science: Greece before Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician usually credited with discovering the relationship between the squares of a triangle’s sides and that of its hypotenuse Clearly, the ancient megalith builders understood principles of measurement and engineering Measurement was also vital to European farmers, who had to devise ways to measure agricultural output and fields Extending back to the Neolithic Period the ancient Europeans were keen observers of the skies A bronze disk with gold inlays found at Nebra in central Germany and dated to about 1600 b.c.e is a controversial find owing to the circumstances of its discovery, but it is interpreted as bearing a depiction of the star cluster known as the Pleiades By the time of the Roman Empire, Roman historians were praising the Celts for their astronomical skill The writer Martial (ca 40–103 c.e.), for example, noted that the Celts believed that the world was round, not flat The Celts devised an astronomical calendar as far back as 1100 b.c.e., and for many years the ancient Greeks debated the question of whether the Celts borrowed their astronomical skills from the Greeks or the Greeks borrowed them from the Celts In either case the Celts kept meticulous records of astronomical events and were even able to predict many regularly recurring events A good example is provided by the tides and their relationship with the phases of the moon A primary motivation was not simple human curiosity but the desire to understand the will of the gods, including the later Christian God, and to exert some measure of control over natural forces GREECE BY PHILIPPA LANG In ancient Greece before the sixth century b.c.e people could roughly predict the movements of the stars and constellations throughout the year, relate the movements to seasonal change, and use the stars to navigate their boats and ships They had the technology to make metals and other materials, such as pottery, both for practical use and pure decoration They used plants and foodstuffs for medicine, and they had stories that explained the world around them and its origins, usually in terms of gods The sea god Poseidon was the cause of earthquakes, and thunder came from Zeus None of this is what is now called science No word for science existed in ancient Greece, and the category of science, its methods, aims, and content, is a modern construction that does not transfer back to the distant past From the sixth century b.c.e onward, however, some Greeks developed ways of thinking about the world and efforts at controlling it that were similar enough to the modern concept of science that the term can be used Ancient science can be defined as attempts to explain, understand, predict, and sometimes control the natural world But it is important to realize that the ancient Greeks did not think of themselves as doing science, and they had no agreed-upon scientific method 937 In the sixth century b.c.e a small group of people now known as the pre-Socratics developed several theories about the origins of the universe and its fundamental components These theories survive only as fragmentary summaries and quotations in later writers, so not very much is known about them They did not agree with one another, but what they had in common was the belief that the universe had a consistent and ordered nature that could be understood and explained by human reason The Greek word for nature is physis, which is where the modern word physics comes from The theories explain natural phenomena without involving traditional gods or other supernatural forces, though they may describe natural forces in terms of the gods or they may view the whole of ordered nature as itself divine This new approach is now often called naturalistic or natural philosophy Thales, the earliest pre-Socratic, suggested that the world floated on water and that earthquakes were caused by waves, not by Poseidon Xenophanes looked at fossils of fish and argued that they showed parts of the earth had long ago been under water Most pre-Socratics also argued that the world and everything in it was made out of the combination of a very few elements, or sometimes that it was only one element in many different forms Such basic elements were usually earth, air, fire, and water, but there were also other views Democritus theorized that the basic units of matter were tiny unbreakable shapes called atoms that fell through a void When they collided and stuck together, they made larger objects of many different kinds Another common pre-Socratic theme was a concern with what counts as truth and what kinds of evidence are reliable This concern is called epistemology, the study of theories about knowledge, truth, and reliability, and it is closely related to science But pre-Socratics were not scientists Later Greek thought called them philosophers, which means “those who love knowledge.” Pre-Socratic inquiries made little to no use of experiment and appealed selectively to everyday observations They agreed neither on most theories nor on how to evaluate them and decide which is better, or more nearly true They were often as interested in ethics and politics as in scientific topics Most pre-Socratics were charismatic individualists with radical and highly speculative views, rather than scientists in any modern sense For example, Empedocles was a wonder-worker who claimed to be able to control the weather and cure the sick ARISTOTLE The philosopher Aristotle (fourth century b.c.e.) was the first person to something very similar to science as it is understood now He argued that the causes of things were within the natural world and could be explained by a careful investigation of nature He systematically collected information on living creatures and classified them by types and characteristics, trying to grasp how things worked and why He dissected many animals; made first-hand observations of insects, fish, mammals, and birds; and asked experts and specialists such