Customer Reviews

Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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I really enjoyed this book. The Greeks undoubtedly had a very interesting culture, and an analysis of their early scientists is an important an interesting read. Mr Lloyd has compiled a good introductory overview, outlining the major players, the development of various ideas, and some suggestions why their "science" got started in the first place. This is not an easy question to answer. I liked his idea that critical analysis of ideas about the natural world may have been a corrollary of a general environment of critical examination of political structure and ideas in difficult times. In other words, because ideas in general were subjected to critical analysis, critical examination of the natural world logically followed, more as an afterthought than a deliberate injunction. It is an interesting theory.

The book includes discussions of various differences and similarities between modern and ancient science. Ancient thinkers seemed less concerned with the practical potential of their ideas. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake, with a few notable exceptions, was a worthy enough endeavour in itself. They saw the natural world as something more to be studied than "tamed". "Science" was a more vaguely defined discipline; few people practised it much less got paid for it. The book discusses the various streams and ideas which grew about, with, and around it, such as medicine, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and biology. The Pythagorians, Platonists, Milesians, Aristotle, Thales, and Anaximander are all names which come to the fore, but unfortunately, their contribution withers away far too quickly in the history of the world. Some interesting points I noted were early suggestions that man had sprung from other organisms, (namely fish), the problem of change, theories concerning the nature of matter-you know-elements, atoms and so on.

A look into the thinking of the early Greeks is in part a mirror into the heart and nature of our society. My only complaint with the book is that we have so little remaining information about these thinkers and their times.

Please, archaeologists and the like, find much more about the Greeks in some colossal discovery of thousands of well-preserved, buried manuscripts in a buried ancient city somewhere about Greece, so we can know more about the ancient world.

I will refrain from the obvious statement of "it's all Greek to me" (OK I guess that I just said it, but I will not do so again), but seriously I must say that this was the overriding impression that I got from the book. It is clear that the author is an authority on the history of Greece and Greek Philosophy, but is not a scientist, and a lack of scientific focus made the book less interesting for me than might otherwise have been the case. I have been trained as a scientist and I never liked Greek philosophy because I found it confusing and frankly mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, this book did little to dispel this view. That is not to say that I did not learn anything from it - I did, but not as much as I had hoped to. I found the text dry and in spite of my interest in the subject of the history of science rather uninteresting. I think that this was the case, in part at least, because the book follows Greek science from a chronological perspective - starting with Thales and the Milesians, then to the Pythagoreans, the Hippocratic writers, Plato, and finally to Aristotle. From my perspective this tended to confuse things. I would have preferred a book that took one subject at a time; for instance, Greek biology, medicine or concepts of the solar system and developed that fully before going onto another subject.

The book did contain thematic elements, such as such as the introduction of mathematical considerations by the Pythagoreans, "The Problem of Change", the medical ideas of the Hippocratic writers, and fourth-century astronomy. However, many of the chapters mixed these elements together in a way that I found difficult to follow.

There is a lot here, but it was either the subject or its treatment, but I just could not get into this book, so had it been possible I would have given it 3.5-stars. Since fractional stars are not possible I am rounding up to 4-stars, primarily because of the inclusion of 9 useful diagrams, one map, an index and chronological table listing the "scientists" and concurrent events. (I am using the quotation marks for scientists not to be snide, but because this book shows that this term had little relevance for the people that the book discuses.) This book is deemed a classic in its genre and if you have more of an interest in Greek philosophy than I do you will likely enjoy it more.

This book, first published in 1970, is a decent summary of Greek thought about the natural world up to Aristotle. (There is a volume of subsequent thinkers, but I haven't read it.) At 146 pages, it is a quick read, or at least as quick a read as anything can be that has separate chapters on Plato and Aristotle. The introduction begins by discussing the questionable use of the word `science' to denote what the ancient Greeks were doing, and those doubts are borne out by the subject matter. Given an abiding skepticism of the reliability of senses, not that much of what the Greeks did looks like science to us, and indeed, the first third of the book details ontological discussions of the nature of being (is change possible? Is reality unified or plural? etc.). The only activities that feel like precursors to empirical science are some astronomy, medical observations and Aristotle's apparently extensive dissections.

This book, really a college textbook in spirit, is four decades old and, as such, can be expected to be dated. I suspect it's not as dated as if it were on, say, European conquest of North America, an historical field that has become all but unrecognizable over the same time period. The basic facts of the matter (the thinkers, their main ideas) haven't been profoundly revised by historians, though given the productivity of the fields of the history, philosophy and sociology of science, the latest interpretations of early Greek science are probably much more subtle (and more rife with academic jabberwocky).

In short, if you want to dip your toe into the subject and want something more linearly organized than browsing through Wikipedia, this book might be for you. Even if it were new, however, I'd say the price seems high for how long it is.

This was given as a replacement for one that my puppy chewed up. My brother-in-law was very happy to have the replacement and an apology from my dog.