During the Hellenistic period, science, in our sense of the word, for the first time detached itself from philosophy. We even see a physical separation: philosophy remained primarily an Athenian concern, while science flourished at the courts of the various dynasties, especially in Pergamon and Alexandria. We should also mention Syracuse, mainly because of one man, Archimedes (c. 250 BC), and his accomplishments in the fields of geometry, optics, (hydro)statics, astronomy, and engineering. The cultural and intellectual flourishing of Hellenistic cities was mostly (but not entirely) owing to the patronage of the princes and the elite. As a result, intellectual culture was an affair of the elite; on the one hand they invested vast sums of money in the arts and sciences, leading to developments of an unprecedented magnitude; on the other, however, art and learning increasingly took place outside the range of vision of the average city dweller.
Alexandria, in particular, became famous as a center of pagan and Jewish scholarship. to Ptolemaic patronage, the Alexandrian Mouseion, the “sanctuary of the Muses,” grew into the largest conglomerate of art and scholarship in the whole of antiquity: a large-scale continuation of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. The Mouseion was unprecedented in its scope, the result of euergetism on an enormous scale, which was much to the honor of the Ptolemies. Apart from prestige, there was a practical side to it: the Mouseion’s librarian was also responsible for the education of the heir to the throne. At the Mouseion, scholars and artists lived together in a pleasant intellectual atmosphere, somewhat in the style of an Oxbridge college. They met in the corridors and gardens or in the dining hall, and a unique library with a large number of titles (precisely how many, unfortunately, remains unknown) was available to them. Here, a considerable amount of research was carried out, especially in the field of philology and literary studies: that many of the Greek “classics,” including Homer’s epics, have come down to us is ultimately the fruit of Alexandrian exertions.
But there was more than textual criticism: Alexandrian astronomy and geography of the 3rd century could flourish thanks to Euclid’s systematization of current mathematics (c. 300 BC). The most appealing example is Eratosthenes’ fairly exact calculation of the circumference of Earth. It is remarkable that, despite all this theoretical activity, factual knowledge of the world remained limited. One is inclined to think that curiosity about the world at large would be bound to grow in a period in which the Greeks were founding cities in a good part of Eurasia and in which, because of Rome, the western Mediterranean became part of the horizon. But the Greek sense of superiority put a spoke in the wheel. The world was divided between Greeks and barbarians, and what was alien merely served to set off what was familiar: it could never be interesting for its own sake. A colorful story fitted this world view better than factual information, so not much effort was made to obtain such information. Long-distance commerce yielded little knowledge: there were hardly any traders who personally transported goods from the area of origin to the destination. Instead, there were fixed trade routes along which goods were passed from hand to hand. The reports of a few rare long-distance travelers did not alter this picture: Megasthenes, who had been sent to Chandragupta by Seleucus I, wrote a report about India that was in many instances reliable, but little credence was given to his observations. Pytheas (c. 300 BC), an astronomer and mathematic, may have been one of the few who left his home for scientific reasons rather than economic or political ones. He probably reached the Faeroe Islands, Norway, or Iceland, but nobody took his stories seriously.
Divisions between theoretical knowledge and empirical knowledge in the field of geography have their counterpart in the equally striking gap between technical knowledge and technology. This includes medicine. Medical studies made great progress, especially in Alexandria, not least because of the systematic application of dissection, as a result of which anatomical knowledge advanced by leaps and bounds. We do not find, however, that this led to an improvement of medical care. The same holds true for mechanics: much was gained on the theoretical side, but this did not result in a wealth of technological applications. Existing appliances, such as pumps and water clocks, were improved, and some new ones introduced, for instance, the simple but revolutionary screw supposedly invented by Archimedes. Much progress was made in the field of military technology, for example, with artillery and siege engines: princes did want to see some practical results from their patronage. But despite theoretical progress and some new applications, there was no technological breakthrough. In Alexandria, scientists experimented with complicated hydraulic systems and even with steam propulsion, which resulted in a fully operational miniature “steam engine,” but there was no subsequent Industrial Revolution. Insufficient knowledge of materials, limited engineering ability, and the low price of labor have all been mentioned as possible reasons. A conservative attitude may have been more decisive: developing theories could be seen as a proper pursuit, but engineering was manual work and therefore unworthy of a member of the elite.
Second, and perhaps more important, theoretical research was hampered by adverse currents; Hellenistic empirical rationalism was, in the end, no match for movements we would call “unscientific” or even “anti-scientific.” The roads of philosophy and science may have parted, but it was philosophy that set the limits. Empirical thinking never found sufficient support, and the ideas of skepticism, for instance, were of course fatal for the development of science. In addition, astrological practices and the like increasingly became part of philosophy, instead of being opposed by it as had initially been the case. Even the Stoa, an eminent example of materialistic philosophy, at a certain point maintained that astrology had great value. Science followed suit and consequently was no longer science in our sense of the word.
World History
