Transcript natsi1.1summer2012 - Natural Sciences Research Institute

Science in Ancient Times
Stone Age
THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF TOOL-MAKING
 Only primates use "tools" in the real sense of the word.
 The finer muscle structure of the nervous mechanism set
them apart from other primates.
 The advanced functional anatomy of the human hand led
to the origin of tool-making.
 The larger and more efficiently organized cerebrum of
man allowed him to slowly grope toward
 supplementing his natural tools.
 Man's earliest natural tools were his hands and his teeth.
EARLY STONE TOOLS
 The first tools ever were of stone.
 The earliest stone tools were pebbles already preshaped
by nature and simply picked up from
 a river bed
 The earliest stone tool were called eoliths because they
date from the Eolithic or earliest Stone age.
 The Eolithic period was over a million years ago.
 One hundred thousand years ago, man started to make
more specialized tools:
 pear-shaped "hand axes", scrapers, knives, pointed
stones, etc.
THE USE OF FIRE
 Man's earliest conquest was fire.
 Man's first use of fire came from fires found in nature (e.g. forest
fires).
 The percussion method was discovered by man only during
Paleolithic times (one million to 8000 BC).
 Fire was used to warm man's body and to cook food.
 The birth of cooking led to many advances such as increasing the
range of foodstuffs of man,
 the preservation of some foods through drying, and baking.
 Cooking led to the invention many things such as suitable
containers, kitchen utensils and other things.
 Many industrial processes involving heat, such as metallurgy,
pottery, and brewing used the accumulated experience of prehistoric
cooking.
ADVANCES IN STONE TOOLS
 By 15000 BC more differentiated and better tools were
being made in Europe and the Near East.
 As more suitable stones for tool-making were found,
flaking techniques became widely used.
 Flint, obsidian, or fine-grained lava could be used for
flaking.
 The 'burin', of which over twenty types were used by the
early nomadic food gatherers, has a narrow chisel edge
which is produced through flaking.
 We must remember, however, that man also used
materials such as wood, bone, and ivory for tool-making.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MINING
 Good flaking stones are not too common.
 This led to the digging of vertical shafts into the
limestone for 30 to 400 feet to reach flint nodules
 with better flaking qualities.
 By the dawn of the Bronze Age (About 2500
BC), flint mining became a separate profession,
 with miners living on the spot year round.
 Another early product to be mined was salt.
TECHNOLOGY AND ASPECTS OF EARLY SOCIETY
 The emergence of flint, salt, and semi-precious stones, as well as seashells from the East led to the emergence of trade over relatively long
distances.
 This developing trade is just one of the signs that society was changing, and
with it, technology.
 For technology is a social product in this sense, that it is one of the
interacting factors in a society, which in those early days was still very much
limited by its food supply pattern.
 Early food-gatherers and hunters devised a full range of tools directed
toward their foraging, hunting, and fishing.
 The creation and cultivation of graphic and plastic arts also emerged.
 Man engraved tools and weapons on the walls of his cave with incised lines
or pecking.
 He also sculpted. Rock, mud, ivory, antler, and stone, were modeled in the
round or in relief.
 In these early societies, there was no specialization or division of labor.
THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS
 By Magdalenian times (17000-8000 BC) the dog
was already domesticated, and probably the
 first reindeer, goats, and sheep have been
tamed.
 During the Neolithic Age pigs, cattle, horse and
the onager were domesticated too.
 Animals were domesticated for economic
purposes.They were bred because of their meat,
hides, or milk.
THE BEGINNINGS OF AGRICULTURE
 Man's need to free himself from the limitations of vegetable food
supplied by nature in the wild state led him to agriculture.
 Cereals probably originated from the cultivation and cross-breeding
of wild grasses growing in Syria and the highlands to the north, that
is, in the Fertile Crescent running from the egyptian border along the
Arabian desert to the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
 From 8000 BC onwards, the Fertile Crescent played its role as the
center of agriculture.
 Europe gave the world two new cereals, oats and rye.
 Rice did not come from the Orient until about 1000 BC.
 Man also grew plants for fibers for textiles and rope making, and for
extraction of oils and dyestuffs.
 The advent of agriculture brought more of less permanent
settlements.
BUILDING
 The coming of permanent settlements led to early forms
of building.
