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Early History of Science

Ages and Stages


The Greeks
Early Technology
Human Evolution
The Stone Age
– Lower and
Middle
Paleolithic http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/oldowanstonetools.htm

2.6Mya-1.2Mya

 First stone tools


Upper Paleolithic (40kBC to 8kBC)
http://lithiccastinglab.com/3timelineindex.htm

 800,000 B.C.: Homo


erectus
 600,000 B.C.: Earliest
major stone tool
manufacturing site by
H. erectus (India)
 400,000 B.C.: Earliest
presence of a vocal
tract in H. sapiens
 300,000 B.C.: Earliest
dated spear (England).
Upper Paleolithic (40kBC to 8kBC)
http://lithiccastinglab.com/3timelineindex.htm

 150,000 B.C.: Evidence of


controlled use of fire
 100,000 B.C.: Intentional
burials by Neanderthals at
Teshik-Tesh Cave in
Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
 48,000 B.C.:
 Homo sapiens sapiens
everywhere except
North & South America.
 Early flake stone tools
appear on islands in
Southeast Asia.
Neolithic
(8000BC)
 Most sophisticated
stone tools
 Bronze and Iron Ages
follow
 Major cities and
civilizations rise later

SUB-SAHARA, AFRICA
5000 B.C. TO 3000 B.C.
Ages and Stages
 Stone tools (2.5Mya, EAfrica by H. habilis)
 Fire (1.5Mya?)
 Language (150kya, EAfrica)
 Numbers on bones (30kBC W+C Europe)
 Farming, domestication of wolves (10kBC),
sheep (9kBC)
 Wheat farming (7kBC) → beer?
 Goats (6.5kBC) → milk → cheese, yogurt
 War weapons (5.5kBC Turkey), walled
communities
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Chronology/30000BC_500BC.html
http://www.sciencetimeline.net/prehistory.htm
Technology
 Decimal number system (5kBC Egypt)
 Astronomical calendars (4.8kBC Sudan)
 4kBC-3.5kBC
 Horses (Eurasia); plows, irrigation (Iraq)
 3.2kBC: wheeled vehicle (Russia),
sailboat (Egypt)
 3kBC: cotton (India); draft oxen, potter’s
wheel (Iraq); abacus (ME, Med);
hieroglyphs (Egypt)
5
1 4
2 3

Earliest Civilizations What they had:


2. Mesopotamia – 5kBC • Major* rivers → agriculture
3. Egypt – 3kBC What they all achieved:
4. India – 2.5kBC • Arithmetic, writing, astronomy
5. China – 2kBC What about other places?
6. Greece* – 1.5kBC • Smaller fragmented
settlements
The Greeks
 Thales (~600 BC) – first Greek
philosopher; invented deductive math;
said to stop a war by predicting an eclipse;
said water is the ultimate substance; the
first futures trader?
 Pythagoras – started a cult based on
numbers: geometry, irrational numbers,
music
More Greeks and Their Elements
 Anaximander (apeiron or “the infinite”),
Xenophanes (earth), Anaximenes (air),
Heraclitus (fire, strife or change),
Parmenides (change is an illusion),
 Empedocles (water, air, fire, earth)
 Democritus (eternal, indivisible atoms of
different kinds)
More G(r)eeks

 Zeno (~450 BC, Elea) – invented the Achilles


and tortoise paradox; reason, not senses, is
the way to truth
 Socrates, Plato – mainly social philosophers;
 Plato: abstract math reflects heaven’s perfection
 Hippocrates– diseases have natural causes
(imbalance of vital fluids); Hippocratic Oath
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
 Revived natural philosophy
 Lectured in his Lyceum, a peripatetic school
 Collected manuscripts later to become the great
Library of Alexandria
 His lectures fill a 150-volume encyclopedia; only
50 survive
 Contributions to science: symbolic logic,
biological classification
 Did little experimentation; often wrong but
influence extended for two millennia
Aristotle’s Physics
 Empedocles (water, air, fire, earth) plus
quintessence, stuff of stars and planets
 Natural states:
 Earth objects stay at rest
 Heavenly bodies revolve in perfect circles
 Four causes – “explanations”
 Material cause – bronze causes statue, silver causes cup;
x is what y is [made] out of
 Formal cause – account of the essence; form and pattern;
formal cause of bowl is “bowl-shaped”; x is what it is to be
y
 Efficient cause – father causes child; x is what produces y
 Final cause – the end or “sake of”; x is what y is for
More Big Names
 Euclid (b. 325 BC) – codified geometry;
proved that √2 was irrational; optics
 Archimedes (287-212BC) – buoyancy;

simple machines; estimated π


 Eratosthenes (276-196BC, Cyrene) –
librarian of Alexandria in Egypt; “Beta” –
second best in everything; estimated size
of the earth
Eratosthenes’s Method

Θ = 1/50 or 7.2°, D = 5000 stadia, 1 stadium = ~160 m


C=?

http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses//astro201/eratosthenes.htm
Other Greek Technology
 Calculating
machine
 Geared machines, simple clocks
 War machinery
 Steam power
 Magnets
If the Greeks were so smart, why didn’t
the scientific revolution start with them?
 Too much war?
 Too academic (ivory tower), no
popularization?
 Too few scientists?
 Slaves and disdain for menial work?
 Too much Aristotle (and other irrational
ideas)?
 Too much theorizing, too little experiment?
After Aristotle (~0 AD)
 Strabo (ca. 100 BC) Geographika: 17-
volume atlas
 Pliny (23-79 AD) Natural History: 37-
volume error-filled encyclopedia
 Ptolemy (ca. 130 AD), Almagest; wrong
model, but excellent observations
 Galen (ca. 170 AD), medicine; pneuma
(senses, reason, imagination, memory),
“seeds of disease” (germs?)
Two Questions:

What about the women?


What about the Philippines?
Women in Early Science
 En Hedu'Anna (2354 BCE)  Lasthenia, (Greece)
 Aganice (1878 BCE)  Lilovarti, (India)
 Aglaonike (Greece)  Maritrayee (India)
 Arate of Cyrene (Greece)  Perictione (Greece)
 Diotama (Greece)  Shi Dun (China)
 Gargi (India)  Theano (Greece)
 Hipparchia (Greece)  Themista ( Greece)
 Hypatia (370 - 415)

http://crux.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/timelist.shtml
Hypatia (370 – 415 AD)
 Educated by her father Theon, Alexandria scholar
 Socrates Scholasticus (b.380) in Ecclesiastical
History:
 Hypatia “made such attainments in literature and science,
as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time.
Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she
explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many
of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions.”
 Head of Neo-Platonists; considered a heretic by Cyril,
Christian Patriarch of Alexandria, whose followers
later kill her
 They allegedly burn later the Library of Alexandria, though
there are other suspects
 Her death and destruction of the Library mark the start of the
Dark Ages in Western History
Philippine Prehistory
 Wave theory (H. O. Beyer): Negritos (25kBC) →
Indonesians (3k-1kBC) → Malays (200BC
onward)
 Almost certainly wrong!
 Current theories:
 “Express Train” (P. Bellwood) left S. China in 7000
BC, in RP ca. 4500 BC
 “Slow Boat” (S. Oppenheimer) from Polynesia
 Philippine prehistory still unclear
 More archaeological data need to be collected and
reconciled with linguistic, and genetic data

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