Early Scientific Developments
Egyptian Science
Ancient Egypt made significant advances in astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Their development of geometry was a necessary outgrowth of surveying to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile river. Despite their superstitions, Egyptian priests encouraged the development of many scientific disciplines, especially astronomy and mathematics. The construction of the pyramids and other astonishing monuments would have been impossible without a highly developed mathematical knowledge. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (also known as the Ahmes Papyrus) is an ancient mathematical treatise, dating back to approximately 1650 BCE. This work explains, using several examples, how to calculate the area of a field, the capacity of a barn, and it also deals with algebraic equations of the first degree. In the opening section, its author, a scribe named Ahmes, declares that the Papyrus is a transcription of an ancient copy, possibly 500 years before the time of Ahmed himself. The flooding of the Nile, which constantly altered the border markers that separated the different portions of land, also encouraged the development of mathematics: Egyptian land surveyors had to perform measurements over and over again to restore the boundaries that had been lost. In fact, this is the origin of the word geometry: “measurement of the land”. Egyptian land surveyors were very practical-minded: in order to form right angles, which was critical for establishing the borders of a field, they used a rope divided into twelve equal parts, forming a triangle with three parts on one side, four parts on the second side, and five parts on the remaining side. The right angle was to be found where the three-unit side joined the four-unit side. In other words, Egyptians knew that a triangle whose sides are in a 3:4:5 ratio is a right triangle. This is a useful rule of thumb and it is also a step away from the Pythagoras Theorem, which is based on stretching the 3:4:5 triangle concept to its logical limit.
Egyptians calculated the value of the mathematical constant pi at 256/81 (3.16), and for the value of the square root of two, they used the fraction 7/5 (which they thought of as 1/5 seven times). For fractions, they always used the numerator 1 (in order to express 3/4, they wrote 1/2 + 1/4). Unfortunately they did not know the zero, and their numeral system lacked simplicity: 27 signs were required to express 999.
Medical historians believe that ancient Egyptian pharmacology, for example, was largely ineffective. Nevertheless, it applied the following components to the treatment of disease: examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, which display strong parallels to the basic empirical method of science and, according to G. E. R. Lloyd, played a significant role in the development of this methodology. The Ebers papyrus (c. 1550 BC) also contains evidence of traditional empiricism.
Greece-Roman SCIENCE
The inquiry into the workings of the universe took place both in investigations aimed at such practical goals as establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses and in those abstract investigations known as natural philosophy. The ancient people who are considered the first scientists may have thought of themselves as natural philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled profession (for example, physicians), or as followers of a religious tradition (for example, temple healers).
Unlike other parts of the world were science was strongly connected with religion, Greek scientific thought had a stronger connection with philosophy. As a result, the Greek scientific spirit had a more secular approach and was able to replace the notion of supernatural explanation with the concept of a universe that is governed by laws of nature. Greek tradition credits Thales of Miletus as the first Greek who, around 600 BCE, developed the idea that the world can be explained in natural terms. Thales lived in Miletus, a Greek city located in Ionia, the central sector of Anatolia’s Aegean shore in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey. This city was the main focus of the “Ionian awakening”, the initial phase of classical Greek civilization, a time when the ancient Greeks developed a number of ideas surprisingly similar to some of our modern scientific concepts.
One of the great advantages of Greece was the influence of Egyptian mathematics, when Egypt opened its ports to Greek trade during the 26th Dynasty (c. 685–525 BCE) and Babylonian astronomy, after Alexander’s conquest of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia during Hellenistic times. The Greeks were very talented at systematically innovating upon the Egyptian and Babylonian mathematical and astronomical knowledge. This turned the Greeks into some of the most competent mathematicians and astronomers of antiquity and their achievements in geometry were arguably the finest.
While observation was important at the beginning, Greek science eventually began to undervalue observation in favor of the deductive process, where knowledge is built by means of pure thought. This method is key in mathematics and the Greeks put such an emphasis on it that they falsely believed that deduction was the way to obtain the highest knowledge. An observation was underestimated, the deduction was made a king, and Greek scientific knowledge was led up a blind alley in virtually every branch of science other than exact sciences (mathematics).