 Earlier men had been satisfied with simple windbreaks,
seeking more permanent shelters such as caves only for
longer stays.
 The earliest European houses were tent-like
constructions.
 Gradually pole or frame constructions were developed.
 The advent of metal tools made possible the building of
log houses in the forest regions.
 Building construction largely depended on the local
materials available.
THE URBAN REVOLUTION
 Technological developments during the Neolithic Age
gradually led to a regular production of surplus
foodstuffs, which supported what has been called the
"Urban Revolution."
 In the Near East after 600 B.C. some farming villages
slowly developed into urban centers dominating an
agricultural area.
 Trade was no longer in luxuries alone; the farmers
brought their surplus grain and food to the city, where
skilled, full-time craftsmen traded the articles which they
had produced for the food they needed.
TRANSPORT
 Despite an increase in trade, transport was still very primitive.
 Most early shipping was merely river transport through very primitive
crafts and few designs havesails.
 Sailing along the coasts of the open seas was seldom risked.
 The technological improvements of land transport was even slower.
 For a very long time, trade was limited to what men or pack animals
could carry on their backs.
 From 7000 BC onward, sledges were in use for heavy loads such as
the stones used for Stonehenge.
 On early tablets found at Uruk in Mesopotamia(3500 BC) we see
pictures of sledges on four wheels.
 True wheeled vehicles are not found until the days of the Sumerian
royal tombs(after 3000 BC).
MAN AT THE DAWN OF HISTORY
 Writing, the most astonishing invention of pre-history, an invention that divided the
very epochs of ancient man, took place about 3500 BC.
 The earliest documents were cuneiform clay tablets.
 Cuneiform writing consisted of wedge-shaped marks incised on wet clay, a material in
which the Tigris-Euphrates Valley abounded.
 Almost at the same time, the Nile Valley also witnessed the beginnings of writing by
brush dipped in ink or dye on papyrus.
 With the beginning of the written record--itself a triumph of technology--we pass from
 pre-historical to historical times.
 Contemporaneous with the invention of writing was to be the beginning of metallurgy.
 With the beginnings of metallurgy, the Stone Age of man comes to an end.
 With the beginnings of writing, prehistory comes to an end.
 With the beginnings of agriculture, man's parasitism on nature gives way to cooperation with nature.
 Technology thus made possible the beginnings of civilization in the great river valleys
of the Near East, in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Bronze Age
Civilizations in the River Valleys
Egypt – valleys of the Nile
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) – valleys of
the Twin Rivers, Euphrates and Tigris
Developed different social and political
systems
Developed differing technologies
Developed different social attitudes
Civilizations in the River Valleys
Mesopotamia
Pessimistic in philosophy
Great fear of demons and evil spirits
Egypt
Loved the good things in life
RISE OF MESOPOTAMIA
Sumerians (3000 BC)
Consisted of city-states -> believed to belong to
the god or goddess of that city
Arose a temple economy
RISE OF MESOPOTAMIA
Assyrian & Babylonian Empires (2000 BC)
Temple workshops gave way to guilds of free
craftsmen
Produced articles which made commercial
contract between Mesopotamia and other
places like Syria, Asia Minor, Iran, Bahrein, and
the Arabic Coast.
RISE OF EGYPT
Originally inhabited by independent tribes
-> established its own water province
United under powerful pharaohs (2000BC)
Protected by deserts
Trading contracts existed
Both free craftsmen and temple
workshops existed
LEARNING
Temple school (clerks, officials, priests)
“order of things as established by the gods
in the beginning”
Religious mysteries
Mathematics -> simple computations
ROLE OF THE CRAFTSMEN
Pottery-making
Manufacture of textiles
Woked on glass, metals, stone, wood,
leather, oils and fats, luxury foods
Employed as specialists in large
engineering projects
WATER WORKS FOR IRRIGATION
EGYPT
Basin irrigation
Established water-houses in each
province
Built nilometers (graduated wells
connected with the river)
WATER WORKS FOR IRRIGATION
MESOPOTAMIA
Basin irrigation
Conditions were different: Tigris-Euphrates
carried 5x more silt (salt and gypsum) than
the Nile.
The canals and ditches had to be cleaned
frequently.
