Science

The classification and attempt to understand the physical universe did not begin with Aristotle. The Mesopotamians were active in the acquisition of information about mathematics and astronomy centuries before our earliest Greek documents were created. Nevertheless, it was the Greek natural philosophers, whom we would now call scientists, who attempted to understand the laws behind the motions of the universe, thus giving rise to the disciplines of physics and astronomy. Not all of the Greeks' ideas turned out to be correct, however. Aristotle believed that the rate of downward movement of various objects was determined by each object's "natural resting state." A stone clearly wanted to be on the ground and so fell quickly, whereas a feather wanted to be in the air and only fell slowly. He concluded that if you tied a feather to a stone, the stone would fall half as quickly.

But many Greek achievements in these fields did prove to be accurate. Thales of Miletos (625-585 b. c.e.), our first recorded natural philosopher, was the first Westerner to predict a solar eclipse by observing and calculating the paths of the sun and moon. Both he and Anaximander of Miletos (c. 570 b. c.e.) determined that, contrary to popular opinion, the Earth was actually round and suspended in space. Hipparchus of Nicaea (190-126 b. c.e.) studied the problem of parallax (seeing one object from two different perspectives) and determined the size and distance of the sun and moon.

Not only did the Greeks provide us with many of the tools and theories used in modern science; they also gave us many of the names we use in our studies. The name of the element helium, for example, derives from the Greek name for sun—Helios. The name of the element hydrogen, which mixes with oxygen to form water, derives from the Greek words for water creator: hydros = water, genos = family. Likewise, for the human body, the word thorax (referring to the chest) comes from the Greek word thorax, a piece of armor that protected the chest. The Greek words for seashore (paralios) and giant (titanos) give us the name of a very large dinosaur from Egypt, the Paralititan. In fact, most terminology for dinosaurs comes from Greek.

The influence of the ancient Greeks can be felt in many aspects of modern society, from the words we use to the allusions we make, from our means of constructing a building to our means of constructing an argument. Every time we see a play or analyze a statue, every time we sit through astronomy class or study the periodic table of elements, we are in some way indebted to the ancient Greeks.