Science in the Ancient World

Introduction

Mathematics and prescience appeared in many of the world’s ancient civilizations but evolved only in Greece. In other cultures, proto-scientific endeavors either remained stillborn curiosities or became hopelessly mired in superstition.

Natural science may be defined as a systematic body of knowledge obtained by careful observation, critical experimentation, and skeptical analysis of objective data. Science attempts to construct logically consistent abstract principles, called theories, to explain experimentally obtained facts. To be accepted as valid, a theory must be internally consistent and a consensus of competent researchers must agree that it is at least useful, if not true. Science by its very nature must be a social activity in which mathematics, experimentation, and rational, objective dialogue provide the means scientists employ to convince and persuade.

The origin of science

Scientific thinking probably evolved parallel to the development of language over the past two million years as the human brain, growing in size and complexity, conferred a selective advantage to the hunter-gatherer ancestors of humans. During the New Stone Age (18,000 to 5000 b.c.e.), the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry marked the beginning of human civilization as well as the emergence and rapid development of mathematics and technology. However, it was the invention of writing about five thousand years ago that provided the means to store a permanent body of knowledge.

Written knowledge is an absolute prerequisite to the development of science. A culture with stored knowledge may have records of tangible causes and effects to explain nature, the essence of proto-science, whereas nonliterate societies tend to rely on supernatural explanations. However, simple knowledge of cause and effect is not sufficient to transform supernaturalism into science. What is required are demonstrations that controlled effects can be produced by manipulating their causes. It is then that explanations move from the realm of religion to the realm of science. As more facts become scientifically known and the law of controlled causation covers more cases, the need to seek supernatural interpretations shrinks proportionately.

The transformation of primitive humans from Neolithic hunter-gatherers to urban dwellers occurred in three primary locales in the West: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. An important trait of this revolution was the creation of mathematics (arithmetic and geometry) and proto-astronomy as well as the complete absence of natural science. Geometry, as its name (literally “earth measure”) indicates, originated with land measurements. Astronomy began with observations of the stars in order to determine the optimum time for planting and harvesting, but an obsession with predicting the future convoluted astronomy into astrology.

Celestial observations, preserved as magical knowledge and transmitted as part of a clerical heritage, produced a privileged priestly class in charge of religious rituals and arcane knowledge. Religion, arising from an innate sense of wonder and a fear of the powerful forces of nature, was used by priests for their own benefit. By monopolizing knowledge and encouraging superstition, priests acquired power over the weak and uneducated. Not surprisingly, the spirit of rational inquiry, the precursor of natural science, was actively discouraged, while the more practical concerns of agricultural and construction advanced mathematics and technology.

Arithmetic, geometry, and proto-astronomy evolved in the earliest cities because they were essential to the development of the urban revolution itself. Arithmetic was essential to keep the inventories and account books of the merchants and traders under the guardianship of the priests who ruled the cities. Geometry was required by architects and engineers for the construction of the monumental structures that characterized these civilizations. Astronomical observation was indispensable to the development of an accurate calendar for agriculture, for without sufficient food, the growing city-states would have collapsed. These sciences, which conformed to the prevailing belief system of officially sanctified superstition, provided the infrastructure necessary to support the urban revolution. City residents willingly submitted to the priests who maintained power by their monopoly on astronomical and mathematical knowledge. Performing simple arithmetic was an act of religious ritual, and geometrical diagrams appeared as mysterious hieroglyphics decipherable only by the priests. As long as astronomy remained embedded in religion and was the sole domain of priests, it could never progress from the realm of embryonic proto-science to a natural science based on objective rational inquiry.

Natural science develops only when the circumstances are right, and the right circumstances occurred in ancient Greece. Some of the key components necessary for science and mathematics, open debate and objective thinking, are already evident in the oldest Greek literature (Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, both c. 800 b.c.e.; English translation, 1616). In these works, despite the gods’ manipulations of their lives, humans control their own destinies and arrange their own affairs. Because Greek society was stable for about one thousand years, there was ample time for these prescientific attitudes to develop into Greek proto-science.