WATER WORKS FOR CITIES
Drew their water from the rivers
In hilly countries: springs and wells
Shaft was dug in the middle of the town to a
horizontal sloping tunnel
Assyrian King Sennacherib -> 1st to build a
long-distance water supply
Wooden bailer
shadoof
WATER WORKS FOR CITIES
400 BC
Archimedian screw
Wheel of pots
Compartment wheel moved by oxen
PROCESSING OF RAW MATERIALS
Crushing, pressing, grinding
Using the feet
Bag press
Saddle quern
Rotary quern (2000 BC)
Fermentation (alcoholic beverages)
Barley, wine
date wine, palm wine (concocted by adding
honey)
TRANSPORTATION
Mainly by water
Vehicles with solid wheels and rimmed w/
nails or strips of leather (3000 BC)
War chariots (1500 BC)
Taming of camels (1000 BC)
TRANSPORTATION
Egypt: canoes and rafts made of bundle of
reeds-> evolved to larger boats
Mesopotamia: skin-float, quffa (or coracle)
THE BUILDING ARTS
Brick and stone
Mesopotamia
Rammed or kneaded clay
Sun-dried bricks made in oblong or rectangular
wooden molds
Corbelling –> kiln-baked
bricks
THE BUILDING ARTS
MESOPOTAMIA
Tower of Babel
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
THE BUILDING ARTS
Egypt
natural stone -> major building
Pyramid of King Zoser at Saqqarah (2600 BC)
Great Pyramid of King Khufu
Reed bundles, mud-bricks,
sun-dried bricks -> houses
Kiln-baked bricks
were rarely used
Iron Age
The civilization of the Iron Age, was
less orderly and peaceful than that it
replaced, but it was also more flexible
and rational .
The Origins of Iron Age Cultures
The barbarians
who overran the
bronze age
cultures of the
ancient east had
been unable to
form stable states
in their own
homelands.
But in the latter half of the second
millennium B.C. these conditions were
achieved through the penetration and
transformation of barbarian clan
societies through the influence of the
class economies of the cities with their
emphasis on private property,
chieftainship, and weapon production.
The Impact of the Discovery of Iron
Where and how iron was first made in
quantity is still a mystery.
The first iron used was the native iron from
meteorites, but this was too rare to be
anything but a precious metal.
The first iron smelted from its ores was
probably a by-product in gold making and
must have been even rarer.
Iron in usable quantities seems to have
first been smelted from the ore
somewhere south of the Caucasus by
the legendary tribe of Chalybes.
The wide distribution of iron and the
ease of iron working ended the
monopoly of civilization of the old river
empires of Egypt and Babylonia.
The Metallurgy of Iron
The iron used in antiquity, indeed up to
the fourteenth century A.D. in Europe,
was made by a process of lowtemperature reduction by charcoal in a
small, hand-blown clay furnace.
The technique of iron-making was
totally different from that of copper.
Once established, however, it required
nothing but the simplest equipment and
could be quickly taught or picked up.
Iron had one serious disadvantage: it
could not be melted for lack of
sufficient blast to the furnace, and
casting was therefore reserved for
bronze.
Iron did not displace bronze; it merely
supplemented it for common
purposes.
The iron made by the bloomery and forging
processes was a wrought iron or very mild
steel: it was tough but relatively soft.
Much harder true steels were known –
chalybs from the Chalybes, ferrum acerrum,
sharp iron, acier – but their method of
manufacture was kept a deep secret among
the tribes of smiths.
The world of science was not to know it
until the work of Reaumur in 1720.
The best steels were those made by
the Chinese – seric iron – and by the
Indians, whose wootz steel was
exported to made the famous
damascened blades.
Good steel was so rare and highly
prized that the swords made out of it
were deemed to be magical.
The great mobility of the horsemen and
the sea peoples and their abundance
of new weapons made it difficult for the
old empires to put up an affective
military resistance.
We may suspect that military failure
was an index of lack of support from
the people of older civilizations.
Further, the Iron Age people, once they
settled down, showed themselves
capable of building prosperous
agricultural or trading communities on
fruitless land.
The basically bronze age culture,
though profoundly changed by iron age
techniques, has retained its continuity
right down to our own time.
Axe and Plough
The substitution of new cultures for old
meant certain losses of continuity, but it
also meant the sweeping away of much
accumulated cultural rubbish and the
possibility of building much more
effective structures on the old
foundations.
