Lecture 16 min.
Until the 7th century BCE, Greece was a periphery of Near Eastern civilization. The Greeks learned from the East: they borrowed the alphabet and shipbuilding techniques from the Phoenicians, and the art of sculpture along with the rudiments of mathematical knowledge from the Egyptians. The famous philosopher Pythagoras lived for a long time in Egypt, trying to become acquainted with the priests and penetrate their secrets; he brought back from Egypt the Pythagorean theorem and the mysticism of numbers. Imitating the priests, Pythagoras founded a secret society of philosophers; his followers believed in the transmigration of souls and claimed that the Earth was a sphere.
Greece was a land of poor soil, and its population could not feed itself through agriculture; many turned to fishing, while others left in search of a better fortune in distant lands, founding colonies along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The invention that made Greece a wealthy country was the trireme, a new type of warship. The first trireme was built around 630 BCE by the Corinthian shipwright Ameinocles; it was a vessel with three rows of oars, a crew of 170 rowers, and 20–30 marines. The trireme measured 40–50 meters in length and 5–7 meters in width, with a displacement of about 230 tons. Its great speed and maneuverability allowed the trireme to make effective use of its main weapon, the ram, which could stave in the hull of an enemy ship.
The trireme was a fundamental breakthrough; it allowed the Greeks to seize dominance over the Mediterranean Sea and gain control of all maritime trade. The Phoenicians, who until then had been the leading merchants of the Mediterranean, tried to resist the Greeks, but their fleet was crushed by Greek triremes at the Battle of Salamis. All sea routes now passed through Piraeus and Corinth, and the enormous profits from middleman trade brought prosperity to the Greek cities. These trading profits were invested in crafts, above all in the production of ceramics; ceramic vessels were the universal packaging of the age — grain, wine, oil, and many other goods were stored in amphorae.
Athens became the leading craft center of the Mediterranean, but Greek entrepreneurs lacked sufficient labor, so they began buying slaves. Slaves were purchased from the barbarian peoples living along the shores of the Black Sea, brought to Athens, and trained in various crafts; they worked in large workshops known as ergasteria. Thus the creation of the trireme gave rise to Greek trade and Greek slaveholding. Greek society was a bourgeois society of merchants and entrepreneurs; the fact that these entrepreneurs relied on slave labor does not change the essence of the matter — the planters of the American South likewise used slaves. The defining feature of bourgeois society is the clash of private interests, which led to endless lawsuits.
In Greek courts, every man had to defend himself; in these trials, plaintiffs and defendants competed in the art of oratory, and this art soon began to be taught in private schools run by wise men known as "sophists." The acknowledged leader of the sophists was Protagoras; he maintained that "man is the measure of all things" and that truth is whatever seems so to the majority (that is, to the majority of judges). Protagoras's pupil Pericles became the first politician to master the art of oratory; it was this skill that enabled him to rule Athens for 30 years.
All of Greek philosophy descended from the sophists and Protagoras; to a great extent it amounted to speculative reasoning that would today be considered unscientific. Nevertheless, rational ideas can also be found among the philosophers' arguments. Socrates was the first to raise the question of the objectivity of knowledge; he questioned accepted truths and beliefs and declared that "I know only that I know nothing." Anaxagoras went even further — he denied the existence of the gods and attempted to construct his own picture of the world, arguing that bodies are made up of minute particles. Anaxagoras's follower Democritus called these particles atoms and tried to apply infinitesimal quantities to mathematical calculations; he arrived at a formula for the volume of a cone. However, the Athenians were outraged by these attempts to deny the existence of the gods: Protagoras and Anaxagoras were banished from Athens, and Socrates was condemned by the court to drink a cup of poison.
Socrates's pupil was the famous philosopher Plato (427–347 BCE). Plato believed in the existence of the soul and in the transmigration of souls after death. For the history of science, what matters is not so much Plato's philosophical quest as the fact that he was the founder of sociology, the science of society and the state. Plato proposed a project for an ideal state governed by a caste of philosophers resembling the Egyptian priesthood (it should be noted that Plato had visited Egypt). The mainstay of the philosophers were warriors, the "guardians," resembling the Spartans, who lived communally and held everything in common — including their wives.
Plato claimed that his ideal state had once existed in Atlantis, a country located somewhere in the West, on a continent that later sank beneath the sea. This was, of course, the "science fiction" of its day. More importantly, Plato and his disciple Dion attempted to build an ideal state in Syracuse, on Sicily; this political experiment led to civil war and the ruin of Syracuse.
