SC NATS 1760 6 – Lecture 3 – Classical Culture
The Iron Age and Greek Natural Philosophy
- Science and ancient Greece, technology and ancient China
- Ancient Greece:
o Scholarly discussion about nature
o The exclusion of religion from explanations of nature
o City states and democracy, open inquiry, the role of other cultures
Iron
- Iron important for commerce by 12th century BC
- Forging and welding soft wrought iron, trial and error
- Technique, simple tools, wood and iron ore, secret of steel
- Communities, iron weapons, horses, warfare with nomadic peoples
- Cheap iron, axes, iron-shod plows, forestry, carpentry, agriculture
- Shipbuilding, cheaper sea transportation of goods
- Increased construction, food production and population growth, costal cities had
lower transport costs and expanded trade
o “The Iron Age is the first in which commodity production becomes a
normal and indeed an essential part of economic activity”
o trade and local production
- Slavery, labour, trade, small cities, warfare and political relations
- Money in widespread use by 7th century BC, erosion of tribal relations
Greek Natural Philosophy
- Classical civilization, old ideas and practices, natural philosophy and democracy
- Greek agricultural production and trade
- New ways of thinking, vested interests and connections with other cultures
- Greek dialectic, critical thinking
- Greek natural philosophy, abstract, generalizations from first principals,
experience and quantification
- Greeks dislike for trades and labour, patrons and schools
- Rulers and philosophers divorced from practical work, idealist and abstract
o Thales: everything was originally water: earth, air and living things came
from this water
o Phase change, plants and animals, materialist and atheist theory
o Heraclitus: all things were ultimately made of fire, constantly in flux
o Empedocles: four elements, earth, water, air and fire
- Pythagoras, number theory, Babylonian and Egyptian sources
- Numbers and shapes, 1 - point, 2 - line, 3 - plane
- Circles in astronomy, Heraclides and Aristarchus: Earth a sphere, planets, sun and
moon all revolved around a “central fire”
- Democritus: small, uncuttable particles called atoms moving in a void
- Atomic theory materialistic and atheist
- Hippocrates, observational work, rejected religious explanations
- Empedocles: four humours matching the four elements: fire, air, water and earth blood, bile, phlegm and black bile, health and the balance of humours
Aristotle
- Aristotle (384-322 BC), student of Plato’s, tutored Alexander the Great
- Importance of observation, classification logic
- “The Philosopher”, work criticized, the authority until at least Renaissance
- Aristotle’s ideas are compatible with commonsense, but not reducible to it
- Four causes: material, formal, efficient (agent making the change) and final
(purpose – biological model)
- Aristotle: senses reflect real qualities in objects, empiricism
- 4 elements - earth, air, fire and water
- Motion is imparted, force must be constant to maintain it
- Natural motion: air and fire up, earth and water down, celestial motion in circles,
all other motion “forced” or “unnatural”
- Earth is immobile and spherical at center of universe
- Void impossible, infinite motion and speed
- Heavens and the 5th element, natural circular motion
- Great chain of being, minerals and vegetables to man
Greek Astronomy
- Museum at Alexandria mathematical and astronomical research
- Claudius Ptolemy (85-165 AD): 5 planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
- Heavens spherical and rotated, sun, moon, stars
- Earth a motionless sphere located at the centre of the universe.
- Classical science was abstract and idealistic, separated from craft knowledge
Science, Technology and China
- China ahead in technology, behind in natural philosophy
- China was isolated by mountains, deserts and steppes
- Sung dynasty (10th -13th century) rice agriculture, increasing population
- Population spiked (estimated at 115-123 million), shifted south, urbanization
increased (to 20% of population), leisured middle class
Government
- Centralized authority in emperor, Emperor T’ai-tsu (960-976),
- Sung Dynasty (960-1279) economic, cultural & political growth
- Transfer from hereditary power to a meritocracy, civil service
- Bureaus, departments, supervisors, political power
- Merchant classes controlled by state
- 12th century China: 50,000 km of waterways and canals, 1100 mile Grand Canal
- Hydrological engineering crossed land boundaries, reinforced centralized state
- Large scale agriculture & trade, large scale state planning, trees, construction,
manufacturing and ship industry
- Ceramics, textiles, paper, machinery
- Paper and block printing (8th century), movable type in 1040
Chinese Science and Philosophy
- Alchemical work, lifespan extension
-
Charcoal, saltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulphur and arsenic (gunpowder) 9th cent.,
bombs and grenades, cannons and rockets by 10th century
Pyrotechnics for celebrations, fumigation, and for medicinal purposes
Math and astronomy, state support
Practical mathematics, economic and engineering problems
No mathematical community, no societies
Algebra over geometry and trigonometry, Muslim mathematicians
Accurate observational astronomy, new stars, comets, eclipses
Astronomy a state secret, transfers, children entering bureau
Accurate meteorological data and agriculture
The Development of Chinese Science
- Centralization, critical inquiry, institutions: guilds, colleges, universities, etc.
- Bureaucracy and work in science and technology
- Government exams and natural philosophy, state support
- Craft knowledge and scholarly knowledge
- General scientific method, universal laws, logic, induction and deduction
- Confucian focus on ethics and social commitments over study and control of
nature