Pirates are symbols of
destructiveness.
Woodmen with their axes and
peasants with their iron-shod ploughs
amply made up for the destruction.
The earlier use of metal was essentially for
the luxury products of city life and for arming
a small elite of high-born warriors.
Bronze was always too expensive.
Iron, however, though originally and for
many centuries, inferior to bronze, was
widely distributed and could easily be
produced and worked locally by village
smiths.
The effect of the abundance of iron
was to open whole new continents to
agriculture:
- forest could be cut down
- swamps could be drained
- resulting fields could be ploughed
Ships and Trade
Another feature of the Iron age that was to
be incalculable importance to human
thought; and particularly to science, was the
use of the sea-ways in spreading culture
much more rapidly than the old overland
routes could possibly do.
With greater facilities for ship-building
provided by iron tools, there were better and
larger ships and more of them.
The breaking up of the sea empire was
the signal for a great period of piracy
and sacking cities.
Only places near the sea could get the
full advantage of iron age culture.
In countries far removed from it, the
Iron Age certainly brought greater
possibilities for agriculture and warfare.
Land transport in bulk could not begin
to be economical until the development
of efficient horse harness in the Middle
Ages.
Iron Age Cities
Politics
In its early stages the Iron Age meant a
return to a smaller scale of economic unit.
By the fifth century B.C., with the spread of
slavery, much larger cities were possible.
The first cities were formed by the
agglomeration of a dozen or so villages.
The Iron Age was the first in which
commodity production becomes a
normal and indeed an essential part
of economic activity.
Another social economic feature of the
Iron Age was the use of slaves not
merely, as of old, for service but also
as a means of producing for the
market.
The Iron Age city became, almost from its
inception, a well placed centre for
manufacture and trade.
Against these advantages was set the
much-increased danger of war.
Nevertheless, the small Iron Age city
was both simpler and freer than the old
river valley city.
In this way, the Iron Age city gave rise
to politics and created out of political
struggles between the classes in the
cities, the successive forms of
oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy.
Money and Debt
One great social invention that
provided both for the expansion and
the internal instability of iron age
civilization was that of metallic
money.
Metal by weight had been used as
currency in the old empires.
Money, which soon became the
measure of every other value, turned
all established social relations into
those of buying and selling.
For the poor, the existence of money
was negative, they lived in a state of
chronic debt.
Oppression of the poor is as old as
civilization itself.
Nevertheless, there were real
differences between the forms it took in
the old civilizations and those in the
Iron Age:
- In the earlier case it was gradual and
partial.
- On the Iron Age, they were potentially
far more independent.
Money power, reforms and
revolutions were the background
theme of the city history.
The Alphahabet and Literature
An Iron Age development of importance for
the origin of science was the vulgarization of
the elaborate system of writing –
hieroglyphics and cuneiform – of the ancient
empires.
As its symbolism was based on sound
it could be applied to all tongues and at
the same time it opened the world of
intelligent communication to a far wider
circle that of the priests and officials of
the old days.
Writing ceased to be confined to official
or business documents and a literature
of poetry, history, and philosophy
began to appear.
Naturally, poetry and prose narratives
themselves in the form of epics and
sagas, must have long preceded
alphabetic or even hieroglyphic writing,
being handed down by bards or
professional story tellers.
PHOENICIANS
and
HEBREWS
THE PHOENICIANS
The first people to profit by the new
conditions of iron age civilization were the
Phoenicians of the Syrian coast.
They were helped by their central position
between the old great powers of Egypt
and Assyria and by the ample use of
supplies of good ship-building timber from
the Lebanon.
They led the way in:
Trade
Exploiting sea transport
The alphabet
They remained too tied to the continuity of
their culture with the old Babylonian
civilization to do more than adapt it to the
conditions without generating much that
was new.
THE JEWS
They were at the very centre of warring
peoples.
They have no resources of overseas
trade.
Their independence always remained
precarious and was only saved in the end
as a national entity by the evolution of a
cultural tradition or law written in a book –
the Bible
Their independence, liberty, and
democracy became indissolubly
associated in their religion.
In this the Jews were unique in the ancient
world, and the influence of their religion
and their sacred books was to prove of
enormous importance to the subsequent
development of civilization.