Plato's sociological studies were carried on by Aristotle, who wrote the famous treatise Politics, containing a comparative analysis of the social order of most of the states known at the time.
Aristotle advanced a number of propositions later accepted by modern sociology; he argued, in particular, that population growth is the leading factor of social development, and that overpopulation gives rise to famine, uprisings, civil wars, and the establishment of "tyranny." The goal of the "tyrants" was to establish "justice" through an equal redistribution of land. Aristotle is also known as the founder of biology; he described and classified various species of animals, just as he described and classified states — scholars of this kind later came to be called "systematists."
Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great, the famous conqueror of half the world. The Macedonian conquests were driven by a new military invention — the creation of the Macedonian phalanx. Alexander's soldiers carried spears six meters long, and the men standing in the rear rested their spears on the shoulders of those in front. Fighting as part of a phalanx demanded a high degree of coordination, and Alexander's father, Philip, spent a great deal of time drilling his soldiers. The Macedonian phalanx was a fundamental breakthrough; this invention set off a wave of Macedonian conquests and gave rise to a new cultural sphere that historians call the Hellenistic world.
Alexander took an interest in the sciences and helped Aristotle establish the first institution of higher learning, the "Lyceum"; he took Aristotle's nephew Callisthenes with him on his campaign. Callisthenes and his assistants described the nature of the conquered lands, measured the latitude of various locations, and sent Aristotle stuffed specimens of exotic animals and the herbaria they had collected. After Alexander's death, the role of patron of the sciences was taken up by his friend and general Ptolemy. When Alexander's empire was divided, Egypt fell to Ptolemy, and in Alexandria he founded, on the model of the Lyceum, a new center of learning, the Museum. The buildings of the Museum stood amid a beautiful park and included lecture halls for students and houses for the teachers, an observatory, a botanical garden, and a magnificent library holding 700,000 manuscripts. The teachers of the Museum received a royal salary; among them were not only philosophers and mechanics but also poets and sages from the East, who translated Egyptian and Babylonian treatises into Greek. The Egyptian priest Manetho was the author of the treatise Aegyptiaca ("Egyptian Antiquities"), while the Babylonian priest Berossus wrote the Babyloniaca ("Babylonian Antiquities"); seventy-two Jewish scholars translated the Bible into Greek.
The Museum was the first research center to be generously funded by the state, and its work demonstrated that where there is money, science will follow. In essence, the birthday of the Museum was the birthday of ancient science itself. The head of the Museum, its "librarian," was the geographer Eratosthenes, who succeeded in calculating the length of a meridian by measuring latitude at various points; this provided the final proof that the Earth is a sphere. Euclid created geometry — the very geometry still taught in schools today. He made rigorous proof the foundation of science; when Ptolemy asked him for a shortcut that dispensed with proofs, Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to geometry." Euclid's pupil Apollonius of Perga continued his teacher's work and described the properties of the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola. At the Museum, scholars actively debated Aristarchus of Samos's hypothesis that the Earth revolves in a circle around the Sun — but this turned out to contradict observation (the reason being that the Earth moves not in a circle but in an ellipse). As a result, the scholars of the Museum, led by Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century CE), developed the theory of epicycles. According to this theory, the Earth lies at the center of the universe, surrounded by transparent spheres nested one within another; moving together with these spheres, the Sun and planets travel along complex epicycles. Beyond the outermost sphere of the fixed stars, Ptolemy placed the "abode of the blessed." Ptolemy's work, The Great Treatise on Astronomy in Thirteen Books (known as the Almagest), remained the principal guide to astronomy right up to early modern times. Ptolemy also created scientific geography and gave the coordinates of eight thousand different geographical locations; his Guide to Geography was used by Europeans up until the time of Columbus.
The founding of the Museum coincided with a new revolution in warfare: the invention of military engines, the ballista and the catapult. The appearance of the ballista transformed naval tactics; whereas the trireme's main weapon had once been the ram, now huge ships with towers were built, on which ballistae were mounted. These ships were called quinqueremes ("fives"), with five or more rowers to an oar, and a total crew of rowers that could reach a thousand men. It was the ballista that allowed King Ptolemy to win mastery of the seas; Alexandria took the place of Athens and became the chief trading center of the Mediterranean. From Alexandria, a canal gave access to the Red Sea, and the ships of the Alexandrian Greeks sailed as far as the shores of India. The symbol of Alexandria's commercial power was the 130-meter Pharos lighthouse, one of the wonders of the world, built by Sostratus of Cnidus on the orders of Ptolemy II.
