Oct 3 Lecture: Greek history, culture, myth
History of science timeline
Ancient World 2000BCE (Babylonia) – 500CE (fall of
Roman Empire)
Medieval 500-1400CE (Islamic and Christians
worlds)
Renaissance and Early Modern Europe 1400-1700
Scientific Revolution 1543–1687 (Copernicus –
Newton)
Greek history, culture, mythology
 Context in which the first “scientific” thinking
emerged.
 Intellectual foundations of science in ancient Greek
thought.
 Importance of Greek culture in Western civilization
– examples?
Periods in the ancient history of Hellas
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1500-1200BCE Mycenaean period (age of heroes)
1200-700 Dark Age (Homer)
700-500 Archaic age
500-300 Classical Greece (Hellenic)
300-30BCE Hellenistic (Alexander)
27BCE-476CE Roman Empire
“Science”?
 Define as knowledge claims about the natural
world.
 Distinguish from practical knowledge, e.g.
technology, astrology?
– Babylonians & Egyptians had writing, useful number
system, astronomy, calendar, medicine.
– But did they seek theories, causes?
Bronze Age
 2100BCE Indo-European people invade Greece;
create “Greek” language.
 1700-1500 Minoan society, island of Crete.
 1500 Greeks invade Crete. Establish Mycenaean
civilization.
Mycenaean civ 1500-1200 (map)
Age of heroes (Mycenaean)
 Trojan War 1270BCE
 Troy falls?
 Greeks colonize Asia Minor
Mycenaean culture
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Warriors; sea trade; piracy
Small regional kingdoms, palaces
Slavery
Writing Linear B (not alphabetic)
Religion of the Indo-European gods, Zeus et al.
Origin of the familiar stories of Greek gods &
heroes.
Greek Dark Age 1200-700BCE
 1200 Cities abandoned; no literacy.
 1000 Greeks colonize east coasts of Aegean Sea;
found Miletus in Ionia.
Revival 900BCE
 New city-states (polis)
Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Delphi, etc.
Military aristocratic class
Individual fighting, prowess, honor
Ethic of competition
776BCE Olympics
Stories and myths
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Oral poetry tradition; bards
Commemorate the Heroic Age ~1200
800BCE Greek alphabet
Homeric epic poems composed ~750BCE
Iliad
–Events of the Trojan War ~1200
Odyssey
–Odysseus’s journey home
Warrior values
Fantastic or truth?
Hesiod’s Theogony 725BCE
 Theogony = genealogy of the gods
 Mythology text
 Authoritative account
 Generation of gods
– Gaia & Ouranus
– Titans (Cronos)
– Olympians (Zeus)
Greek mythology
 Gods imagined in the image and behavior of
humans
 Yet like other religions, they also embody forces of
nature. Nature inhabited by spirits.
 Functions of myths?
 How different are myth and science?
Greek myth of Prometheus’s creation of humans
 Prometheus molded men out of water and earth and gave
them also fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in
a stalk of fennel. But when Zeus learned of it, he ordered
Hephaestus to nail his body to Mount Caucasus. On it
Prometheus was nailed and kept bound for many years.
Every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured his
liver, which grew by night. That was the penalty that
Prometheus paid for the theft of fire until Heracles
released him.
Archaic age 700BCE,
Greek expansion
Classical age, Athens 460BCE
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Pericles
Direct democracy
Citizenship
“The worst thing is to rush into action before the
consequences have been properly debated.”
Persian wars, 490BCE- (map)
Parallel between Greek democracy and philosophy:
politics influences science?
 GER Lloyd (1979) Magic, Reason, and Experience
 “Just as one of the notable features of Greek
political experience is the way in which questions
about how society should be regulated came to be
a subject for open discussion… so too the
possibility of challenging deeply held assumptions
about ‘nature’ and of debating such issues as the
origin of the world is a prominent characteristic of
Greek speculative thought.”
“Testing arguments, weighing evidence, and adjudicating
between opposing points of view were a common part of the
experience of a considerable number of Athenian citizens.”
Political/legal debate as “contest”
Role of rhetoric = argument
Rhetoric vs truth??