Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Bertman, PhD, professor emeritus of classics at Canada’s University of Windsor, is the author of seven books, including Doorways through Time (featured by the Natural Science Book Club), The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom, Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, and Erotic Love Poems of Greece and Rome.

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The Genesis of Science

Prometheus Books

Contents

Acknowledgments.................................................................11Prologue. The Essence of Science................................................13Chapter 1. The Genius of Greek Civilization.....................................17Chapter 2. Science before the Greeks............................................21Chapter 3. The Language of the Universe.........................................43Chapter 4. Optics...............................................................49Chapter 5. Acoustics............................................................67Chapter 6. Mechanics............................................................75Chapter 7. Chemistry............................................................95Chapter 8. Geography and Geology................................................109Chapter 9. Meteorology..........................................................119Chapter 10. Astronomy...........................................................125Chapter 11. Biology.............................................................139Chapter 12. Medicine............................................................153Chapter 13. Psychology..........................................................169Chapter 14. Greek Science in Roman Hands........................................185Chapter 15. The Transmission of Greek Science to Later Ages.....................197Chapter 16. Sky Watchers of Central America.....................................211Chapter 17. Secrets of Stonehenge...............................................221Chapter 18. Science in Ancient China............................................227Epilogue. The "Untravell'd World"...............................................239The Hellenic "Hall of Fame".....................................................243Notes...........................................................................257Recommended Readings............................................................267Index...........................................................................277

Chapter One

    ... that which we are, we are,
    One equal temper of heroic hearts
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

          —Tennyson, Ulysses

Why the Greeks? Why was science—the methodical investigation of the physical universe and the living beings within it—a Greek invention and not the creation of some other civilization?

It is a question of profound significance and it goes to the very heart of this book. For if we satisfy ourselves with making a mere compilation of separate discoveries rather than seeking the unifying genius behind them, we will have settled for the "what" or "how" of history and never touched the "why."

French scientist Louis Pasteur once declared: "Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind."' Pasteur's point was that only those who are mentally ready will recognize the significance of what lies on the ground before them. Others can walk by and never notice, or—worse—never care, preoccupied as they are with mundane concerns or blind to the possibilities that lie undisclosed beneath the surface of what most might call reality. Therefore, truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder—not because it is subjective, but because it can so easily be overlooked. Unlike others who came before them, the ancient Greeks recognized that truth for the first time and thus more passionately and more critically observed the world around them.

What was it that made the Greeks this way, that allowed them to see—and impelled them to search for—what millions of others had missed for millennia?

Surely the land of Greece itself was an unlikely mother of geniuses. Its soil was rocky and poor, lacking the fertility and abundant water that had long before blessed the river valleys of the Near East where civilization itself had been born. Scattered on islands or separated from each other by mountains, the Greek people would seem to have been too fragmented to ever have left a collective and decisive mark on history. The miracle is that they did, not by drawing upon the resources around them but by maximizing the potential that lay within. From a critical examination of their surviving literature and art, we can reconstruct the unique traits of personality that made the ancient Greeks who they were, and from these ethnic characteristics we can trace the genesis of the scientific attitude that has come to define the modern world.

First among these traits was rationalism, a reliance on the intellect to find answers and solve problems. Rather than prayerfully turning outward for help, the Greeks instead persistently turned inward and used their brains, convinced that the mind was a fit instrument to accomplish any task. While not underestimating the capricious power of the gods, they looked upon the universe, however complex, as a fundamental expression of order accessible to the mind. If the universe was a lock, then intelligence was the key that could open it. Their leaders in this enterprise were philosophers, not "wise men" but "lovers of wisdom," as the word's etymology shows. Indeed, ancient Greece produced the world's first philosophers, men aggressively dedicated to the rational pursuit of truth.

It was their rationalistic "ear" that enabled the Greeks for the very first time to hear the language of the cosmos. That language was mathematics—a mathematics beyond the mere measurement or calculation of particular things but dependent upon immutable laws to which all the phenomena of this world were, are, and forever will be, obedient. In learning this universal language of space and time, the Greeks became conversant with nature's most fundamental relationships.

Though not averse to applying their knowledge to the everyday world, Greek thinkers more often than not preferred the development of theories to their practical application, enamored as they were with reason's abstract purity.

The rationalism of the Greeks was combined with humanism, a pride and confidence in their own human potential. This pride was in part born of their successful struggle to survive, but in larger part it was engendered by the firm conviction that humanity can possess an experience no god could ever have: the thrill of victory won by risking everything against great odds. Such a thrill was reserved for mortals precisely because their lives were inherently so fragile and their powers so finite. It was a thrill the Olympian gods, omnipotent and immortal, could never share, for because man had to die, only man could most fully live. Thus, confronted with the choice of becoming a god or remaining human, the hero Odysseus (fig. 1, above) chose to retain his humanity, even though it meant he had to eventually relinquish his life.

The Greek zest for living was driven by a compulsion to excel. Knowing they could not exist for all time, they determined to achieve a different kind of immortality by performing deeds that would ensure their being remembered forever. Thus the hero Achilles was willing to die young on the battlefield of Troy as long as his name remained indelibly impressed on the minds of future generations. In addition to pursuing excellence on the battlefield or, more peacefully, in the Olympic Games, the Greeks also pursued it by creating enduring works of literature and art, and by reaching new heights in the search for knowledge, never retreating in debate from the battleground of ideas. Their pursuit of excellence was also marked by a passion for perfection and a dedication to detail that would eventually contribute to the precision essential both to the fine arts and to science.

Another of their distinguishing traits was restless curiosity, an insatiable hunger to understand themselves and their world. This trait would not only prove instrumental in making the Greeks the world's first scientists, but it also explains their achievements in other fields. Drama, for example, itself a Greek invention, represented the quest to understand the motivations for and the consequences of individual human behavior. The field of history, another Greek innovation, examined the implications of that behavior on a wider stage. Indeed, the very word history in Greek means "research." Even democracy, yet another Greek invention, was compatible with objective science, for as critic Mary McCarthy once observed, "In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality."

Underpinning all of these national characteristics was a fierce love of freedom and of individualism. Without freedom of thought and unfettered imagination, science could not exist. And without heroic individualism, the bastions of stultifying convention could never be breached.

All these distinctive national characteristics would set the Greeks apart from the earlier civilizations of the ancient world.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Genesis of Science by STEPHEN BERTMAN Copyright © 2010 by Stephen Bertman. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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