ancient Greek science Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Thales of Miletos Was Not “the First Scientist”

Thales of Miletos (lived c. 625 – c. 545 BCE, with those dates being very approximate) is widely revered today with monikers such as “the first philosopher,” “the first scientist,” or “the first mathematician.” Many people today admire him, believing that he was an astounding, once-in-a-millennium kind of genius akin to Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein who single-handedly invented the idea of science as we know it. There is even a French defense contracting company named after him called the “Thales Group” (presumably because the name “Thales” makes people think of science, innovation, and progress, which are all much-needed positive associations for a company that actually makes deadly weapons that governments use to kill people).

The Thales of the modern imagination, however, is predominantly a myth. Most of the stories that people have heard about him are legends that can’t possibly be true, that are first attested many centuries after his death, or both. Much like Pythagoras of Samos and Hippokrates of Kos, the historical Thales of Miletos is an obscure figure about whom very little is known with any certainty.

Aristotle Was Not Wrong about Everything

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BCE) is widely portrayed in popular culture as an overconfident buffoon who made assertions based on no evidence whatsoever and who was wrong about nearly everything. It is often claimed that his errors and overconfidence held back the progress of science for two thousand years. This portrayal is wildly inaccurate and is rooted in a centuries-old tradition of hostile writers deliberately misrepresenting Aristotle’s works to make him look as stupid as possible.

It is undoubtedly true that Aristotle made quite a few mistakes, but he was wrong a lot less often than is usually claimed. Furthermore, Aristotle did, in fact, rely on empirical evidence. In fact, of all ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle is by far one of the most empirical. When Aristotle did make a mistake, it was generally not because he didn’t care about evidence, but rather because the evidence available to him was incomplete or his interpretation of the evidence was faulty.

Finally, the claim that Aristotle held back the progress of science for two thousand years is demonstrably wrong and ridiculous. For one thing, for much of the two thousand years in question, Aristotle wasn’t even generally seen as the most authoritative philosopher in the parts of the world where his works were being regularly studied. Furthermore, even when Aristotle was seen as the most authoritative philosopher, his authority was still open to some degree of question.

Who Was Agnodice Really?

The ancient Greek legend of Agnodice is one that has captivated modern audiences. Agnodice is said to have been the first female doctor, who disguised herself as a man because it was forbidden for women to practice medicine. In this article, we will examine the full story of Agnodice, the ancient sources behind it, and the question of whether or not she really existed.

Should We Be Tearing Down Statues of Socrates and Aristotle Because of Their Views on Slavery?

You may have heard that there are bunch of statues that have been taken down recently. I think that’s a good thing. Some other people disagree. On 12 June 2020, the British comedian John Cleese—who is known as a member of the comedy group Monty Python and as the co-writer and lead actor for the sitcom Fawlty Towers—issued this tweet:

Cleese followed this up with another tweet in which he said this:

There is a lot to unpack here. Cleese is obviously joking, but, through his misunderstanding of what protesters want and why, he has inadvertently raised some very serious questions that I think are worth addressing.

Were Mythical Creatures Inspired by Fossils?

It is popularly believed that stories about dragons and other mythical creatures must have arisen when ancient peoples discovered fossils of prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs. As we shall see in a moment, there is definitely some evidence that ancient peoples did sometimes discover fossils of prehistoric creatures and interpret them as the remains of mythic beasts.

Fossils, however, seem to have only rarely been the source of belief in such mythic creatures to begin with; it seems to have been far more common for people to interpret fossils in light of mythic creatures they already believed in, rather than inventing entirely new mythic beasts to explain the fossils.

Furthermore, the vast majority of claims about specific mythical creatures being inspired by specific prehistoric creatures don’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny. There is almost no solid evidence to support the assumption that dragons, Cyclopes, or griffins were inspired by prehistoric fossils and there is actually quite substantial evidence against these assumptions.

What Was Really in the Library of Alexandria?

It is no secret that I spend a lot of time debunking popular misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria. I do this because modern people are absolutely obsessed with the Library of Alexandria and all the amazing documents they believe it must have contained. Today I’m going to revisit the Library of Alexandria yet again to debunk some ideas about what was in it.

Lots of people like to imagine that the Library of Alexandria was filled with amazing scientific information that has been lost. They like to imagine that it could have housed all sorts of breathtaking secrets about the universe that even modern scientists might not know. These ideas, though, are wrong.

