Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science (Vol. 1-5)

In the field of cosmology, Greek genius has demonstrated that the earth is spheroidal, that the moon is earthlike in structure and much smaller than our globe, and that the sun is vastly larger and many times more distant than the moon. The actual size of the earth and the angle of its axis with the ecliptic have been measured with approximate accuracy. It has been shown that the sun and moon present inequalities of motion which may be theoretically explained by supposing that the earth is not situated precisely at the centre of their orbits. A system of eccentrics and epicycles has been elaborated which serves to explain the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies in a manner that may be called scientific even though it is based, as we now know, upon a false hypothesis. The true hypothesis, which places the sun at the centre of the planetary system and postulates the orbital and axial motions of our earth in explanation of the motions of the heavenly bodies, has been put forward and ardently championed, but, unfortunately, is not accepted by the dominant thinkers at the close of our epoch. In this regard, therefore, a vast revolutionary work remains for the thinkers of a later period. Moreover, such observations as the precession of the equinoxes and the moon's evection are as yet unexplained, and measurements of the earth's size, and of the sun's size and distance, are so crude and imperfect as to be in one case only an approximation, and in the other an absurdly inadequate suggestion. But with all these defects, the total achievement of the Greek astronomers is stupendous. To have clearly grasped the idea that the earth is round is in itself an achievement that marks off the classical from the Oriental period as by a great gulf.

In the physical sciences we have seen at least the beginnings of great things. Dynamics and hydrostatics may now, for the first time, claim a place among the sciences. Geometry has been perfected and trigonometry has made a sure beginning. The conception that there are four elementary substances, earth, water, air, and fire, may not appear a secure foundation for chemistry, yet it marks at least an attempt in the right direction. Similarly, the conception that all matter is made up of indivisible particles and that these have adjusted themselves and are perhaps held in place by a whirling motion, while it is scarcely more than a scientific dream, is, after all, a dream of marvellous insight.

In the field of biological science progress has not been so marked, yet the elaborate garnering of facts regarding anatomy, physiology, and the zoological sciences is at least a valuable preparation for the generalizations of a later time.

If with a map before us we glance at the portion of the globe which was known to the workers of the period now in question, bearing in mind at the same time what we have learned as to the seat of labors of the various great scientific thinkers from Thales to Galen, we cannot fail to be struck with a rather startling fact, intimations of which have been given from time to time—the fact, namely, that most of the great Greek thinkers did not live in Greece itself. As our eye falls upon Asia Minor and its outlying islands, we reflect that here were born such men as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Aristarchus, Hipparchus, Eudoxus, Philolaus, and Galen. From the northern shores of the aegean came Lucippus, Democritus, and Aristotle. Italy, off to the west, is the home of Pythagoras and Xenophanes in their later years, and of Parmenides and Empedocles, Zeno, and Archimedes. Northern Africa can claim, by birth or by adoption, such names as Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Aristippus, Eratosthenes, Ctesibius, Hero, Strabo, and Ptolemy. This is but running over the list of great men whose discoveries have claimed our attention. Were we to extend the list to include a host of workers of the second rank, we should but emphasize the same fact.

All along we are speaking of Greeks, or, as they call themselves, Hellenes, and we mean by these words the people whose home was a small jagged peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean at the southeastern extremity of Europe. We think of this peninsula as the home of Greek culture, yet of all the great thinkers we have just named, not one was born on this peninsula, and perhaps not one in five ever set foot upon it. In point of fact, one Greek thinker of the very first rank, and one only, was born in Greece proper; that one, however, was Plato, perhaps the greatest of them all. With this one brilliant exception (and even he was born of parents who came from the provinces), all the great thinkers of Greece had their origin at the circumference rather than the centre of the empire. And if we reflect that this circumference of the Greek world was in the nature of the case the widely circling region in which the Greek came in contact with other nations, we shall see at once that there could be no more striking illustration in all history than that furnished us here of the value of racial mingling as a stimulus to intellectual progress.

But there is one other feature of the matter that must not be overlooked. Racial mingling gives vitality, but to produce the best effect the mingling must be that of races all of which are at a relatively high plane of civilization. In Asia Minor the Greek mingled with the Semite, who had the heritage of centuries of culture; and in Italy with the Umbrians, Oscans, and Etruscans, who, little as we know of their antecedents, have left us monuments to testify to their high development. The chief reason why the racial mingling of a later day did not avail at once to give new life to Roman thought was that the races which swept down from the north were barbarians. It was no more possible that they should spring to the heights of classical culture than it would, for example, be possible in two or three generations to produce a racer from a stock of draught horses. Evolution does not proceed by such vaults as this would imply. Celt, Goth, Hun, and Slav must undergo progressive development for many generations before the population of northern Europe can catch step with the classical Greek and prepare to march forward. That, perhaps, is one reason why we come to a period of stasis or retrogression when the time of classical activity is over. But, at best, it is only one reason of several.

The influence of the barbarian nations will claim further attention as we proceed. But now, for the moment, we must turn our eyes in the other direction and give attention to certain phases of Greek and of Oriental thought which were destined to play a most important part in the development of the Western mind—a more important part, indeed, in the early mediaeval period than that played by those important inductions of science which have chiefly claimed our attention in recent chapters. The subject in question is the old familiar one of false inductions or pseudoscience. In dealing with the early development of thought and with Oriental science, we had occasion to emphasize the fact that such false inductions led everywhere to the prevalence of superstition. In dealing with Greek science, we have largely ignored this subject, confining attention chiefly to the progressive phases of thought; but it must not be inferred from this that Greek science, with all its secure inductions, was entirely free from superstition. On the contrary, the most casual acquaintance with Greek literature would suffice to show the incorrectness of such a supposition. True, the great thinkers of Greece were probably freer from this thraldom of false inductions than any of their predecessors. Even at a very early day such men as Xenophanes, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Plato attained to a singularly rationalistic conception of the universe.

We saw that "the father of medicine," Hippocrates, banished demonology and conceived disease as due to natural causes. At a slightly later day the sophists challenged all knowledge, and Pyrrhonism became a synonym for scepticism in recognition of the leadership of a master doubter. The entire school of Alexandrians must have been relatively free from superstition, else they could not have reasoned with such effective logicality from their observations of nature. It is almost inconceivable that men like Euclid and Archimedes, and Aristarchus and Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus and Hero, could have been the victims of such illusions regarding occult forces of nature as were constantly postulated by Oriental science. Herophilus and Erasistratus and Galen would hardly have pursued their anatomical studies with equanimity had they believed that ghostly apparitions watched over living and dead alike, and exercised at will a malign influence.