The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the pre-Socratics, provided competing answers to the question found in the myths of their neighbors: "How did the ordered cosmos in which we live come to be?" The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales (640–546 BC), dubbed the "father of science", was the first to postulate non-supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. For example, that land floats on water and that earthquakes are caused by the agitation of the water upon which the land floats, rather than the god Poseidon. Thales' student Pythagoras of Samos founded the Pythagorean school, which investigated mathematics for its own sake, and was the first to postulate that the Earth is spherical in shape. Leucippus (5th century BC) introduced atomism, the theory that all matter is made of indivisible, imperishable units called atoms. This was greatly expanded on by his pupil Democritus and later Epicurus.
Subsequently, Plato and Aristotle produced the first systematic discussions of natural philosophy, which did much to shape later investigations of nature. Their development of deductive reasoning was of particular importance and usefulness to later scientific inquiry. Plato founded the Platonic Academy in 387 BC, whose motto was "Let none unversed in geometry enter here", and turned out many notable philosophers. Plato's student Aristotle introduced empiricism and the notion that universal truths can be arrived at via observation and induction, thereby laying the foundations of the scientific method. Aristotle also produced many biological writings that were empirical in nature, focusing on biological causation and the diversity of life. He made countless observations of nature, especially the habits and attributes of plants and animals on Lesbos, classified more than 540 animal species, and dissected at least 50.Aristotle's writings profoundly influenced subsequent Islamic and European scholarship, though they were eventually superseded in the Scientific Research.
In Hellenistic Egypt, the mathematician Euclid laid down the foundations of mathematical rigor and introduced the concepts of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof still in use today in his Elements, considered the most influential textbook ever written. Archimedes, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, is credited with using the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of Pi. He is also known in physics for laying the foundations of hydrostatics, statics, and the explanation of the principle of the lever.
Theophrastus wrote some of the earliest descriptions of plants and animals, establishing the first taxonomy and looking at minerals in terms of their properties such as hardness. Pliny the Elder produced what is one of the largest encyclopedias of the natural world in 77 AD, and must be regarded as the rightful successor to Theophrastus. For example, he accurately describes the octahedral shape of the diamond and proceeds to mention that diamond dust is used by engravers to cut and polish other gems owing to its great hardness. His recognition of the importance of crystal shape is a precursor to modern crystallography, while mention of numerous other minerals presages mineralogy. He also recognizes that other minerals have characteristic crystal shapes, but in one example, confuses the crystal habit with the work of lapidaries. He was also the first to recognize that amber was a fossilized resin from pine trees because he had seen samples with trapped insects within them.
- INDIAN SCIENCE
In India, we find some aspects of astronomical science already in the Vedas (composed between 1500 and 1000 BCE), where the year is divided into twelve lunar months (occasionally adding an additional month to adjust the lunar with the solar year), six seasons of the year are named and related to different gods, and also the different phases of the moon are observed and personified as different deities. Many of the ceremonies and sacrificial rites of Indian society were regulated by the position of the moon, the sun, and other astronomical events, which encouraged a detailed study of astronomy.
Geometry was developed in India as a result of strict religious rules for the construction of altars. Book 5 of the Taittiriya Sanhita, included in the Yajur-Veda, describes the different shapes that the altars could have. The oldest of these altars had the shape of a falcon and an area of 7.50 squares Purusha (a Purusha was a unit equivalent to the height of a man with uplifted arms, about 7.6 feet or 2.3 meters). Sometimes other altar shapes were required (such as a wheel, a tortoise, a triangle), but the area of these new altars had to remain the same, 7.50 square Purusha. Some other times, the size of the altar had to be increased without changing the shape or the relative proportion of the figure. All these procedures were impossible to carry out without a fine knowledge of geometry.
A work known as the Shulba Sutras, first composed in India around 800 BCE, contains detailed explanations on how to perform all the geometrical operations required to support the religious procedures regarding the altars. This text also develops mathematical topics such as square roots and squaring the circle. After developing important geometrical studies, religious practices changed in India, and the need for geometrical knowledge gradually died out as the construction of altars fell out of use.
