1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

4
Scientific Technology
In this chapter we will try to verify in the case of Hellenistic civilization the
relationship between exact science and scientific technology that we have
characterized theoretically. The consequences of this new technology to
production and the economy will be considered in Chapter 9.
Alas, the information we have on Hellenistic technology is very limited:
literary sources are almost completely silent on the subject, 0 and archeological
data, though having grown in the last decades, yield information
that is fragmentary, casual and often not at all easy to interpret. Today’s
secondary literature contains excellent works on particular sectors of technology,
but among general works even the best are by now completely
obsolete. 1
Given this situation, our objective will be simply to document through
examples the existence of scientific technology in Hellenistic civilization, 2
and to get a qualitative idea of its level. page 122
0 The useful anthology [Oleson, Humphrey, Sherwood] includes the relatively meager relevant
source material — for the whole Greco-Roman world, not just the Hellenistic period.
1 I refer to the History of technology edited by C. Singer and others ([HT]) and to the Studies in ancient
technology in nine volumes by R. J. Forbes ([Forbes: SAT]). The main limitation of these works
(which are admirable in many respects) is not the presence of ideological prejudices — though they
often are present, as we will have more than one occasion to point out — but that they were written
before a good part of the archeological evidence now available came to light. These works have
contributed for several decades to the supremacy of the “primitivist” view, according to which
Antiquity as a whole was a stagnant period in all sectors of technology.
2 The prevalence of statistical methods has discredited in the eyes of many historians of culture
the use of “examples” as an insufficiently “scientific” method. In contrast, for mathematicians a
single example is enough to prove a theorem of existence, and a single counterexample is sufficient
to prove that an assertion is false. Of course, after one demonstrates through examples the existence
This is page 85
Printer: Opaque this