THE BIBLE: LAW and
RIGHTEOUSNESS
The Hebrew Bible is far more than a
collection of ancient history and legend.
It is a book with a moral, full of
propaganda expressed as a poetry.
The propaganda of the Bible is essentially
popular in that in stresses the ideas of the
law and of righteousness.
Righteousness, in the Bible, is largely a
protest against the abuses of the rich and
powerful who, then as now, were addicted
to falling into foreign ways of oppression.
The Jews were the first people we know of
to fight for an idea and the wars of
Maccabees testified to their fanaticism and
militancy.
The Bible has, directly in Christianity and
indirectly through the Koran in Islam, often
serve as the inspiration and justification of
popular revolutionary movements.
GENESIS
It is one aspect of the Bible that has most
affected science.
The early books of the Bible are versions
of old Babylonian and ever early Sumerian
creations.
They represent an attempt to account for
the origin of the world and man.
Genesis
The world came into existence
from a primeval chaos of water,
The heaven, earth, air and other
objects and forces are a result
of the union of the male and
female gods of chaos.
Babylonians: younger gods
used force to conquer nature
Egyptians: gods are powerful
without being violent
These myths soon became the essential
justification of the covenant between God
and His people and therefore beyond
examination and criticism.
Later still, because they were part of the
sacred books of the Jews, these myths
have come down to us as a literal divine
revelation to accepted on faith.
THE GREEKS
The most successful in the exploitation of
the new conditions of the Iron Age were
the Greeks.
They had double advantage of being more
removed from the conservative influence
of the older civilizations while being able to
make extensive use of their traditions.
The Greeks were the only people to take
over the bulk of the learning that was still
available after several centuries of
destructive warfare and comparative
neglect in the ancient empires of Egypt
and Babylonia.
They took that knowledge and with their
own acute interest and intelligence they
transformed it into something at the same
time simpler.
CLASSICAL CULTURE
Classical Culture was synthetic; it made
use of every element of culture which it
could find in the countries it occupied and
with which it came into contact.
It was not however a mere continuation of
these cultures.
The great contributions of classical culture
were in political institutions, particularly
demorcracy, and in natural science,
especially mathematics and astronomy
THE BIRTH of ABSTRACT SCIENCE
The unique character of Greek thought
and action resides in just that aspect of
their life which we have called the
scientific mode.
By this I do not mean simply the
knowledge or practice of science but the
capacity to separate factual and verifiable
from emotional and traditional statements.
In this mode we can distinguish two
aspects: that of rationality and that of
realism.
In losing their original culture, the Greeks
did not and could not take over the
cultures of the countries in their entirety.
They selected from foreign cultures what
seemed to them to matter.
THE ECONOMIC BASIS of the GREEK
CITY
The early Greeks were able to exploit their
local resources to the full with all the
intensity and simplicity that are possible
only in a compact city.
In these circumstances there were rapid
and even violent economic and political
changes, while tradition, though never lost,
was at a discount.
Institutions and divinities became less
important and more attention was
concentrated on men.
THE SEPARATION of SCIENCE from
TECHNIQUE
The technical developments made in the
early Iron Age, and especially by the
Greeks before Alexandrian period, were
not innovations as fundamental as those
of the Bronze Age.
The use of iron led directly to the
improvement of all hafted tools.
It also made possible the use of hinge.
These all arise with ease with which iron
bars may be bent over in a loop and then
welded to form a hole for a haft or peg.
Later, through the marriage of Greek
mathematics and Egyptian or Syrian
techniques, came the most important
developments.
Of chemical inventions the most important
is that of blown glass first made in Egypt.
The technical advances of the Iron Age did
not affect the learned in the same way as
had those of the early Bronze Age.
It was particularly because they were
essentially improvements and not radical
innovations that they did not strike our
imagination.
ARCHITECTURE
CONTENT and METHOD IN GREEK
SCIENCE
Modern science is directly derived from
Greek science, which provided it with an
outline, a method, and a language.
All the general problems from which
modern science grew were formulated by
the Greeks.
Unfortunately, they thought that they have
solved it in their own particular logical,
beautiful, and final way.
