An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science

3

European Origins of Science

3.1 Ionia and the Early Greek Contributions

The study of physical science is ultimately a search for law and order in phenomena. The fundamental tools required for this inquiry, viz. arithmetic, geometry and the techniques for the measurement of time and space, seem to have been available in the early civilizations. Information had been piling up in Egypt and Babylonia whereas the quest of knowledge for its own sake and the resulting efflorescence of the scientific spirit took place, not in these ancient treasure houses of traditional knowledge, but in Ionia, a small Greek colony on the shores of the Aegean Sea.

The essential ingredient missing in Egypt or Babylonia but available in Greece was the development of ...