Graeco-Roman Science

The attempts to solve the great problems attacked by philosophy led to investigations that in the course of centuries grew to take rank as separate studies. Early Greek science, as may be seen from the fragments given in the second volume, made many guesses but did not prove them: later Greek and Graeco-Roman science gathered many facts, but, outside of mathematics, had evolved no principles from them before it was throttled by the prejudice of the early Christian Church. This fact, that ancient science, except mathematics, consisted mostly of either unproven guesses or uncorrelated data, makes it impossible and unnecessary in this place to do more than to outline the ideas of the times.

Among the early Greeks, Thales, who lived in the last of the seventh century B.C., is reported to have noted the solstices and equinoxes, i.e., the longest and shortest days, and the times when the day and night are equal. He probably foretold an eclipse by using the Babylonian cycle of 223 months, during which period eclipses repeat themselves at regular intervals. Anaximander, in the first half of the sixth century, is supposed to have invented a sun dial that showed the time of day by the position of a shadow on a plate. He is also reported to have made a map of the world as he knew it. Anaxagoras, born at the end of the fifth century, discovered that either the sun or the moon may shut off our view of the other; and that the planets move while the other stars do not. He thought the sun to be a fiery rock, say as large as the Peloponnesus. Eudoxos, born about 406 B.C., marked some of the apparent movements of the planets in the heavens. The Pythagoreans believed that the earth is round and revolves about the unseen fire which they thought to be the center of the universe. Leukippos and Demokritos developed their remarkable atomic theory, the most important hypothesis advanced by the Greeks, but, though it was supported at the time with striking arguments, the ancient world refused to accept it, and it remained nothing more than a theory until the present century. Aristotle and his school made great collections in zoology and did considerable work in classifying animals in accordance with the nature and use of their organs. Fragments from these early thinkers have already been included in the previous volume.