STAGES in the DEVELOPMENT of
GREEK SCIENCE
The history of Greek science may
conveniently be split into four major
phases:
The Ionian Phase
The Athenian Phase
The Alexandrian Phase
The Roman Phase
Rome
and the Decadence
of Classical Science
Tina Felizardo
Hellenistic empires collapsed in
anarchy as Rome came into power. The
latter gained advantage by establishing
itself in Italy, which was then a farming
country with good climate and plenty of
timber, and growing and healthy
population.
It also experienced same class
struggle as Greek cities did.
 That is, in the form • and the policy of extending
Roman citizenship first to
of rivalry between
Italians and later on, to
patricians and
other provincials making
plebeians.
Rome a territorial State
dominated by slave-owners
and wealthy merchants.
The strength of the Empire was
Its army by which the Empire
had been won and defended against
barbarians. They were managed by
imposing and collecting enough
taxes to keep them from mutinying
and choosing another emperor
It was also effectively a loose
federation of cities managing
themselves and profiting for
their mutual trade from the Pax
Romana.
 The best land of
the countryside
was farmed by
slave gangs from
the villas of the
wealthy.
 The pagi or rustic
communes were left
to the natives
(pagans) who were
following their own
tribal customs later to
become the peasants
of the Middle Ages
and to give their
name to the country
or pays or to newly
settled colony and
freed slaves from
villas.
Effects to Culture
Too late to save Greek civilization
Added nothing significant but rather picked
up some general ideas on Greek
philosophy
Elder Cato hated Greek science
Cicero found much to praise in the philosophy
of Aristotle and Plato
Decay of science
 More application of existing knowledge was
done, especially in public works and
architecture.
 Restrictive participation on market and
abundant slave labor gave no incentive for
development of industry.
 Development of the arch and the arched vault
as needed on large basilicas.
 Though yet a science, agricultural writings
like Georgics are necessarily limited to
recordings of peasant practice and grim
reminders of estate management based on
slave labor.
Roman Law
 It is said to be anything but a scientific attempt at
securing fair dealing between man and man: it is
frankly concerned with preserving the property
of those fortunate enough to have acquired it.
 Three superimposed layers of cultural history:
Old tribal custom (Roman family system)
City and merchant law (cash and recovery of dept)
Imperial Administration (prerogative of the prince)
 Law of Nature
From the time of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138)
the whole economy began to breakdown.The
army became an increasing but necessary
burden. To avoid the taxes, the villas became
economic centers and trade more limited to
luxuries.
By the 3rd century B.C., if not earlier,
knowledge that is not used to gain further
knowledge does not remain. It decays and
disappears. Nobody needed nor wanted to read
the volumes until no one can understand them.
Thought turned once more to mysticism
and religion to escape the wicked world. It had,
though, an elaborate intellectual foundation.
Their common intellectual feature was
reliance on inspiration and revelation as a
higher source of truth than the sense or even
than reason. Sarcastically, as Tertullian
expressed it, “I believe because it is absurd.”
Although the rule of nominally Roman
Emperors in Constantinople was to last another
thousand years, the empire belonged to a new
age.
The Barbarians
 East absorbed its barbarians
 In the West, there was something like a general
economic collapse of which the barbarian
invaders took advantage.
 It is said that barbarians had better agricultural
techniques than the Romans – they were, at
least, able to cultivate the fertile and heavy soils
of western Europe which the Romans neglected.
 Everything of culture that depended on largescale material organization was lost.
The Legacy of the Classical World
 Improvement in the
irrigation and roadmaking
 New styles in
monumental architecture
 Town planning
 Social sciences
 Greek mathematics
 Greek astronomy
 Astrological predictions
 Calendar
 Indifferent maps
 Art of the navigator
 Natural History
 Discursive catalogues
 Techniques minus the
scale
 Great spread of
civilization
 Hellenism blended with
old native culture of East
and in West, the prestige
of the lost learning served
to tame the barbarians of
Europe
The end
Pre-Socratic period
 * nature more impersonal than that of
previous civilization
 Thales - similar views of the universe as
that of the ancient civilization but with the
disappearance of the sun-god
 Anaximander - suggested fire as the
fourth basic element; he said that the
heavens were concentric about the
earth; and living creatures rose from
moist element as the sun evaporated
them.
 Anaximenes- difference between
elements were quantitative
Pre-Socratic con’t.
