THE DAWN OF THE SCIENTIFIC AGE
The Encyclopaedia Britannica states under the heading of “History of Science” that the present way of comprehending the natural world is a very recent development. It was possible for great civilizations of the past to achieve high levels of development in knowledge, religion and legal systems in the complete absence of a conception of science as it is now understood. Such were the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and the western hemisphere. Even the Hebrews, people whose religion forms a large part of the basis of European civilization, were indifferent to science. Although some two and a half millennia ago the Greeks created a system of thought that was similar to the scientific, in succeeding centuries there was little progress beyond their achievement and little comprehension of it. The great power of science and its pervasive influence on all aspects of life are thus very recent developments.
The dawn of European science has traditionally been located among the philosophers of the Greek city states on the coast and islands of the eastern Mediterranean, in the later sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Their work is known only through fragmentary references, and brief quotations made by authors who came later, perhaps by hundreds of years.29
These brief references are actually very misleading. For example, the saying of the earliest known philosopher, Thales, “All is water,” would appear to be a scientific sentence. But when taken as a whole—“All is water, and the world is full of gods,”30 it assumes a superstitious character. (Thales was a philosopher who lived in the sixth century B.C. None of his writings or contemporary source materials survive. His name is included in the canon of the legendary seven wise men.)
The truth is that for both Greeks and Romans, there was only one barrier obstructing the path of science, and that was their polytheistic thinking. This indeed was what had robbed them of the realistic bent of mind, which is so essential to scientific investigation. There was, therefore, no question of their ever making any progress in this field.
