Greek science in general, and Aristotle in particular, developed many of the elements of modern scientific method. Yet they neglected verification. Aristotle often succumbed to the rational pitfall of hasty generalization; for example, he claimed that all arguments could be reduced to syllogisms. Greek forays into experimentation and verification, though rare, were sometimes spectacular. In about 240 B.C., for example, Eratosthenes estimated the diameter of the earth, with an error of less than 4%, by measuring the angle of a shadow at Alexandria, when the sun was vertical at Syene. More frequently, however, Greek science ignored experiment and focused instead on the ‘higher’ skill of contemplative theorizing. Almost two millennia passed before European cultures discarded this bias and thereby embarked on the scientific revolution. Although Aristotle swung the pendulum too far, imparting rigidity to Greek science (Goldstein, 1988), he revealed the potential of deduction and induction.
Science is the Greek word for knowledge. Yet the gift of the Greeks to future science was more a gift of techniques than of facts. Science survived the transition from Greek to Roman culture and the move to Alexandria. But what more can be said of Roman science beyond the observation that its greatest discoveries were the arch, concrete, and improved maps?
Repeated incursions by nomadic tribes into the boundaries of the Roman Empire eventually overwhelmed the urban Roman civilization. At the same time the appeal of Christian teachings, which provided explanation and solace in the face of increasingly difficult conditions, eventually caused much of the population to embrace the idea that the world of the senses is essentially unreal. Truth lay in the inscrutable plan of God, not in the workings of mathematics. The accompanying eclipse of scientific knowledge and methods went virtually unnoticed. This world-view excluded science, because science requires love of nature and confidence in the world of the senses.
“The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of reason, resolved to treat every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or skeptic to eternal flame.” [Gibbon, 1787]
The scientific nadir came in about 389 A.D.: “In this wide and various prospect of devastation, the spectator may distinguish the ruins of the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria. The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged, and near twenty years afterwards the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages.” [Gibbon, 1787]
Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was the most eloquent and influential proponent of the new attitude toward science:
“It is not necessary to probe into the nature of things, as was done by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian should be ignorant of the force and number of the elements - the motion, and order, and eclipses of the heavenly bodies; the form of the heavens; the species and the natures of animals, plants, stones, fountains, rivers, mountains; about chronology and distances; the signs of coming storms; and a thousand other things which those philosophers either have found out or think they have found out...It is enough for the Christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or in -
