700 words, 3 min reading time An essay about the history of modern science and distractions. Content mostly from Wikipedia.
I asked myself this question while I was in the middle of a rabbit hole into the history of biological taxonomy (after originally wanting to research human history). It turns out that Aristotle is the first recorded person to ever classify first flora, then fauna (on the island of Lesbos, no less). This later led to Neoplatonism carrying his "great chain of being" theory all the way to the Middle Ages, later influen- cing Western scholastic tradition, and thus modern science.
The thing I found myself asking, though, is who really is Aristotle? I mean, I think the majority of us know that he was a Greek philosopher, and have some shadow of knowledge around early philosophy starting around Athens leading to modern science.
I decided to learn more about the history of modern science for my general knowledge and more specifically to inform my worldbuilding projects. Unfortunately, I ended up going in a completely wrong direction. While looking into the histo- ry of modern science, I saw a description of the history of early Greek philosphy, and figured that it was a likely or- igin to the eventual Socratic school of thought. Here's what I found pretty early on:
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Socrates was a teacher of Plato, who was a teacher of Aristotle. They lived in Athens in the mid-5th century BCE. Plato founded the first academy. The three are widely consi- dered to have done the foundational thinking that led to mo- dern scientific methods and reasoning.
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Greek philosophy first started in Ionian cities on the west coast of Anatolia, across the Aegean Sea from Athens.
There is an argument to be made for Anaxagoras, an Ionian in Athens at the time of Socrates, to have influenced the latt- er in matters of Ionian though. However, it seems like this train of thought has ended up stopped.
It turns out that modern science is basically descended from a main branch of Socratic thought with many, many revivals, replacements and diversions in the roughly 2 millenia since. I... basically went down a rabbit hole for nothing based on an early misconception (that Socrates <- Ionians).
To briefly cover what I have learnt anyway: early science developed during the 2nd and 3rd millenias BCE in various places around the world, including ancient India, China, Mesoamerica, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Egypt and Mesopotamia, bordering Greece, naturally provided a lot of the early thi- nking to early Greek philosophy. Greek schools of thought originating from Athens during the 5th century persisted after the fall of the Western Roman Empire through the Greek -speaking Byzantines, though deteriorating in Latin-speaking Western Europe.
Translated greek texts from these early eras preserved hell- enistic worldviews and were absorbed into the Arabic-speaki- ng Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age from the 8th to 13th century. Islamic inquiries into Western Europe duri- ng the 10th to 13th centuries resulted in a revival of West- ern naural philosophy.
The real marker of modern science developing into what it is today is the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. This involved new departure from the earlier Greek though, involving more mechanistic methods, more integration with mathematics, and being more reliable and open based on the newly defined Scientific Method. Later revolutions followed like the Chemical Revolution in the 18th century, with foundations laid for later advancements in through new discoveries in physics and biology in the 19th and 20th century.
During and after World War 2, a series of changes occurred in industrial nations - scientific progress was increasingly gated behind empirical verification of theoretical results requiring experiments using large and expensive constructio- ns, such as CERN's Hadron Collider. "Small science", or ind- ividual/small group research effort, is still relevant, as the theoretical results of the research still may have sign- ificant impacts, despite verification being costly. This has led to scientific progress relying on large-scale projects, usually funded by one or more national governments.
And we are now up to today! I learnt how early Ionian philo- sophy influenced early Athenian philosophy which led up to the modern science we so casually enjoy today. This was very fun, and I'm still glad I went down that rabbit hole. As you can see, I have roughly plotted out many more to go down, and hope to be doing so to develop my worldbuilding a little more. Adios and stay tuned for more essays and articles like this.