Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (Ancient Culture and Society) Paperback – February 17, 1974

My background is in philosophy and I have studied the Presocratic philosophers quite a few separate times before reading this book. What Lloyd does very well is to present the presocratics and the reasons why they say what they say. In fact it is one of the best sources I have come across to give a synopsis of the presocratics to a philosopher. I know now that it is very hard to separate science from their philosophy. Indeed, philosophical questions are still very much en vogue in modern science, although many modern scientists don't know much about philosophy (and in my opinion they ought to, if only to spare us from redoing something already proven or disproven)Many readers have voiced that they did not "get" this book, nor its importance. That is likely because the Ancient Greeks were largely concerned with knowledge of all things and how they interrelated. We are very compartmentalized in our current educational system. Science is science, philosophy is philosophy and they don't need to mix (or so some moderns will say). For the Greeks, they were inseparable because they aimed at one and the same thing, the truth. It's odd to think that one can mix geometry and religion, but there it is in the Pythagoreans.There are many modern "science" books that claim theological and philosophical positions. One only need to look around for half a second to find books on godless science, creationism, universe from nothing and the like. Such questions were also asked by the presocratics. Parmenides realized that something could not come from nothing, thus implying a permanence to the universe (and likely an eternal universe as Aristotle would (comment on). These are still themes in modern science. Is the universe infinite? Is it composed of many things? What is it composed of?The beauty of this book is that Lloyd does all this in a very short amount of space. He is lucid and to the point. There is hardly a moment of fluff in his writings, thus making it a good read. That doesn't mean you will finish it as quickly as a novel. It is filled with information that likely will require time to digest. Having been introduced to the presocratics multiple times before, I would like to think it took me less time to digest than others. I can also imagine some people who couldn't digest it at all, being unable to compare and contrast to other elements of philosophy.

thought and science, in particular, are attributed to the Early Greeks. Lloyd’s coverage of this subject at just the right level of detail for me, more of a layman than a student of philosophy. It had none of complex tangents that I’ve observed in similar texts on the subject.

Gave it 4 for the education, not the writing. This is not a popular science book, but for those with a serious interest in history (of science, of ideas, of ancient history, Greek world, philosophy, etc.

Excellent book toward greek science...reads very well.

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.

This is the best introduction to Greek science I've seen. Lloyd talks about Greek science in general and introduces the reader to the names and schools they will encounter if they read more detailed presentations. Although he does not give the technical details necessary to follow the science, he gives the reader as perfect a framework for further reading as I can imagine. In the preface Lloyd writes, "Indeed the study of early Greek science is as much a study of the development and interaction of opinions concerning the nature of the inquiry as of the content of the theories that were put forward." The writing is clear and pleasant to read.The two big achievements of early Greek science were giving natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations for how the world works, and having rational debate about the natural world. Even though early Greek explanations for natural phenomena like earthquakes are speculative, they are an advance over previous explanations because they are entirely naturalistic, for example explaining earthquakes as a result of waves in water on which the earth floats instead of being due to the anger of Posiedon. Also, rather than dealing with any particular earthquake, early Greek scientists were interested in earthquakes in general. On the other hand, a tradition of intellectual criticism forced thinkers to justify their theories, rather than just to assert them. Their theories were in competition and these thinkers were not telling stories that could be inconsistent with other stories. Therefore Greek thinkers would develop solid ideas that could be defended with evidence lest their opponents find weaknesses in their arguments. This habit of rational debate was due to citizens having to make convincing arguments when participating in the government of their cities. (There is indeed tension between winning arguments and determining the truth, and Lloyd discusses this.)Greek scientists had to decide what convincing evidence was. Heraclitus and Parmenides raised the question of how much we should trust the evidence of the senses; Heraclitus said that evidence of the senses should be used cautiously, while Parmenides said that reason alone should be trusted. Empedocles made what I consider a very important point: "[the senses] are feeble instruments, but so too is the mind" (p. 39). Of course we can come to wrong conclusions by observation, but we also make mistakes in reasoning.Naturalistic explanations were a huge advance, but having precise, mathematical, explanations is a further advance. Empedocles had a theory that everything is made from the irreducible roots earth, water, air and fire in precise proportions. But the surviving fragments of his writings only have two instances where he assigns precise proportions: bone is composed of fire, water and earth in the ratio 4:2:2, and blood is made of the four roots in equal ratios. It's not at all clear how one would figure out the proportions of the roots in a given substance and how one could be sure they were right. Similarly, Leucippus came up with an atomic theory of matter but didn't apply the theory to explain anything in particular. But their goals were different than our goals: "Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus were chiefly engaged not in programmes of research, but in discussions of a highly abstract nature in which what counted was not the empirical data that could be adduced in support of a theory, so much as the economy and consistency of the arguments on which it was based." (p. 49) Another example of the shift to a precise theory is Eudoxus of Cnidus's mathematical model of the movements of the heavenly bodies, which Lloyd discusses in Chapter 7. Earlier systems didn't give precise accounts of these movements, and it is giving a precise account "that distinguishes the later fourth-century theories and marks an epoch in the development of astronomy. (p. 82)