For a variety of reasons, science did not develop in the other great civilizations of the ancient world. China produced many technological innovations and took tentative steps toward science, yet science did not develop. Indian science was a diluted version of Greek science; it had the substance but not the form. The Arabs originally learned Greek science from India and later directly from translations of the Classical Greek texts, but this knowledge was not brought to fruition. These failures show that even proto-science can arise only under a very precise set of cultural circumstances. Even then, the highly rational Greek science, by relying exclusively on the intellectual with little recourse to experiment, tended to be somewhat subjective. It was not until the Renaissance that Europe, under another set of somewhat unlikely circumstances, extended the limits and limitations of Greek science and propelled the advance of modern science. Greek science began in the human mind and remained there; modern science begins outside the human mind—with nature.

Mesopotamia (4000 b.c.e. to 539b.c.e.)

From its beginnings in Sumer before the mid-third millennium b.c.e., Mesopotamian science was characterized by tedious enumeration attempting to order all things in the world into columns and series but without any desire to synthesize and reduce these data into a system. Although they knew the essence of Pythagoras’s theorem one thousand years before Pythagoras, it was never formulated as a law nor was any attempt made to derive it. Although great strides in astronomic observation, mathematics, and time reckoning were made before 3000 b.c.e., no laws of nature were derived over the long history of this civilization.

Babylonian priests studied the stars not only for practical reasons, but to divine the future. For this they needed precise astronomical data obtained by accurate observation. Their timetables of celestial events eventually became the calendars that were employed to regulate all organized social activities, from the growing of crops to religious ceremonies. By 2000 b.c.e., the observations could accurately predict astronomical events such as planetary conjunctions and eclipses. Although the theoretical foundation of Babylonian science was based on mythological assumptions, the theories worked.

By 1000 b.c.e., the astronomer-priests had plotted the paths of the Sun and Moon through the fixed stars and determined the dates of the solstices and equinoxes. They divided the yearly path of the Sun through the fixed stars into the twelve signs of the Zodiac and divided this circular path into 360 degrees, the supposed number of days in a year. The degrees of a circle were subdivided into sixty minutes, and a minute into sixty seconds of arc. Their obsession with accurately measuring time by the movements of the heavenly bodies led to the invention of the sundial and the clepsydra, or water clock. The division of the month into four seven-day weeks, the clock into twelve hours, the hour into sixty minutes, and one minute into sixty seconds are all vestiges of Babylonian astronomy.

To the Babylonian priests, the most interesting objects in the celestial dome were the planets (wanderers through the fixed stars) consisting of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The motion of the planets through the constellations of the Zodiac had a double significance; it provided accurate data for the priest’s records, and it conveyed symbolic astrological messages predicting the future and the fate of humans. In this way, precise celestial observation remained inextricably intertwined with the pseudo-science of astrology, and true science stagnated.

Being merchants, the Babylonians needed simple mathematics to facilitate recording monetary transactions. Early in their civilization, they developed a place-value notation in their number system, the place of a digit indicating its value. By 2000 b.c.e., the familiar arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, cubing, and extracting roots were being performed. Because a number system based on place values encounters the problem of an empty space when that position is null, the concept and symbol for zero was incorporated. Eventually, the Babylonians even developed a numerical algebra capable of solving certain fourth-order equations, and they were able to solve several complex geometrical problems using the concept of similarity. They advanced geometry sufficiently to compute the area of irregular surfaces, but their computation of pi as equal to 3.0 was a surprisingly crude approximation. They knew that the diagonal of a square is the square root of two (1.414) times the length of a side, but they never discovered that the square root of two is an irrational number.

Babylonian mathematics was concerned exclusively with solving specific problems. No proofs or explanation of a general method was ever provided, and despite the algebraic skill employed, mathematics remained quite elementary. It reached its zenith in the time of Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 b.c.e.) and continued for another three thousand years without further development.

Egypt (3000-332 b.c.e.)

