The Glaring Fact

The Iron Age and Greek Natural Philosophy

• Ancient Greece: Scholarly discussion about nature; The exclusion of religion from explanations of nature; City states and democracy, open inquiry

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: “The Iron Age is the first in which commodity production becomes a normal and indeed an essential part of economic activity” –> 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

• “Natural philosophy” not “science”
• 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
• Smaller cities, role of the individual citizen, argumentation skills
• 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: Thales –> everything was originally water: earth, air and living things came from this water; Phase change, plants and animals, materialist and atheist theory; Heraclitus: all things were ultimately made of fire, constantly in flux
• Empedocles: four elements, earth, water, air and fire, maintained place
• Elements material and constantly changing, later fixed, social inequities
• Elements were substances or qualities
• Pythagoras, number theory, Babylonian and Egyptian sources
• Numbers and shapes, 1 - point, 2 - line, 3 - plane
• Numbers and geometry, strings in simple ratios of length create harmonies, number ratios and geometrical shapes represented by harmonies
• 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
• Eudoxus: mechanical model of the heavens, inaccurate and later complex
• 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
• Plato, idealism abstract ideas and mathematics

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
• Matter moves from potential to the actual
• 4 elements - earth, air, fire and water, passive (dry / moist) and active (hot /cold)
• 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
• Prime mover, God
• 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.

Roman Science and Engineering

• Romans, science and engineering
• Decay of science and gap between the powerful and the powerless
• Slavery, mechanical production and industrialization
• Roman aqueducts, roads and architecture
• 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, government industry and resources
• 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, affinities, gunpowder, 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

Institutionalization of Science in China

• Confucius (551-479BC), neo-Confucian philosophy in Sung dynasty
• Confucian philosophy: family, ethics, just society, statecraft, submission to elders, respect authority, supported status quo
• Educational system standardized, curriculum of literary and moral learning
• Government exam system discouraged questioning authority
• Poetry, ethics, political histories and law, and some administrative problems
• Chinese civilization and foreign traditions
• No legal autonomy for guilds or societies, no professional organizations or guilds

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