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A Brief History of Science

Lecture 3 – Early Days III
THOMAS OSIPOWICZ|GEH1018
After the classical Age: Rome & Christianity
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 We will look at the social and historical context of the period (~300BC to ~ 500AD),
the Roman Empire and its decline.
 There was great progress made by mathematicians and astronomers (Euclid,
Aristarchus, Archimedes, Ptolemy and many more) - very important in later
developments.
 In order to be able to understand later struggles, we will clarify the basic concepts
and terminology of planetary motion.
 We will see the work of Ptolemy and its significance (beneficial & detrimental) in
later scientific inquiry.
 Geocentricism
 Cartography: Maps, Latitude & Longitudes
 The rising influence of Christianity on the development of natural philosophy, in
many ways establishing the priority of revealed knowledge through theology.
Alexander of Macedon (356-323) BC I
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 Five years after Plato's death, Aristotle took a position as tutor to King Philip II
of Macedonia's thirteen-year-old son Alexander. It is not clear what impact
Aristotle's lessons had on him, but it is interesting to consider this points:
 Aristotle had an awful sense of geography, which he probably passed
on to Alexander. He had no concept of how large the world was. He
believed the edge of the world (the outer ocean) was visible from the
Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan, which (he believed) weren't too
far away from Greece.
 He reasoned that Morocco is quite close to India, since elephants
could be found in both places.
 He probably inspired Alexander's vision of conquering to the edge of
the world.
 Alexander was certainly a great admirer of Greek civilization, even though
the Greeks considered Macedonia very uncivilized.
Alexander of Macedon
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 Greece (Macedonia) reached the height of its military power under
Alexander. When his father Philip died in 336 BC, Alexander went on to
conquer Persia, the Middle East, Egypt, south Afghanistan, some of Central
Asia and the Punjab.
 Alexander spread Greek civilization widely (Hellenization). He founded
Greek cities in many places, the greatest being Alexandria in Egypt, which
later became the most important centre of Greek science, without which
much learning may have been lost.
 5

http://www.worldhistorymaps.info
Alexander of Macedon: Empire 323 BC
 Fall of ancient Greece
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 Alexander died of a fever at age 33. After his death
his military conquests were rapidly lost.
 By 100 BC the Greek/Macedonian Empire had passed
its peak of military strength and was taken over by the
Roman Empire.

Charles Laplante / Public Domain via Wikipedia

 The Romans were great admirers of everything Greek
and preserved much of Greek culture and learning (it
is common for invaders to emulate those they have
conquered, consider Alexander, the Goths, the
Mongols).
 In many areas, Greek culture was adopted by the
Romans (Hellenization). Greek ideas were spread
over the whole of the Roman Empire, which became
very large.
 The language of western Europe became Latin,
whereas Greek was still widely used in eastern Europe
 Empire in
Roman

AD 14
The
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http://sitemaker.umich.edu/mladjov
 The Colosseum - Rome
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 The Colosseum was founded
in 80 AD and is one of the
great architectural
monuments achieved by the
ancient Romans. The
amphitheatre is a vast ellipse
with tiers of seating for 50000
spectators around a central
elliptical arena. Lots of
gladiators and Christians were
killed for entertainment of the
crowd.

The Colosseum,1757, engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

 Developments in mathematics, etc. by scholars from late-Greece to early-Rome

Euclid of Alexandria, 330 - 260 BC

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 He wrote the defining study of geometry, called The
Elements, which had a profound effect on academic
thinking in Europe when it was widely distributed
again, 1500 years later.
 It is thought that after the Bible, this book has been
more studied, translated and reprinted than any
other book in history. This is because of clear way in
which proofs were developed in a systematic
manner.
 He knew how to construct a regular 15-side polygon,
using only a compass and an unmarked ruler. It took
until 1796, over 2000 years, until Gauss made further
progress, showing that the regular 17-edge can be
constructed in this way.
 In this book he described the basic principles of plane
and solid geometry of triangles, squares, rectangles,
circles. He also worked on number theory, for
example he proved that there is an infinite number of Statue of Euclid in the
prime numbers. Euclid: Oxford University Museum
1. Infinite numbers
2. Basic geometry (15-side polygon and others)
of Natural History
3. The Elements (book on systematic proof)
Euclid of Alexandria - Proof that there are infinitely many Prime Numbers
 The concept of proof became very important in Greek (and later our) mathematics. 10
 A Prime Number is a whole number (an integer) greater than 1 that can be divided evenly only
by 1 and itself.
Proof (by reduction to absurdity)
 Assume there exist only finitely many primes, say n of them. Write them in a list:
p1 < p2 < ... < pn.
Now consider N = p1× p2 × ... × pn,
and N+1 = p1× p2 × ... × pn+1.
 N+1 is not a prime, by our assumption (Which says that they are all in the list).
 So, it must be divisible by at least one of the primes in the list. This element, say it is pi, divides
both N and N+1, so it must divide the difference, 1
 This is absurd (1 cannot be divided evenly by any number >1)
 So, our assumption is wrong, there is at least one more prime. Include it in the list and repeat.
And so on. So, there are infinitely many primes.
 This does not say that N+1 is prime. The proof actually uses the fact that all primes are assumed
to be in the list. Other (larger) primes can divide N+1, eg:
2 × 3 × 5 × 7 × 11× 13 + 1= 30031= 59 × 509
About proofs in other cultures (Chinese, Indian) See also: https://nrich.maths.org/5996/index?nomenu=1
 Aristarchus of Samos (310 BC - 230)
 Little of his work survives. Here is a quote from 11
Archimedes book ‘The Sand Reckoner’:
 “…You are aware the 'universe' is the name given by
most astronomers to the sphere the center of which is
the center of the Earth. This is the common account as
you have heard from astronomers. But Aristarchus has
brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses,
wherein it appears, as a consequence of the
assumptions made, that the universe is many times
greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His
hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain
unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on
the circumference of a circle …” Challenging the geocentric system
 He attempted to measure the Earth - Moon distance, using correct geometry but he had bad
data. He found that the Moon is half the size of the Earth, and that the Sun 18-20 times the size of
the Moon (see next slides). This result may have triggered his heliocentric model.
 His proposal of a heliocentric universe is the culmination and triumph of the Pythagorean school
of natural philosophy. It was not accepted by the main schools of Plato and Aristotle, but it was
also never completely forgotten. It was widely rejected in favour of a geocentric system for 1,500
years. We will later see why.
Aristarchus He used surprisingly modern techniques to get surprisingly
correct and accurate answers. Few people listened.
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 Aristarchus attempt to measure the Earth – Sun distance C, in terms of the Earth
Moon distance A, at half moon.
𝐴
 Geometry is correct: = cos 
𝐶