In Egypt, as in Babylonia, the scholars were the priests who, dwelling in the comfort and security of the great temples, had the time and the interest to observe nature and study mathematics. It was these priests who, despite their superstitious worldview, advanced mathematics and established Egyptian technology. At the beginning of Egyptian recorded history, mathematics was already fairly well developed and priests were engaged in careful astronomical observations. Although areas and volumes could be accurately computed, the lack of decimals and a concept of zero made Egyptian math somewhat cumbersome. The dependence of Egyptian life on the fluctuation of the Nile River led to the development of accurate surveying techniques and careful land measurement. Accurately predicting the annual flooding to determine the best time to plant crops necessitated precise astronomical observations. The scrupulous records of planetary motions, accumulated over thousands of years, enabled the astronomer-priests to construct a calendar accurate enough to include leap years.

Although they did not develop physical science, over the centuries, the Egyptians’ mathematics and measurement techniques became sophisticated enough to permit the construction of complicated architectural and engineering projects such as gigantic pyramids and the intricate colonnaded temples that still adorn the land. The Egyptians sought mathematical knowledge not for its own sake but for its practical applications. Their mathematics was very elementary (arithmetic) and was surrounded by an aura of magic; arithmetic problems were occult secrets. The Egyptians knew that a triangle with sides in the ratio of 3:4:5 was a right triangle, but they knew nothing of the Pythagorean theorem.

Pharaoh Akhenaton, who ruled during the fourteenth century b.c.e., developed the quasi-scientific penchant of considering the Sun as a light-emitting disc rather than as a god. Although this view jeopardized the priest’s power, nothing could be done while the pharaoh was alive because he ruled with absolute authority. After his death, however, his name was struck from the calendar of kings, and he was vilified as a criminal when he was mentioned at all. The priests could not tolerate any threat to their power over the people, and the people were more than relieved to restore their old Sun god back to his rightful place in the pantheon. Even this small deviation toward scientific objectivity could not be sanctioned; such is the strength and tenacity of myth. If even the all-powerful pharaoh could not interfere with religious beliefs, it is not difficult to imagine the formidable odds preventing celestial observations from developing into a true science.

India (2500-329 b.c.e.)

The history of Indian science is one of the longest and most amply documented. It begins in prehistory and ends with Alexander the Great’s conquest of India. Indirect evidence suggests that mathematics and astronomy developed in the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan) at the third great center of early Western civilization. The evidence is indirect because the ancient scripts containing the relevant information have yet to be deciphered. Nevertheless, oblique evidence suggests that astronomic observations were being made before 2000 b.c.e.. After 1750 b.c.e., this civilization declined and was followed by a one-thousand-year dark age of preliterate peasant communities. In the seventh century b.c.e., a new age of urbanization began in the Ganga Valley. Although rational natural science was not present in the earlier civilization, science did surface briefly during the second urbanization when the forces tending to suppress science had weakened somewhat.

During this time, Uddālaka Āruni took the first profound and important steps from prescience to science. The prevailing Vedic culture was not only uninterested in science but also actively disparaged it, direct perceptions of nature being considered anathema to the ruling deities. Nevertheless, Uddālaka was able to formulate and practice scientific methodology using experimental verification of hypotheses by simply ignoring the mythological belief system of the Vedic scriptures. Although some of his explanations seem naïve, one must remember that his experimental method was confined to the unaided human senses applied to incompletely controlled variables. Uddālaka was the first to attempt a comprehensive and unified naturalistic explanation of the evolution of the world, the origin of life, the making of humans, and the generation of mind. He postulated a universal cosmology without gods and moved away from ubiquitous animism to a separation of matter and life. His secularization of nature foreshadowed natural science, and his methodology of experimental demonstration was a precursor of the scientific method. His ideas, however, being ensconced in the Hindu tradition and at variance with Brahman orthodoxy, were doomed from the beginning. No school to promulgate his ideas was ever established, and with time, his ideas suffered progressive distortion to make them more amenable to the prevailing dogmatism of Hinduism.

Indian mathematics influenced the development of Arabic algebra, as well as providing the Arabic numerals and the concept of zero. However, the main characteristic of the Indian civilization was a turning inward to strive toward higher consciousness. At its most profound level, Indian philosophy completely denied existence and encouraged religious doctrine to be accepted without question. Despite a long tradition of philosophical discourse, even proto-science cannot develop in a milieu in which rational objective inquiry is denigrated.

Greece (600 b.c.e.-140 c.e.)