Possibly the most influential achievement of Hindu science was the study of arithmetic, particularly the development of the numbers and the decimal notation that the world uses today. The so-called “Arabic numbers” actually originated in India; they already appear in the Rock Edicts of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (3rd century BCE), about 1,000 years before they are used in Arabic literature.
Mathematics: The earliest traces of mathematical knowledge in the Indian subcontinent appear with the Indus Valley Civilization (c. 4th millennium BC ~ c. 3rd millennium BC). The people of this civilization made bricks whose dimensions were in the proportion 4:2:1, considered favorable for the stability of a brick structure. They also tried to standardize measurement of length to a high degree of accuracy. They designed a ruler—the Mohenjo-Daro ruler—whose unit of length (approximately 1.32 inches or 3.4 centimeters) was divided into ten equal parts. Bricks manufactured in ancient Mohenjo-Daro often had dimensions that were integral multiples of this unit of length.
Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata (476–550), in his Aryabhatiya (499) introduced a number of trigonometric functions (including sine, versine, cosine, and inverse sine), trigonometric tables, and techniques and algorithms of algebra. In 628 AD, Brahmagupta suggested that gravity was a force of attraction. He also lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and a decimal digit, along with the Hindu-Arabic numeral system now used universally throughout the world. Arabic translations of the two astronomers' texts were soon available in the Islamic world, introducing what would become Arabic numerals to the Islamic world by the 9th century. During the 14th–16th centuries, the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics made significant advances in astronomy and especially mathematics, including fields such as trigonometry and analysis. In particular, Madhava of Sangamagrama is considered the "founder of mathematical analysis".
Astronomy: The first textual mention of astronomical concepts comes from the Vedas, religious literature of India.[52] According to Sarma (2008): "One finds in the Rigveda intelligent speculations about the genesis of the universe from nonexistence, the configuration of the universe, the spherical self-supporting earth, and the year of 360 days divided into 12 equal parts of 30 days each with a periodical intercalary month. The first 12 chapters of the Siddhanta Shiromani, written by Bhāskara in the 12th century, cover topics such as: mean longitudes of the planets; true longitudes of the planets; the three problems of diurnal rotation; syzygies; lunar eclipses; solar eclipses; latitudes of the planets; risings and settings; the moon's crescent; conjunctions of the planets with each other; conjunctions of the planets with the fixed stars; and the patas of the sun and moon. The 13 chapters of the second part cover the nature of the sphere, as well as significant astronomical and trigonometric calculations based on it.
Nilakantha Somayaji's astronomical treatise the Tantrasangraha similar in nature to the Tychonic system proposed by Tycho Brahe had been the most accurate astronomical model until the time of Johannes Kepler in the 17th century.
Linguistics: Some of the earliest linguistic activities can be found in Iron Age India (1st millennium BC) with the analysis of Sanskrit for the purpose of the correct recitation and interpretation of Vedic texts. The most notable grammarian of Sanskrit was Pāṇini (c. 520–460 BC), whose grammar formulates close to 4,000 rules which together form a compact generative grammar of Sanskrit. Inherent in his analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root.
Medicine: Findings from Neolithic graveyards in what is now Pakistan show evidence of proto-dentistry among an early farming culture. Ayurveda is a system of traditional medicine that originated in ancient India before 2500 BC, and is now practiced as a form of alternative medicine in other parts of the world. Its most famous text is the Suśrutasamhitā of Suśruta, which is notable for describing procedures on various forms of surgery, including rhinoplasty, the repair of torn ear lobes, perineal lithotomy, cataract surgery, and several other excisions and other surgical procedures.
Metallurgy: The wootz, crucible and stainless steels were invented in India, and were widely exported in Classic Mediterranean world. It was known from Pliny the Elder as ferrum indicum. Indian Wootz steel was held in high regard in Roman Empire, was often considered to be the best. After in Middle Age it was imported in Syria to produce with special techniques the "Damascus steel" by the year 1000. Chinese Science
In China, the priesthood never had any significant political power. In many cultures, science was encouraged by the priesthood, who were interested in astronony and the calendar, but in China, it was government officials who had the power and were concerned with these areas, and therefore the development of Chinese science is strongly linked to government officials. The court astronomers were particularly interested in the sciences of astronomy and mathematics, since the calendar was a sensitive imperial matter: the life of the sky and the life on earth had to develop in harmony, and the sun and the moon regulated the different festivals. During the time of Confucius (c. 551 to c. 479 BCE), Chinese astronomers successfully calculated the occurrence of eclipses.