I’ve addressed this subject before, but today I want to address it in-depth, debunking some specific claims about the Library of Alexandria’s contents and bringing people’s expectations more down to Earth.

No, Aristotle Is Not Telling You to Unleash Your Inner Rage

Most people today believe that the word catharsis refers to the necessary release of negative emotions and destructive impulses for the sake of “purging” oneself of those emotions and impulses. Many people see this “purging” of negative emotions—usually specifically anger—as healthy or even necessary. This idea of catharsis as emotional purging is usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC).

Psychological experiments, however, have shown that unleashing your anger does not cause that anger to go away. In fact, actually has a tendency to make people even more angry than they were originally. Furthermore, while Aristotle did use the Greek word κάθαρσις (kátharsis) in his Poetics, he certainly didn’t use that word to mean what many people today think he meant by it.

Carl Sagan Was Really Bad at History

Carl Sagan’s thirteen-episode documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which originally aired on PBS in 1980, is the most watched PBS documentary series in history. The miniseries, which is, broadly speaking, about the history and importance of science, has had a massive influence on both our culture as a whole and on individual people’s lives. Many people say that watching Cosmos growing up was what inspired them to go into STEM.

Unfortunately, while Carl Sagan may have been a brilliant scientist and a great science popularizer, he was an unbelievably terrible historian and, in the show, he gets a boatload of facts about history blatantly wrong. Because Sagan was a scientist with an established reputation, though, many people have assumed that everything he says in the miniseries must be correct and, as a result, these misconceptions have spread and become embedded in popular culture.

Perhaps the most influentially wrong segment in the whole series is a twenty-two-and-a-half-minute segment in the last episode about the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria and the murder of the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia. In this one segment, Sagan manages to promote what seems like roughly half of all the misconceptions about the ancient world that I have ever debunked.

I wrote an article in August 2018 debunking misconceptions about Hypatia and another article in July 2019 debunking misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria. In both of those articles, I have noted that many of the misconceptions I debunk originated from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, but, in those articles, I did not address Carl Sagan’s PBS miniseries directly.

I have therefore decided to undertake the ambitious task of going through the entire segment about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria and correcting all the inaccuracies I come across. This should give you some impression of how historically accurate Carl Sagan’s documentary really is.

If You Like Ancient Greek Texts, Thank the Byzantines for Preserving Them

There is a widespread belief among members of the general public that ancient Greek texts were mostly only preserved by the Arabs through Arabic translations. The Byzantine Empire is rarely mentioned in the context of the preservation of classical texts. When the Byzantines are mentioned in this context, it is usually by writers who see them as ignorant fundamentalist Christian obscurantists.

Contrary to what popular culture would lead you to believe, however, the Byzantine Empire did retain Greco-Roman knowledge. In fact, the vast majority of ancient Greek texts that have survived to the present day are primarily known from Greek manuscripts that were either copied in the Byzantine Empire or copied from texts that were copied in the Byzantine Empire.

The idea that the majority of ancient Greek texts have only been preserved because they were translated by Arabic scholars is largely a misconception. There are a few lesser-known classical Greek texts that have been preserved only through Arabic translations, but the vast majority of the really famous texts that people still study today have actually been preserved in the original Greek.

The widespread ignorance of the Byzantines’ role in the preservation of classical Greek and Roman texts is just one small part of a centuries-old, systematic effort by westerners to marginalize the Byzantine Empire and minimize its importance in European history.

No, the Antikythera Mechanism Was Not Unique

If you have any interest in ancient science and technology, you have almost certainly heard of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek mechanical orrery that was discovered in 1901 in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. It is a clockwork mechanism that was used to keep track of Olympiads and the movements of the celestial bodies. The wreck the device was recovered from dates to between c. 70 and c. 60 BC. The Antikythera mechanism itself was most likely originally created sometime in around the late second or early first century BC.

In popular science writings and in popular culture, the Antikythera mechanism is usually described as an “ancient Greek computer.” It is usually presented as an astonishing example of how incredibly advanced ancient Greek technology was and it is usually presented in such a way that makes it sound as though we had no idea that devices like it even existed before it was discovered.

The truth, though, is that devices like the Antikythera mechanism are actually well-attested in surviving ancient written sources and classical scholars already knew that these kinds of devices existed in antiquity long before the Antikythera mechanism was discovered. The Antikythera mechanism is not significant because it is the only device of its kind that ever existed, but rather because it is the only one of its kind that is known to have survived to the present day.