Egyptian technology and mathematics, which made their impressive feats of engineering possible, were greatly admired and copied by the early Greeks, while early Greek cosmology was borrowed from the Babylonians. However, in the sixth century b.c.e., a new development swept the Ionian culture: Rational thought emerged as the hallmark of philosophy, and Greek ideas came to be dominated by the love and pursuit of reason. Mythological explanations of nature were discarded and replaced by natural causes, and the universe became a rational, ordered system capable of being comprehended. Perhaps as new ideas and diverse philosophies clashed at the crossroads of trade, superstitions canceled each other and reason prevailed. Increased trade also created a wealthy leisure class with time to think and contemplate new thoughts, unrestrained by ancient texts or powerful priests with a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

Although the roots of Greek science were Babylonian, the Greek religion itself paved the way for the secularization of human thought as a rational and consistent understanding of nature was sought through reason unconstrained by myth. The Greek pantheon contained a plethora of gods, but ruling both gods and humans was Moira, or Fate, an impersonal higher law to which even the gods were subject. It is then but a short step to replace Moira by incalculable, but comprehensible, laws of nature; order and regularity replace chaos and chance, and mythology begets science as philosophers search for natural causes.

Thales of Miletus (c. 624-c. 548 b.c.e.), who imported geometry to Greece, and knew enough Babylonian astronomy to predict an eclipse of the Sun, asked fundamental questions on the origin of the universe and would not accept mythological answers. By searching nature for answers, he liberated proto-science from the spell of superstition. His answers may have been incorrect, but by the questions asked and by searching nature for answers, he employed a new process for understanding the universe and took the first decisive step toward science.

Another Ionian philosopher, Anaximander (c. 610-c. 547 b.c.e.), postulated that the stars are pinpricks in a rotating celestial dome revealing the cosmic fires beyond, and the Sun is a hole in the rim of a huge wheel turning about Earth. This is the first approach to a mechanical model of the universe; the Sun god’s chariot of the Babylonians and Egyptians having been replaced by a rotating wheel in an automated universe.

However, it was Pythagoras of Samos (c. 580-c. 500 b.c.e.), skilled mathematician and the originator of a mystical religious philosophy, who could be considered the true founder of both mathematics and natural science. Pythagoras and his disciples believed that numbers were the ultimate reality and imbued these with magical qualities. Their concentration on orderliness and number founded mathematics, and their careful observations of nature spawned science. As a case in point, Pythagoras was able to relate musical intervals to simple arithmetic ratios of the lengths of a vibrating string. He also observed that the simpler the ratio, the more consonant the sound of two simultaneously plucked strings, an embryonic theory of music.

Pythagoras is best known as the father of the Pythagorean theorem, although it was known for special cases by the Egyptians and the Chinese hundreds of years before he was born. The Egyptians may have discovered formulas for geometrical calculations, but the Greeks proved these formulas and introduced the concept of generality; they developed abstract methods of proof not restricted to particular cases. It was not the discovery of the Pythagorean theorem that marked the Greek contribution to mathematics, but the proof of the theorem.

The mathematization of the universe by Pythagoras may not have been valid, but mathematical equations still remain the most utilitarian method for delineating physical laws. In other civilizations, no one even imagined that mathematical relationships might be the key to unlocking the secrets of nature. Today this concept is so ingrained into science that without mathematics, modern physics could not exist. Starting with the Pythagoreans, Greek mathematics made the leap from concrete to abstract thinking. Geometry became a rational science of theorems proved by logical deduction from postulates and axioms, which Euclid later organized into a comprehensive whole. This invention probably occurred only in Greece because of the Greek public assemblies where great prestige was attached to debating skills based on rules of argumentation developed over centuries. In the process of developing strong arguments, the early Greek mathematicians discovered formal logic and thereby transformed Eastern numerology into true mathematics.

Although later Greek philosophers such as Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.) concocted bizarre physical theories, no supernatural agents were involved. The apparent whims of nature were still explained by natural causes operating in certain sequences with predictable regularities. Although Aristotle paid insufficient attention to physical data, his science, though erroneous, was important because it was constructed on logical reasoning and rational deduction. The literary religion of Greece was not dominated by priests with a vested interest in preserving their power, and even the gods were not exempt from physical law. Greek culture with its penchant for reason and objective thinking smashed the barrier of egocentric superstition. Logic, deductive reasoning, and science can originate only in a mind that has freed itself from belief in its own omnipotence.