Geometry developed as a result of the need to measure land, while algebra was imported from India. During the 2nd century BCE, after many centuries and generations, a mathematical treatise named The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art was completed. This work contained mostly practical mathematical procedures including topics such as determining the areas of fields of different shapes (for taxation purposes), pricing of different goods, commodities rate exchange and equitable taxation. This book develops algebra, geometry and also mentions negative quantities for the first time in recorded history. Zu Chongzhi (429-500CE), estimated the right value of pi to the sixth decimal place and improved the magnet, which had been discovered centuries earlier.
Where the Chinese displayed an exceptional talent was at making inventions. Gunpowder, paper, woodblock printing, the compass (known as “south-pointing needle"), are some of the many Chinese inventions. Despite their immense creativity, it is ironic that Chinese industrial life did not undergo any significant development between the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) to the fall of the Manchu (1912 CE).
Mathematics: From the earliest the Chinese used a positional decimal system on counting boards in order to calculate. To express 10, a single rod is placed in the second box from the right. The spoken language uses a similar system to English: e.g. four thousand two hundred seven. No symbol was used for zero. By the 1st century BC, negative numbers and decimal fractions were in use and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art included methods for extracting higher order roots by Horner's method and solving linear equations and by Pythagoras' theorem. Cubic equations were solved in the Tang dynasty and solutions of equations of order higher than 3 appeared in print in 1245 AD by Ch'in Chiu-shao. Pascal's triangle for binomial coefficients was described around 1100 by Jia Xian.
Although the first attempts at an axiomatization of geometry appear in the Mohist canon in 330 BC, Liu Hui developed algebraic methods in geometry in the 3rd century AD and also calculated pi to 5 significant figures. In 480, Zu Chongzhi improved this by discovering the ratiowhich remained the most accurate value for 1200 years.
Astronomy: Astronomical observations from China constitute the longest continuous sequence from any civilisation and include records of sunspots (112 records from 364 BC), supernovas (1054), lunar and solar eclipses. By the 12th century, they could reasonably accurately make predictions of eclipses, but the knowledge of this was lost during the Ming dynasty, so that the Jesuit Matteo Ricci gained much favour in 1601 by his predictions. By 635 Chinese astronomers had observed that the tails of comets always point away from the sun.
From antiquity, the Chinese used an equatorial system for describing the skies and a star map from 940 was drawn using a cylindrical (Mercator) projection. The use of an armillary sphere is recorded from the 4th century BC and a sphere permanently mounted in equatorial axis from 52 BC. In 125 AD Zhang Heng used water power to rotate the sphere in real time. This included rings for the meridian and ecliptic. By 1270 they had incorporated the principles of the Arab torquetum.
Seismology: To better prepare for calamities, Zhang Heng invented a seismometer in 132 CE which provided instant alert to authorities in the capital Luoyang that an earthquake had occurred in a location indicated by a specific cardinal or ordinal direction. Although no tremors could be felt in the capital when Zhang told the court that an earthquake had just occurred in the northwest, a message came soon afterwards that an earthquake had indeed struck 400 km (248 mi) to 500 km (310 mi) northwest of Luoyang (in what is now modern Gansu). Zhang called his device the 'instrument for measuring the seasonal winds and the movements of the Earth' (Houfeng didong yi 候风地动仪), so-named because he and others thought that earthquakes were most likely caused by the enormous compression of trapped air.
