Ancient Greek science

It is certain that Greek science in its origin was dependent on traditions that came from more ancient civilizations, notably from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

For example, Herodotus was the first to suggest that the Greeks obtained their knowledge of astronomy for Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Although unified by language and shared heritage, Greek society was not a single politic entity but a collections of city states scattered around the Aegean Sea and the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Instead of a centralized kingdom, Greek civilization arose as a set of decentralized city-sates, and it retained its loosed structure until Alexander the Great unified Greece in the fourth century BC.

Its pre-imperial period, from 600 to 300 BC is known as the Hellenic era, while period following Alexander’s conquests has been designated as the Hellenistic.

The Greeks were a people who actively participated in the governance of the state and were accustomed to debate and discussion of matters of importance as part of the daily course of life.

The most remarkable of Hellenic science was the Greek invention of scientific theory – ‘natural philosophy’ or the philosophy of nature. Early Greek speculation on the cosmos and the disinterested Hellenic quest for abstract knowledge were unprecedented endeavors.

There are four main chronological divisions in the period of Greek science:
*Pre-Socratic period. From 600 BC until just before 400 BC
*Fourth century, the century of Plato and Aristotle and later the creation of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies.
*Hellenistic period, 300 – 100 BC
*Greco-Roman period, from about 100 BC to AD 600.

The last period was the period that the Greek science which was to pass later to the Arabs and through them to the Latin West was epitomized, reorganized and subjected to extensive commentaries.

The most famous of the early Greek thinkers, can be called ‘philosophers’, that is who love and search for knowledge or wisdom.

Aristotle refers to the earliest of Pre-Socrates physicists, for they were the first who tried to explain phenomenon on natural rather than supernatural grounds.

Earthquakes, for example, which Homer and Hesiod attribute to the action of Poseidon, are explain by Thales as the rocking of the earth while it floated in the all encompassing waters of Oceanus.

Aristotle also told the world that when two objects of different weights were dropped from a height, the heaviest would hit the ground first.
Ancient Greek science