Rome (400 b.c.e.-410 c.e.)

By the start of the common era, Rome had come to dominate the entire Mediterranean region. The sophisticated and progressive Roman civilization, with access to the entire corpus of Greek science, produced not a single scientist. Except for arithmetic and the rudimentary knowledge of geometry necessary to plan a temple or survey a farm, science was not part of the education of Roman citizens. Roman technicians used Greek geometry for building their vast engineering projects but added not a single theorem. As for the science of astronomy, in the Roman Empire, it stagnated; Romans citizens were more interested in astrology than in understanding the cosmos.

How can the Romans’ complete lack of interest in science be explained? Perhaps slavery, by stifling the drive for industrial innovation, was the cause, but this seems somewhat simplistic. Perhaps Rome’s social structure, which considered science as fit only for casual speculation or practical techniques, left no place for the appreciation of science. Or perhaps arcane scientific knowledge was considered magic, and Rome had a long history of aversion to gross forms of magic. Although the reasons may never be known, there is perhaps a warning here that a civilization that uses the fruits of science without understanding or practicing science will stagnate and eventually decline.

The Middle East

The ancient Israelites were essentially indifferent to science; the little science they did possess was borrowed from their Babylonian and Egyptian neighbors. Hebrew geometry was rudimentary and used exclusively for practical applications and empirical procedures. Hebrew cosmology was derived entirely from Babylonian myths, but with Yahweh replacing the Babylonian gods. It is instructive to compare the two fundamentally different ways Israel and ancient Greece acquired knowledge. In the oldest Greek literature (Iliad), there is a strong preexisting tradition of noncontradictory debate, indicating the Greek penchant for acquiring knowledge through rational argument. This is a major step toward the separation of the internal and external worlds essential to the subsequent development of science. The pervasive tradition of the Old Testament is of prophets communicating directly with God to acquire knowledge of his will, which they exhort the people to obey. Prophets do not attempt to persuade by reasoned arguments but proclaim revealed truth. In this egocentric environment, scientific thinking could not and did not arise.

There has been a long history of active cultural contact between Arabic-speaking lands, India, and Europe; therefore, it is not too surprising that the earliest Arabian science was imported exclusively from Greece. Arab philosophers tended to believe that the important knowledge had already been discovered, and they need only concentrate their efforts on gathering this wisdom and translating it into Arabic. This search for truth through extant wisdom did give them a taste for methodical investigation; they eventually realized that experimentation was a necessary stepping stone to scientific truth. Considering science as an active effort helped it evolve away from metaphysical speculation toward the modern concept of science as experimentally imbued knowledge. Their concern with observation, accurate description, and precise measurement did much to develop an objective scientific attitude that was later covertly transmitted back to the West with the ancient Greek science they so carefully preserved.

Despite the Arabic love of knowledge, in the theocratic society spawned by Islam, all foreign ideas except medicine were suspect and no social foundation for science existed. The centers of scientific culture were few and far between, and little information was shared, rendering any sustained development virtually impossible. The Arabian style of scholarship was for one savant to attempt to master all secular knowledge. This individual might advance science to some degree, but the lack of cooperative scholarship rendered this approach ineffectual. But the coup de grace that prevented science from developing in the Arab world was the four-hundred-year ban on printing in Muslim countries, instituted by imams for religious reasons. Thus, although the Arabs saved Greek knowledge and kept it alive until it was reintroduced to the West, Islam was cut off from the European scientific revolution of the Renaissance that it had helped initiate.

Mesoamerica and South America

The ancient cultures of the Americas, particularly the Maya, developed a complex civilization that rivaled that of Egypt. Since an interest in mathematics and astronomy seems to be an adjunct of civilization, it is not surprising that they accomplished sophisticated astronomical observations and developed arithmetic. Although they had taken the first steps toward proto-science, it would be misleading to label the religious systems and technical achievements of these people “science” because of their preoccupation with divination and mystical problems.