"King Ptolemy dedicates this to the savior gods, for the benefit of sailors" — so read the inscription on a plaster slab at the base of the lighthouse. But over time the plaster crumbled away, revealing another inscription beneath it, carved into the marble: "Sostratus of Cnidus dedicates this to the savior gods, for the benefit of sailors."
The invention of the ballista marked the birth of engineering science, "mechanics." The first great mechanical engineer was the famous builder of military machines, Archimedes, who spent most of his life in Alexandria. Archimedes gave a mathematical description of the use of the wedge, the pulley, the winch, the screw, and the lever. Together with the shipwright Archias, Archimedes built for Hieron, king of Syracuse, the Syracusia, an enormous floating palace with magnificent halls and pools. The ship was propelled by two thousand rowers, and ballistae mounted on its towers hurled stones weighing some fifty kilograms at the enemy. Thousands of workers harnessed themselves to ropes to launch the ship, but could not budge it; Archimedes then built a winch with which the king was able to move the ship single-handedly. Archimedes is credited with discovering the laws of hydrostatics and inventing the "Archimedes' screw," a device for raising water that was used to irrigate fields. Among the other Alexandrian engineers who won fame were Ctesibius, the inventor of the water clock and the fire pump, and Hero, who created the aeolipile, the forerunner of the steam turbine. The still, later used for producing alcohol, was also invented in Alexandria.
The 3rd century BCE saw the beginning of the age of Roman conquest. Rome's rise was tied to a new military invention, the creation of the legion. This new Roman military system set off a fresh wave of conquests and gave rise to a new cultural sphere that historians call the Pax Romana, the "Roman Peace." Having conquered Greece and Egypt, the Romans adopted both Greek culture and the scientific achievements of the Museum.
The chief technical achievement of the Romans was the invention of cement and concrete. The Romans learned to use formwork and to build concrete structures, using crushed stone as aggregate. In the 2nd century CE, the Pantheon, the "Temple of All the Gods," was built in Rome, with a cast concrete dome 43 meters in diameter; this structure later became a model for architects of the modern era. The Romans used cement and concrete in building roads and bridges, and Roman roads inspired the admiration of historians in later ages. The bridge over the Danube, built by the architect Apollodorus, was one of the wonders of its time, extending more than a kilometer in length. The pinnacle of Roman building art was the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, built by Anthemius of Tralles; this church had a dome 33 meters in diameter, resting on pillars 23 meters high.
The most celebrated scholar and engineer of Roman times was Marcus Vitruvius, who lived in the 1st century BCE. At the request of the Emperor Augustus, Vitruvius wrote The Ten Books on Architecture, an extensive work describing the building trade and various machines; it contains the first known description of the water mill. In the 15th century, Vitruvius's treatise became a standard manual for architects of the early modern era.
In his work, Vitruvius drew on the writings of scholars from the Alexandrian Museum, which continued to operate until the end of the 4th century. In its final centuries, the Museum was home to such renowned scholars as Pappus and Diophantus. In 391 CE, the Museum was destroyed in a wave of religious violence, as Christians accused its scholars of worshipping pagan gods.
The role of Christianity in the development of science can only be understood by grasping the essence of this ideology. As is well known, Karl Kautsky, founder of the German Social Democratic Party, considered Jesus to be the creator of a socialist ideology. "Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor," Jesus told the rich man. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." "All who believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need," the Acts of the Apostles tells us. Later on, Christians came to accept private property, but truly devout monks still live in communes to this day. Christianity was a socialist ideology, and it was this that made it the religion of the common people and secured its victory.
At the same time, however, Christianity claimed the status of a monopoly ideology; it fought against other religions and other gods, persecuting every form of dissent. No one had the right to doubt what was written in the Bible — and the Bible stated that the Earth lay in the midst of the Ocean, covered like a tent by seven domes of heaven, that Jerusalem stood at the center of the world, and that Paradise lay in the East, beyond India, where four sacred rivers had their source: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Ganges. This was an ancient picture of the world, borrowed long ago from Babylon, and it could not be reconciled with ancient science. In the end, the fathers of the Church agreed to accept the system of Claudius Ptolemy; they quietly acknowledged that our planet is a sphere and moved Paradise beyond Ptolemy's seventh sphere, into the "abode of the blessed." Later on, however, once the Church had become firmly established, it could no longer afford to make such concessions to Copernicus and Galileo.
The Church suppressed the free thought of scholars, but the demise of ancient science was not caused by the Church's dominance. In the 3rd century CE, far to the east, a new weapon appeared that would bring about the destruction of ancient civilization.
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