There are many notable contributors to the field of Chinese science throughout the ages. One of the best examples would be Shen Kuo (1031–1095), a polymath scientist and statesman who was the first to describe the magnetic-needle compass used for navigation, discovered the concept of true north, improved the design of the astronomical gnomon, armillary sphere, sight tube, and clepsydra, and described the use of drydocks to repair boats. After observing the natural process of the inundation of silt and the find of marine fossils in the Taihang Mountains (hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean), Shen Kuo devised a theory of land formation, or geomorphology. He also adopted a theory of gradual climate change in regions over time, after observing petrified bamboo found underground at Yan'an, Shaanxi province. If not for Shen Kuo's writing, the architectural works of Yu Hao would be little known, along with the inventor of movable type printing, Bi Sheng (990–1051). Shen's contemporary Su Song (1020–1101) was also a brilliant polymath, an astronomer who created a celestial atlas of star maps, wrote a pharmaceutical treatise with related subjects of botany, zoology, mineralogy, and metallurgy, and had erected a large astronomical clocktower in Kaifeng city in 1088. To operate the crowning armillary sphere, his clocktower featured an escapement mechanism and the world's oldest known use of an endless power-transmitting chain drive.
The Jesuit China missions of the 16th and 17th centuries "learned to appreciate the scientific achievements of this ancient culture and made them known in Europe. Through their correspondence European scientists first learned about the Chinese science and culture." Western academic thought on the history of Chinese technology and science was galvanized by the work of Joseph Needham and the Needham Research Institute. Among the technological accomplishments of China were, according to the British scholar Needham, early seismological detectors (Zhang Heng in the 2nd century), the water-powered celestial globe (Zhang Heng), matches, the independent invention of the decimal system, dry docks, sliding calipers, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, the blast furnace, the iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the suspension bridge, the winnowing machine, the rotary fan, the parachute, natural gas as fuel, the raised-relief map, the propeller, the crossbow, and a solid fuel rocket, the multistage rocket, the horse collar, along with contributions in logic, astronomy, medicine, and other fields.
However, cultural factors prevented these Chinese achievements from developing into what we might call "modern science".
According to Needham, it may have been the religious and philosophical framework of Chinese intellectuals which made them unable to accept the ideas of laws of nature:
It was not that there was no order in nature for the Chinese, but rather that it was not an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly languages the divine code of laws which he had decreed aforetime. The Taoists, indeed, would have scorned such an idea as being too naïve for the subtlety and complexity of the universe as they intuited it.Mesoamerican Science
Mesoamerican mathematics and astronomy were highly precise. The accuracy of the Maya calendar was comparable to the Egyptian calendar (both civilizations fixed the year at 365 days) and already in the 1st century CE the Maya used the number zero as a place-holder value in their records, many centuries before the zero appears in European and Asian literature.
Time record-keeping in Mesoamerica included a 260 day period known by the Maya as tzolkin “count of days” and tonalpohualli by the Aztecs. This interval was obtained by combining cycles of 20 days with thirteen numerical coefficients (20 x 13 = 260). The origin of this interval is believed to be around the 6th century BCE in the southern region of the Zapotec Civilization, and it is in tune with some important natural events: 260 is a good approximation of the human gestation period and, in mid-Mesoamerican latitude, is perfectly consistent with the agricultural cycle. There was also a 360 day period known as tun by the Maya, composed of cycles of 20 days and 18 months (20 x 18 = 360). Most Mesoamerican calendars would be based on one tun plus an additional month of five days (360 + 5 = 365), which is a good approximation of the solar cycle. This count regulated the holidays, religious ceremonies, sacrifices, work life, tributes, and many other aspects of religious, political and social life.
The 260 and 365 day count would be run simultaneously, and every 52 years the starting point of both would match up, an event termed as a “calendar round”. The Aztec codices suggest that during the time of a calendar round, it was believed that the world was vulnerable to destruction, so at that time they held a number of sacrifices and religious ceremonies in order to please the gods and ensure the world would continue.
The Mayas created the longest Mesoamerican calendar cycle by multiplying one tun by 20 (360 days x 20 = 7,200 days, or one katun) and one katun by 20 (7,200 days x 20 = 144,000 days, or one baktun). The Mayan Long Count was composed of 13 baktuns (144,000 days x 13 = 1,872,000 days), or 5,125.37 years. The starting point of the Mayan Long Count is August 11, 3114 BCE and it ended on December 21, 2012 BCE.
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