The Maya used pictographs to record information, a decimal counting system, and a highly sophisticated ritualistic calendar to reckon time. The calibration of the calendar was left to an elite group, the priest-astronomers who exerted great intellectual effort into contriving this elaborate system. They were aware of the cycles of solar and lunar eclipses and could predict these fairly accurately, which helped maintain their stranglehold on power. Ancient Maya mathematics enabled the priests to count with very large numbers, but only numbers related to their calendar were recorded. Maya culture was a pervasive theocracy: The gods ruled, the intellectual and religious life was dictated by priests who interceded with the gods, and the people obeyed. Time was an emotional fetish for the Maya, and the calendar was the foundation of all their actions. In order to preserve human existence, the priests had to calculate each ritual according to their convoluted methods to coordinate each god’s sacrifice to the calendar. Every moment of their lives was preoccupied with knowing the position of the planets, for if the gods were not propitiated by having their prayers and sacrifices at exactly the right moment, the world would end. The Maya priests dominated the people by fear and superstition; lacking any motivation to move away from supernatural explanations, there was no incentive for the appearance of science.

China

The Chinese empire existed as a stable society for most of the past four thousand years, ending in the early 1900’s. Thousands of years ago, China developed remarkable inventions and brilliant technology and took tentative steps toward astronomy, physics, chemistry, and seismology. The scientific creativity of the Chinese people, however, was severely handicapped by the very culture creating the enduring stable environment indispensable to the parturition of science.

Because Chinese scholars preferred continuity over discontinuity, their worldview was organic, rather than mechanistic: Every phenomenon was connected to every other according to a hierarchical order. Chinese astronomers, disinclined to trust theory, proposed no explanations of planetary motions, although they could predict eclipses. Their careful experimentation enabled them to discover magnetic declination and to register the exact chemical conditions required in kilns to accurately reproduce extraordinary ceramic pieces. Mechanical properties of matter were being studied as early as the fifth century b.c.e. Treatises on the atmosphere and the geometrical forms of crystals were written during the Han Dynasty (206 b.c.e.-220 c.e.). Han scholars also determined that snowflakes are composed of hexagonal crystals, a fact not discovered in the West for another fifteen hundred years.

The ancient Chinese proposed a wave theory to explain sound propagation, studied musical scales, and designed musical instruments based on scientific observation. They understood resonance and how to eliminate it when it became problematic centuries before the West. Besides inventing the magnetic compass in 1100 b.c.e., the Chinese also studied the magnetic properties of magnetite. The science, unfortunately, stopped after the observations; magnetic attraction was explained in terms of an internal qi that necessitated that magnetite and iron attract each other so that the yin of one complements the yang of the other.

By the fifth century b.c.e., elaborate studies on image formation by mirrors were carried out by Mozi (fl. fifth century b.c.e.). He also used a pinhole to project an inverted image in a dark room, investigated the linear propagation of light, and studied the motion of the shadows of flying birds. By the fourth century b.c.e., Chinese astronomers knew that moonlight is actually sunlight reflected from the Moon. Zhang Hua, experimenting during the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316 c.e.), discovered that a piece of ice cut into a sphere will focus light, the basic principle of the convex lens. Yet despite a myriad of scientific observations and the invention of many technological marvels, Chinese physics descended into the occultism of feng shui and the metaphysics of yin-yang.

A mathematical treatise produced during the early Han Dynasty contains the first known mention of a negative quantity, and Zu Chongzhi calculated the correct value of pi to six decimal places in the fifth century c.e. However, because Chinese mathematicians were more concerned with the moral order of society than with mathematical proofs, they never developed Euclidean geometry with its concurrent geometrical way of visualizing nature. Chinese mathematics consisted of reckoning rules that, despite their great sophistication, could only be applied to the detailed calculations for which they had been designed. Although these methods gave a false sense of understanding nature, they did not lead to any rational conception of a cosmos controlled by discoverable laws.

