1. Ancient Greek philosophers made many contributions to the development of science. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes proposed early naturalistic theories explaining the world without resorting to mythology. 2. The Pythagorean school, founded by Pythagoras, made advances in mathematics and also studied harmonies in music and the cosmos. Empedocles proposed that all things are made of combinations of four elements. 3. Plato founded the Academy in Athens and emphasized rational thought over empirical observation. His student, Aristotle, established the Lyceum and made wide-ranging contributions to many fields including biology, physics, ethics, and logic. He viewed the universe as a system of

1. UNIT III
European Origins
of Science

2. Objectives
At the end of this unit, you will understand;
1. Greek contribution to the development of
science
2. Various schools that had originated in Greece

3. IONIAN AND THE EARLY GREEK
CONTRIBUTIONS

4.  The essential ingredient missing in Egypt and
Babylonia but available in Greece
was the development of the alphabetic writing and
the liberation of knowledge from
priesthood.
 Greeks were travelers and seafarers.
 So they had the sense of space, adventurous
temperament and resourcefulness.

5. 1. THALES (Ca.625 - 546 BC) of Miletus
 Philosophy
 History
 Science
 Mathematics
 Engineering
 Geography
 Politics
THE BIRTH OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

6.  The first and the foremost of the Greek natural
philosophers
 He is the first person to investigate the basic principles
of nature and so he was considered to be the founder
of natural philosophy.
 Thales explained the underlying unity behind diversities
and he taught that everything came from water, the
primordial basis of life.
 The earth, he supposed, was a cylinder or a disc with
waters below, on which it floated, and with waters
above, from which the rains came.

7. 2. ANAXIMANDER (Ca. 611-547 BC)
Added a fourth element, namely
Fire, to the three, viz, Solids,
Liquids and Gases.
* He believed that living
organisms had risen from
elemental water and that
higher animals, like man, had
developed from lower living
organism.

8. * According to Anaximander’s sketch of the genesis of the world
(cosmogony), the evolution of the world begins with the generation of
opposites in a certain region of Nature:
CREATION & DESTRUCTION

10. -The opposite forces caused an imbalance that necessitated their
ultimate destruction.
-What appears to us as heavenly bodies are reality parts of the
fiery rings.

11. 3. ANAXIMENES (Ca. 611-547 BC)
• He considered ‘air’ as his
primordial substance and derived
the other elements from it.
• In early Greek literature, air is
associated with the soul (the
breath of life) and Anaximenes
may have thought of air as
capable of directing its own
development, as the soul controls
the body

13. Three philosophers of Miletus
believed in a single basic
substance
Natural Philosophers:
• Thales = water
• Anaximander = divine matter, boundless
• Anaximenes = air
• Permenedes: all is permanent
• Heraclutus : all is in flux
• Basic elements: air, water, earth, fire
• Empedocles: Source of nature cannot be a single element
• Anaxagoras: seeds ordered by intelligence.

14. THE PYTHAGOREAN SCHOOL
1. PYTHAGORAS (Ca. 580-500 BC)
- He founded a school in
Croton in Southern Italy
- Gave much attention to
‘regular solids’
- Could consider him as a
Ecologist (cosmophilia &
biophilia)

15. - Born in Samos in Ionia

16. - Greek Mathematician (Pythagorean theorem)

18. 2. EMPEDOCLES of Argentum (Ca. 500 – 430 BC)

19. - He taught that the universe
began as a chaotic mixture of
four elements
- more valuable
contribution is his
hypothesis that light
travels through space at a
finite speed

20. - Change is caused by changes in the position of
the four basic elements – earth, fire, water,
and air.
- Love and Hate are the forces of change.

21. 3. ARCHYTAS (Ca. 400 BC.)
He was a scientist of
the Pythagorean school and
famous for being the reputed
founder of mathematical
mechanics, as well as a good
friend of Plato.
He was specially interested in
the mechanical applications of
science and is said to have
worked out the theory of
pulley

22. The Archytas curve is created by placing a semicircle (with
a diameter of d) on the diameter of one of the two circles
of a cylinder (which also has a diameter of d) such that the
plane of the semicircle is at right angles to the plane of the
circle and then rotating the semicircle about one of its ends
in the plane of the cylinder's diameter.
-This rotation will cut out a portion of the cylinder forming
the Archytas curve

23. ROBOT HISTORY
400-450 BCE
A Mechanical pigeon, created by ancient Greek
Mathematician Archytas, is thought to be the first
robot. It was powered by steam and flew more than
600 ft. until it ran out of steam.

24. GREEK ATOMISM
- LEUCIPPUS (Ca. 400 BC)
- DEMOCRITUS (Ca. 470 – 400 BC)

26. - These ancient atomist theorized that the two
fundamental and oppositely characterized constituents of
the neutral world are indivisible, uniform, solid and
incompressible.
- The latter is describe simply, or emptiness.
- Atoms are solid and impenetrable bodies, and intrinsically
unchangeable; they can only move about in the void and
combine into different clusters.
- Since atoms are separated by void, they cannot fused, but
must rather bounce off one another when they collide.

27. AESCULAPIUS
– god of Medicine
HIPPOCRATES (Ca. 460 -377 BC) – he was an
outstanding figure he regarded medicine as an
art or a technique, rather than a theoretical
science.

28. – the quality of being amusing or comic,
especially as expressed in literature or
speech
- a mood or state of mind

30.  Enhances respiration
 Enhances circulation
 Oxygenates blood
 Suppressed the stress related
hormones in the brain
 Activates immune system

37. (Ca. 488-428 BC)

38. - He was a rationalist
- Maintained that the heavenly bodies were of the same
general nature as the earth (cosmogony)
- That they had become incandescent through rotation.
* his discovery of the true
cause of eclipses. Reasoned
that the moon shines by
reflected sunlight
* Only half of the moon is
illuminated at a time

39. - He even hypothesized that other
worlds besides earth also existed and
were inhabited by human beings like
ourselves.
- His doctrine of nous (‘mind’ or
“reason”)

40. 2. PLATO (429 -349 BC)
-Born on Athens
-He founded the Academy
Subjects of Study:
Immortality
Socrates
Soul
Philosopher King
A priori knowledge

41. Mind VS Material World
- Is the only
fundamental
reality and these
mental forms or
the ideas of the
mind were perfect
Material world as only
a shadow of that
reality and material
objects were only
fleeting glimpses and
imperfect
representations of the
perfect forms

42. ARISTOTLE (Ca. 384 -322 BC)
-Disciple of Plato
- Set up the Lyceum

43. - He was a brilliant biologist
- Cosmogony: He saw the universe as a system of
concentric spheres, all having their common center
- Formal Logic the Deductive Method

45. THEOPHRASTUS (Ca. 372 – 287 BC)
-He came to Athens at a young age and
initially studied in Plato's school.
- was the successor to Aristotle.

46. He attached himself to Aristotle who took to
Theophrastus his writings. When Aristotle fled
Athens, Theophrastus took over as head of
the Lyceum.
He is often considered the father
of botany for his works on plants
The interests of Theophrastus were wide
ranging, extending from biology
and physics to ethics and metaphysics

47.  His two surviving botanical works, Enquiry into
Plants (Historia Plantarum) and On the Causes of
Plants,
Aristotle,Theophrastus
, and Strato of
Lampsacus. Part of a
fresco in the portico of
the University of
Athenspainted by Carl
Rahl, c. 1888.