Science and the Greek Philosophers

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the Greeks, such as Aristotle, did not have a theocratic tradition to hold them back, rejected monarchies, opting for republican systems of government, which allowed a relatively free flow of intellectual thought in contrast to some other ancient kingdoms, such as Persia. The author points out that Aristotle deduced the elements of atomic theory, a theory later proven to be correct with the aid of modern technology and postulated the now accepted theory of physics that all matter is merely converted into a different substance and is never destroyed. The paper relates that one of the values of Greek scientific inquiry and the postulates of early thinkers like Aristotle was that the Greeks first suggested that the human, naked eye is not the harbinger of all truth.

From the Paper:

"Of course, nothing proved more discomforting than the idea that earth and humanity were not the center of creation-but this was more true Galileo's time than in Ptolemy's as it should be noted that even Ptolemy's erroneous acceptance of the earth's central place in the universe was not taken on faith. While his error was accepting that the planet's orbits were circular rather than oval, and he lacked an appropriate telescope to give him a full range of information about the cosmos, he was still able to elaborate on the theory of planets in orbit, and to account for such astronomical confusion of the time, such as the apparently backward motions of some of the planets in the sky and their periodic variations in size or brightness depending on the seasons."

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