Chinese culture amalgamated two disparate philosophies: the Confucian, concerned with the individual’s duty to family and society, and the Daoist striving to transcend everyday life and achieve a mystical union with the universe. The Confucian ideal was a society of tradition, social etiquette, moral standards, and scholarship. In a culture in which social harmony is regarded as more important than abstract principles, individualism tends to be smothered and the disquieting spirit of scientific inquiry tends to be anathema. The Daoists, on the other hand, observed nature only as a means of intuiting characteristics of the Dao (the way of liberation from this world) by eschewing all logical thought. Although Daoists may have had a basic disposition toward scientific observation, their deep mistrust of the analytic method prevented them from developing laws or constructing scientific theories.

Although the three great inventions (magnetic compass, gunpowder, printing press) that transformed Europe after the Renaissance all came from China, it was Europe that achieved the breakthrough to modern science. The Chinese philosophy of nature, based on organic analogies, could not accommodate the picture of dead matter moving in accordance with rigid mathematical laws. Western science was conceived on the method of reductionism, whereby the properties of a complicated system could be understood by studying the behavior of its component parts. Because their religious philosophy emphasized the interconnectedness of all nature, the Chinese approach was primarily holistic. However, holism without the accompanying reductionism is not amenable to scientific progress.

The Greeks believed in the absolute invariance of the laws of nature. From the inevitable relationship between cause and effect they created the worldview that the universe was predictable and knowable, as well as the incentive to reveal that order. In China, there was no confidence that such a code existed, and even if it did, no one was sure that it could be comprehended by mere mortals.

Current views

There are two prevailing views on how science was acquired by humans. The traditional view maintains that the true beginnings of science occurred only once—in ancient Greece. Only the Greeks developed the concepts of objectivity and deductive reasoning that are the hallmarks of science. By severing the human inclination toward the supernatural connection and differentiating internal thought from external reality, the Greeks promoted the unique set of cultural circumstances which spawned science.

As twentieth century scholars unearthed evidence of proto-science in India and China, the second theory of the birth of science emerged. This view is that the human brain is predisposed toward scientific thought, and therefore, every culture eventually develops science. If science had not arisen from the Hellenistic world it would have, sooner or later, appeared in other cultures. The main problem with this idea is that it cannot explain why, if the human brain evolved to its present form 150,000 years ago, real scientific knowledge has only been achieved in the past three hundred years.

The twentieth century viewpoint was given further impetus in 1991 with the appearance of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, which hypothesized that ancient Greek philosophy and technology originated in Africa and migrated to the West through Egypt. Those scientific traditions that never left their traces in modern Western science were purposely suppressed by first, denying that non-Western achievements were really science; second, rewriting the history of the origins of European civilization to make it self-generating; and third, appropriating non-Western knowledge through conquest, recycling it as Western, and suppressing knowledge of its origins.

The consensus of modern scholars, however, seems to be that the Bernal hypothesis is a melange of poor research and fabrication masquerading as a scholarly investigation. This pseudoscholarly propaganda is not a serious contender to the traditional view that Greek civilization arose autonomously and that the contributions from its North African neighbors, while important, were not substantial. Not only was Greece the undisputed fountainhead of science, but also no other civilization seemed able to abolish irrationality and completely separate internal thought from external reality. Other cultures may have played important roles in the preservation and subsequent development of science, but none was able to develop the objectivity necessary for science to liberate itself from the shackles of superstition.

Though the roots of modern science lie deep in many ancient civilizations, these civilizations, despite highly developed technologies, mathematical systems, and accurate planetary data, functioned with a complete absence of natural science. The Babylonians, Chinese, and Maya kept extensive accurate records of astronomical observations but never attempted to discover a mechanism to explain their observations. The ancient Chinese believed the unpredictable irregularities of nature were important signs from heaven; consequently, regular patterns tended to be ignored. Egypt and Rome were content to use elementary mathematics for practical matters and the applications of science to engineering endeavors. Although India protected Greek knowledge in the centuries between the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam, and the Arabs subsequently maintained the Greek interest in science for many ensuing centuries, they too eventually succumbed to the allure of the supernatural. Most early civilizations never graduated from superstition and thaumaturgy (the performance of magic) to a general curiosity about nature. Only the ancient Greeks, through the development of rational debate, took the definitive step toward the separation of the internal and external worlds essential to the subsequent development of science. The Greeks did not excel in developing technology; rather, they originated the novel concept that the world is governed not by capricious gods but by the natural laws amenable to systematic investigation.

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