrian astronomers, there is no evidence that Babylonian astronomy had passed beyond the empirical stage. [Source: John Burnet (1863-1928), “Early Greek Philosophy” London and Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1892, 3rd edition, 1920, Evansville University]

“We shall see that Thales probably knew the cycle by means of which the Babylonians tried to predict eclipses; but it would be a mistake to suppose that the pioneers of Greek science had any detailed knowledge of Babylonian observations. The Babylonian names of the planets do not occur earlier than the writings of Plato's old age. We shall find, indeed, that the earliest cosmologists paid no attention to the planets, and it is hard to say what they thought about the fixed stars. That, in itself, shows that they started for themselves, and were quite independent of Babylonian observations, and the recorded observations were only made fully available in Alexandrian times. But, even if the Ionians had known them, their originality would remain. The Babylonians recorded celestial phenomena for astrological purposes, not from any scientific interest. There is no evidence that they attempted to account for what they saw in any but the crudest way. The Greeks, on the other hand, made at least three discoveries of capital importance in the course of two or three generations. In the first place, they discovered that the earth is a sphere and does not rest on anything. In the second place, they discovered the true theory of lunar and solar eclipses; and, in close connection with that, they came to see, in the third place, that the earth is not the center of our system, but revolves round the center like the planets. Not much later, certain Greeks took, at least tentatively, the final step of identifying the center round which the earth and planets revolve with the sun. These discoveries will be discussed in their proper place; they are only mentioned here to show the gulf between Greek astronomy and everything that had preceded it. On the other hand, the Greeks rejected astrology, and it was not till the third century B.C. that it was introduced among them.

“We may sum up all this by saying that the Greeks did not borrow either their philosophy or their science from the East. They did, however, get from Egypt certain rules of mensuration which, when generalized, gave birth to geometry; while from Babylon they learnt that the phenomena of the heavens recur in cycles. This piece of knowledge doubtless had a great deal to do with the rise of science; for to the Greek it suggested further questions such as no Babylonian ever dreamt of.”

Muslims and Greco-Roman Science

Tower of the Winds

In the early Middle Ages, the Muslim kingdoms was the intellectual center of the world. Among other things, the Arabs were very interested in Greek science and philosophy. They were reading Plato and Aristotle when he had long been forgotten in the West.

Arab translators did the world a great service. They translated classical Greek works on philosophy, science, mathematics, medicine, astrology and alchemy. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (808-73), for example, a scholar in Baghdad, translated Plato and Aristotle and Galen's “Anatomy” . The original Greek versions of these works were lost and probably would not survived were it not for Ishaq's Arabic translations.

The motivations for translating the classical works seemes to have been both practical and scholarly. Knowledge relating to medicine, was particularly in demand. There also seemed to be intellectual curiosity. The great Islamic thinker al-Kindi (801-66) wrote: “We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is no higher value than the truth itself.”

The Arabs supplied the cultural and scientific link between the Golden of Greece and Rome and the European Renaissance. The medieval European sources of valuable documents by Euclid and Ptolemy and others where Arab manuscripts that were translated into Latin in Toledo.

Some scholars believe that Arab knowledge played a part in triggering the Renaissance and accelerating the pace in the Age of Discovery. The Renaissance began as a rediscovery of classic Greek culture and many say that Arabs were the ones who were responsible for reintroducing writings by Greek authors. Translations of Arabic texts into Latin spread knowledge of instruments such as the astrolabe.

Time in Ancient Greece

Water clock in
ancient Agora of Athens
Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, contends that people living when the “ Iliad” was written (the 8th century B.C.) had little awareness of time. The epic poem he says was about people who "did not live in a frame of past happening, who did not have 'lifetimes' in our sense, and who could not reminisce." Concepts of time developed when language advanced to the point where people could describe the past in terms of personal experience. Zeno of Elea, a fifth century B.C. Greek philosopher, was the first man to ponder over the fact that any unit could be subdivided endlessly. [Source "The Enigma of Time" by John Boslough, National Geographic, March 1990]

The 24 hour day, in the words of one historian, "was the result of Hellenistic modification of an Egyptian practice combined with Babylonian numerical procedures." The Egyptian used sun dials and came up with the idea of hours. These hours, in turn, were organized using Babylonian arithmetic which grouped numbers in denominations of six rather than ten (no one knows for sure why the Babylonians selected six). [Source: "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin]

The word "hour" comes from the Latin and Greek words for “season” or “time of day.” It described a twelfth of the period of sunlight or darkness. Minutes (derived from a Latin word for "small part”) were used to divide the region between lines of latitude and mark locations on a circle during ancient times long before they marked time. It wasn’t until perhaps the 13th century, when the mechanical clock was invented, that minutes were used to divide an hour into sixty units. Seconds were not included until the 16th century when clockmaking technology was significantly improved.

