1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

6.9 Where Do the Clichés about “Ancient Science” Come From? 173
to the development of even very sophisticated forms of deductive reasoning,
such as arose in classical Greece; but one would expect in this context
variations in the choice of assumptions, to suit the needs of the moment. 82
A second important effect of the diffusion of books was the fostering
of a conventional terminology. Anything like Archimedes’ definition of page 220
“ball-shape”, which associates a new meaning to an old word, is likely
meant to be written, not just spoken. Only those who, like Archimedes
or Herophilus, know that their work will last in the written medium and
remain available to specialists in the subject can change the meaning of
a term without causing confusion. Thus, it seems not to be a coincidence
that linguistic conventionalism and nominalist definitions arose around
the time when written culture emancipated itself from oral culture.
Because a fully scientific methodology (in our sense of “scientific”) requires
the formation of vast unified theories, based on shared premises
and precisely defined terms, what we have called the scientific revolution
seems to assume as prerequisite the diffusion of written culture, 83 and so
would have been impossible before the fourth century. Of course, the diffusion
of writing came at a cost (which Plato thought was too high). In
particular, the homogeneity of methods and premises that allowed any
student to solve as an “exercise” a problem internal to a full-fledged scientific
theory is paid for by the giving up of many ideas which, although
present in the earlier culture, for various reasons did not make it into the
victorious systematization.
6.9 Where Do the Clichés about “Ancient Science” Come
From?
This book espouses theses openly opposed to certain fairly widespread
opinions about “ancient science”, summarizable in three interconnected
statements:
a. The Ancients did not know the experimental method.
b. Ancient science was a speculative form of knowledge, unconcerned
with applications. page 221
c. The Greeks created mathematics but not physics.
We discussed the experimental method in Section 6.7. This section tries to
explain the origin of the other two assertions.
82 See page 31 and also Plato, Meno, 86e–87b.
83 Of course this prerequisite is not sufficient. Egyptian culture had used writing for millennia,
but its evolution led in other directions.
Revision: 1.7 Date: 2002/09/14 23:17:37