Did the Greeks Create Science or Inherit It?
In chapter two of my book God Versus Nature I claimed that science originated with the ancient Greeks. However some historians of science have attacked this idea, pushing the origin of science back to earlier cultures. In order to get clear on this issue, let’s start with my summary of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians:
Egypt
The pyramids are dramatic evidence of the Egyptians’ skill in large-scale construction and their ability to perform and apply geometric calculations. The Egyptians developed a simple numerical notation that had ten symbols but was not position-based like our modern system. Using this system, they were able to solve simple problems of area, weight, and volume.
The Egyptians also made simple astronomical calculations related to maintaining the calendar and aligning temples. The north face of the Great Pyramid at Giza is precisely aligned (within 1/20 of a degree) to the celestial north pole, the point around which the rest of the stars appear to rotate. Their calendar served both agricultural purposes (when to plant the seeds) and religious purposes (when to perform ceremonies). Their skill in embalming revealed a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy, and papyri have been found recording the progression of symptoms for diseases.
But perhaps the most notable aspect of Egyptian civilization was its changelessness. Early in their history, Egyptians made a few key advances in mathematics, medicine, and calendrical astronomy, but over the course of two thousand years, there were virtually no discoveries or advances in these fields. This extreme conservatism makes sense in light of the otherworldliness of Egyptian culture. The Egyptians had an elaborate and centralized state religion. The pyramids themselves are monuments to the Egyptian obsession with the world beyond death. Given the absolute importance of the other world, the Egyptians had little motivation for studying this world or improving their life on Earth.
Mesopotamia
The Babylonians developed a complex numerical notation that was both decimal and sexagesimal (based on powers of 60). Babylonians recorded “word problems” in which specific unknown quantities had to be calculated from known quantities. They compiled tables of multiplications, reciprocals, squares, and square roots, as aids to their calculations. Babylonian priests compiled extensive records of the motions of the celestial bodies—records that would later be used by Greek astronomers. These priests made accurate mathematical calculations for planetary positions and times, and compiled complex tables for prediction of celestial events such as eclipses and lunar phases. They used these astronomical calculations to create a calendar based on the lunar cycle but also related to the solar year. The maintenance of an accurate calendar was crucial to the Babylonians for the same reasons as for the Egyptians: for agricultural and religious purposes. The Babylonians’ medical practices, like those of the Egyptians, were strongly tied to their religion. (1)
The Babylonians commonly believed that disease was caused by gods, and their primary means of diagnosis was hepatoscopy — the examination of the liver of sacrificed animals. Mesopotamian and Egyptian mathematics reveals a proficiency in certain mathematical operations, but there was no conceptual-level mathematics with general propositions, theorems, or proofs. For both of these ancient civilizations, religion was the central focus of their abstract conceptual thought. In chapter two of my book, I also wrote:
Both of these cultures made cognitive advances which helped the Greeks to develop science, but … neither of these possessed science itself, because neither had a scientific mindset. (2)
By “scientific mindset” I was referring to the Greeks’ conscious distinction between the natural and the supernatural — what G.E.R. Lloyd called “the discovery of nature.” According to Lloyd, the Greek thinkers generally recognized:
that natural phenomena are not the products of random or arbitrary influences, but regular and governed by determinable sequences of cause and effect. Many of the ideas attributed to the Milesians are strongly reminiscent of earlier myths, but they differ from mythical accounts in that they omit any reference to supernatural forces. (3)
A classic example is Thales’ account of earthquakes. Whereas previously, earthquakes had been explained by reference to Poseidon, Thales said that the earth rests on water, and natural disturbances in the water made the earth shake. (This does not mean that the Greek natural philosophers fully rejected the supernatural. References to gods are found in numerous writings, even those of Thales, who held, according to Aristotle, that “all things are full of gods.” (4))
The pre-Socratic thinkers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Leucippus, and Democritus were seeking a single natural substance or small set of substances which could explain the great diversity of the natural world.
The Hippocratic writings generally ruled out divine intervention as the direct cause of disease. A treatise titled Airs, Waters, Places states that “Each disease has a nature of its own, and none arises without its natural cause.” (5) A well-known example is the treatise on epilepsy, commonly known as the “sacred disease”; the author of this treatise argues that epilepsy is not caused by any type of divine activity, but has a natural cause.
Later in chapter two I summarize a wide variety of accomplishments made by Aristotle and many other ancient Greeks. Aristotle developed a philosophy in which our knowledge comes from our perceptions of the world around us; in which abstract principles must be grounded in observations. Aristotle also made meticulous observations of marine animals and developed theories explaining their structure and behavior.
Greeks made advances in medicine, mathematics, mechanics, optics, and especially astronomy, in which they created models of the cosmos and used geometric reasoning (along with simple observations) to determine the shape and size of the earth, and the relative distances to the sun and the moon. All of these astronomical studies went far beyond any other early civilization.
Accusations of Madness
Identifying the ancient Greeks as the originators of science has been widespread among historians. However there have been some prominent exceptions. In a paper titled “Hellenophilia versus the History of Science”, David Pingree — a historian specializing in ancient science — says:
A Hellenophile suffers from a form of madness that blinds him or her to historical truth and creates in the imagination the idea that one of several false propositions is true. The first of these is that the Greeks invented science. (6)
Historians like Pingree highlight the Greek continuities with Babylonian astronomy and Egyptian medicine. According to Martin Bernal, “by the second millennium B.C. Mesopotamian astronomy and Egyptian medicine … were concerned with regular and, if possible, predictable phenomena with relatively little supernatural involvement.” (7)
If Bernal is correct, then the lines between Greek and Babylonian astronomy and between Greek and Egyptian medicine may become more blurred. However, something is clearly wrong with Pingree’s definition of science, which he presents later in his paper:
What is the proper definition of science for a historian of science? I would offer this as the simplest, broadest, and most useful: science is a systematic explanation of perceived or imaginary phenomena, or else it is based on such an explanation. [emphasis mine] (8)
Pingree also writes:
Astral and psychic magic we may not wish to test to determine their validity, but as historians we must regard them as scientific, if for no other reason than because many Western scientists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took them to be genuine sciences. (9)
Pingree’s definition of science is too broad. This is not to imply that there is no value for historians in studying fields which we now consider to be pseudo-sciences. But we are not obliged to keep calling them “sciences” because historical figures believed in their validity.
Historians of science like to identify and condemn examples of the historical fallacy of presentism (or Whiggism), which may be defined as the improper projection of present-day ideas and values onto the past. However we must never forget that history is for us living in the present. When we study the past, we must always use our own ideas and values; we simply need to guard against implying that these are always shared by the historical figures we study.
Did the Greeks create science? Absolutely. They initiated a crucial shift from the supernatural to the natural, and this enabled them to make impressive advances in a range of different scientific fields.
(1) Frederick M. Seiler, God Versus Nature: The Conflict Between Religion and Science in History (Rhinebeck, NY: Epigraph Publishing, 2020). Kindle Edition. p. 10
(2) Seiler, pp. 10-13
(3) G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (New York: Norton, 1970), p. 8
(4) Aristotle, De Anima, A5, 411a7
(5) As quoted in Edward Grant, A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 21
(6) David Pingree, “Hellenophilia versus the History of Science,” ISIS, 1992, 83, p. 555
(7) Martin Bernal, “Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science”, ISIS, 1992, 83, p. 597
(8) Pingree, p. 559
(9) Pingree, p. 559