 Heraclitus - the idea of retribution to
explain the world order
 Pythagoras and the Pythagorean
School
 *founded a school devoted to a life of
mathematical speculation
 *his name bears the rule for the right
triangle
 *first to show the relation between
the sound and the length of a string
 *numbers provide the conceptual
model of the universe. They are
forms and images of natural objects.
Pythagoras con’t
 *The universe was divided into earth,
cosmos and olympos
 -these bodies are spherical
 -heavenly bodies move in circular
and uniform motion
 -noble bodies move slower than the
less noble ones
 * The idea that the earth is the center
of the universe evolved
 Empedocles - theory of organic
evolution
The Atomists (Democritus)
 *the universe consists of indivisible
atoms that move in the void
 *man is the microcosm of the
universe
 *their cosmology is entirely
mechanistic, all things were predetermined
 *they did not use human analogies.
For them, wrong doers are punished
not for vengeance but a deterrence
for further commission of crime.
Natural Philosophy in Athens
 Anaxagoras - Ionian philosopher who
believed heavenly bodies were of the same
quality as the earth and not divine as what
Pythagoreans believed
 craft and philosophical traditions were
separated while society grew and
differentiated
 Socrates -chief philosopher of the time. To
him the task of the philosopher was the
ordering of man and human society. He
devoted his time to the problems of an ethical
and political nature.
Athens con’t.
 Plato - founded the Academy
 - he suggested any philosophy is
subordinate to ethics and politics
 - the universe was an uncreated
chaos, the ordering being done by a
creator who has a rational design of
the world.
 Eudoxus - unified quantitative
astronomy with cosmological
interpretations
 Aristotle - the heavenly bodies were
arranged outwards from the earth
 -absolute diferrence between
Aristotle con’t.
- motion is maintained so long
as the body was in direct
contact with a continuously
operating mover
-the idea of a prime mover and
the nonexistence of vacuum
- to him there are four causes of
all natural processes: material,
formal, efficient and final
- the first to embark upon
extensive empirical inquiries
The Alexandrian Period
 The museum of Alexandria was founded as a
research and teaching institute
 Archimedes - made devices as screws,
apparatus for astronomical purposes; he
discovered bouyancy and relative densities;
he originated method
for deducing pi

 Euclid - systematized geometry
 Aristarchus - the earth moved around the sun
 Erastosthenes - measured the size of the
earth; earth as a globe with poles and an
equator; made a map of earth marked with
latitudes and longitudes
 Hipparchus - observational astronomy

Alexandrian con’t.
 Ptolemy - adopted and developed
the Hipparchus system of eccentrics
and epicycles; he put forward the socalled geocentric theory, that is, the
earth as the center of the universe
 ROMAN EMPIRE
 - main contributions were
a)formulation of Roman law; b)
formation of public medical science;
c) building of aqueducts and roads;
d) Julian calendar; e) systems of
Ptolemy and Aristotle were given
Christian and theological dress
Medieval Period
500-1450 A.D.
 cultural advances in Persia and Syria, India
and China
 Hellinistic culture (science and art) flourished
in Constantinople
 wandering tribes and barbaric invasion of
Europe
 feudal system of economic order
 phenomenon of organized religion worldwide
Medieval Period con’t.
 activity in science was directed to the
dominant religious mode, thus the universe
was considered a theological universe
 establishment of Islamic empire and the
invasion of the Arabs
medieval world was a theological
physical world of spheres - spheres of
sun, moon, and planets above which is
the great sphere of fixed stars and
heaven beyond
earth is the center of the universe
Summary of Achievements of
Ancient Science (4000 B.C- 500 A.D.)
 Mathematics: arithmetic, geometry
 Astronomy: movement of heavens; shape
and size of earth; earth-centered universe
 Mechanics - spring bow, lever,wheel, pulley,
wedge
 Dynamics - resisted motion, sound as
vibration
 Pneumatics/heat - bellows, pumps,
Archimedes
 Magnetism -magnets
 Optics - shadows, mirrors, plane and curved
Summary of Achievements during the
Medieval and Arabic Period (500-1450 A.D.)
Mathematics - Arabic numbers ; algebra
Astronomy - navigational astronomy
Mechanics - horse harness, gearing,
water and windmills, clocks, pumps
Dynamics - motion of the projectile
Magnetism and electricity - compass
Optics - lenses, eye spectacle