Ancient Greek Atoms

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Euclid and Pythagoras
Most Greeks believed that matter was made up of four elements — earth, air, fire and water. The Greek word “ atom” meant the smallest indivisible unit of matter. The existence of these particles was first proposed by a 5th century B.C. Greek named Leucippus, who found life so amusing he was dubbed the "laughing philosopher." He said the entire universe consisted of atoms and voids, and that atoms themselves were not "infinitely complex but somehow intelligible" and someday "there might be no limits to man's power." This concept of atoms contradicted the “four elements” theory. [Source: "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin,∞]

Democritus wrote in 400 B.C., "Nothing exist except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." The Roman poet Lucretius (95-55 B.C.) perpetuated the idea of atoms to waylay man's fear of death and supernatural powers by pointing that nature was governed by it own laws and the soul died with body and wasn't taken to Hades and tortured. The Christian clergy attacked Lucretius and the idea of infinitesimally small particles wasn't resurrected until Descartes wrote about them in the 16th century.∞

The ancient Greeks called amber “ electron” , and we get the word electricity from the fact that when amber is rubbed on wool or silk it produces a static charge. Roman doctors prescribed amber for ear infections and tonsillitis and gladiators wore it as a good luck charm.

Optics in Ancient Greece

The ancient Greeks explained the miracle of sight by stating that perception occurred when "internal fire" from the eye mixed with "external fire" from the object. The intuitive 5th century B.C. philosopher and poet Empedocles suggested that light was substances emitted by the sun that moved so quick people were not aware of it.

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Bronze mirror
The Greeks ascribed light, vision and perception to "fire within the eye," a concept that equated eyes with lanterns. Based on the fact that sometimes people look towards light but fail to notice it immediately Plato and Euclid believed that the eyes produced a visual ray that struck an object before people perceived it. Aristotle and other observed that if this were true people would be able to see in the dark.

Euclid believed that the eye somehow emitted rays which absorbed the object. Plato and the Pythagoreans described the process of seeing as "emanations of the eye which somehow encompassed the object seen." The Atomists were again on the right track when they suggested that emissions from the seen object somehow entered the eye and produced images. But Galen didn't buy this. He pointed out that large images, "like those of mountains, could not squeeze through the pupil of the eye"...In case you forgot vision occurs when the eye perceives the light emitted by an object. [Source: "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin,∞]

Rock-crystal magnifying lenses dating from 1200 B.C. have been found in Crete. The Greek playwright Aristophanes mentioned crystal lens in “The Clouds” .

Astronomy in Ancient Greece

In ancient times astrology and astronomy were the same thing. Among Greece's most famous astronomers were Anaximander (611-546 B.C.), who stated all the heavenly bodies were discs; Eudoxus of Cindus (408-355 B.C.), who asserted the planets moved in concentric spheres around the Earth; and Aristarchus (live around 280 B.C.), who hypothesized that the sun not the Earth was the center of the universe. Complicated mathematical equations were developed to explain the movements of heavenly bodies in an effort to make astrology seem like a science.

Joseph Castro wrote in Live Science: “Most of what's known about early Greek astronomy comes from various literary texts, such as Aratus of Soli's Phaenomena, a poetic text that describes the Greek constellations known by the third century B.C. However, these valuable documents only date as far back as the Classical period of Ancient Greece, which lasted from the fifth to the fourth century B.C. [Source: Joseph Castro, Live Science, October 27, 2014 ***]

“To learn about how the ancient Greeks viewed the night sky before then, researchers must rely on visual depictions of the sky, such as those found on ceramic pottery — but these artifacts are relatively rare, and what's left of them generally only show one or two constellations. For example, one of the oldest constellation images from Greece comes from a pottery fragment from the Late Geometric period (760 to 700 B.C) found at a site on the island of Ischia in Italy, but it only depicts what may be the constellation Boötes ("the Herdsman"). ***

Antikythera Mechanism, the World's First Computer

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Antikythera Mechanism The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was discovered by sponge divers on a shipwreck of a Greek cargo ship off Antikythera, a Greek island north of Crete, in 1901 but until recently no one knew what it did. Using X-ray tomography, computer models and copies of the actual pieces, scientists from Britain, Greece and the United States were able to reconstruct the device, whose sophistication was far beyond what was though possible for the ancient Greeks.

In November 2006, in an article published in Nature, team of researchers lead by Mike Edmunds of the University of Cardiff announced they had pieced together and figured out of the functions of the Antikythera Mechanism — an ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century B.C. that was so sophisticated it has been described as the world’s first analog computer. The devise was more accurate and complex than any instrument that would appear for the next 1,000 years. [Source: Reuters]

The shoe-box-size device was comprised of a maze 37 hand-cut, interlocking, bronze gear wheels packed together sort of like the gears in a watch and was housed in a wooden case with mysterious inscriptions on the face, cover and bronze dials. Originally thought to be a kind of navigational astrolabe, archaeologists continue to uncover its uses and have come to realize that at the very least is an extremely sophisticated astronomical calendar. Edmunds told Reuters, What is extraordinary is that they were able to make such a sophisticated technological device and be able to put that into metal.” Edmunds said the device is unique and nothing like as sophisticated would appear until the Middle Ages, when the first cathedral clocks were put into use.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024