  is difficult to measure precisely, close to 90 , so that cos  is small.

 Aristarchus thought it was 87 → C =19 A
 True value is 89.853→ C = 390 A
Aristarchus
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The earth’s umbral and penumbral

shadows. No direct sunlight in the umbra.
APOD 2008 August 20
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A composite of photos, demonstrating the size of

the earth’s shadow.
Archimedes 287 - 212 BC
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 He lived in Sicily and was killed by a Roman soldier during the

invasion of Syracuse after a two-year-long siege, which added
the island to the Roman Empire (against orders, the Roman
generals wanted him alive).
 He built war machines that repelled Roman attacks – he was a
genius with levers, pulleys and such.
 The principle best known about him is that when an object is
immersed in a liquid it is thrust up by a force equal to the weight
of the liquid displaced (but he probably did not run naked
down the street, shouting Heukera!) Archimedes's Principle The Fields Medal carries a
portrait of Archimedes
 Archimedes
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 Archimedes screw: a device with

a revolving screw-shaped blade
inside a cylinder. It was turned by
hand, and could also be used to
transfer water from a low-lying

Silberwolf, CC
body of water into irrigation
canals.
 Archimedes' screw is still in use
today for pumping liquids and
granulated solids such as coal
and grain.
 Archimedes
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His mathematical
achievements include:
 The deduction of the
volume and surface area
of a sphere.
 The value of π (pi) to be
between 223/71 and
22/7, by the evaluation of
inscribed polygons. The
latter number was used
approximate calculations
for the next 1500 years.
 He is considered one of
the fathers of calculus.

Archimedes - Estimation of π
The Zodiac - Astrology
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Sun is in Leo, so at night, Aquarius is visible.

(JAMES KALER, PNGGuru, CC BY-NC)
 Planetary Motion – Introduction, so we know what is really going on
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 The observed motion of stars and planets are rather complicated,
three different types need explanation:
 Daily (diurnal) motion: the celestial bodies rise and set once,
moving across the sky from east to west.

Wikipedia, Tomruen
 Yearly (annual) motion: Constellations visible in the summer are
not seen in the winter. This is because each night, a given star
rises slightly earlier than the night before. Thus, the stars, besides
their diurnal motion, appear to revolve around the earth from
east to west once in a year.
 The seven planets (the wanderers, the Moon, Mercury, Venus,
the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) have even more complex
paths in the sky:
 Planetary proper motion is seen in the zodiac, and the
planets appear to move, at variable speeds, from west to
east from night to night (i.e. that is, rising later each day)
against the backdrop of fixed stars. The libration of the Moon
over a single lunar month.
 With the exception of the sun and the moon, the planets
occasionally stop, move backward through the zodiac Also visible is the slight
(retrogradation), stop again, then resume their usual motion. variation in the Moon's
 The planets—especially the moon—move in a wavy path, visual size from Earth
oscillating slightly north and south within the band of the because of the eccentricity
zodiac during their east-west motions.
of the orbit.
(now) Polaris, the North Star

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 In addition to the daily and yearly rotations, there
is a “wobble” in the movement of the earth, the
precession of the equinox, about 1 degree per 77
years.
 It was discovered by naked eye by Hipparchus of
Nicaea around 150 BC (by comparing his and ~150
years earlier observations).
 Caused by the non- spherical shape of the Earth
and the gravitational pull from Moon and Sun.
 In ancient times, the vernal equinox (the first day
of spring) was in Aries. Due to precession, it moved
into Pisces around 100 BC, where it is now and will
remain until AD 2700, when it will move into
Aquarius, and so on.
 Over the course of 25,800 years (a Platonic year), it
will eventually return to Aries and the cycle will
begin again.
21
Retrograde Motion - video
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http://astro.unl.edu/video/demonstrationvideos/
 Ptolemy 90 - 168 AD
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 Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician, geographer, astronomer,
astrologer who lived in Roman Egypt.
 He wrote 3 books which were of great importance to later Islamic
and European science. The first is the astronomical book, The
Almagest (The Great Treatise). It was lost in Europe after the Roman
Empire collapsed but was preserved, like much classical Greek
science, in Arabic manuscripts, hence the name:
megiste (“greatest” in Greek, to al-majisṭī (in Arabic) to Almagest (in
Latin)
 Because of his reputation, Ptolemy's books were widely sought after
and were translated into Latin in the 12th century in Europe.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Almagest was considered the
Ptolemy as imagined by
authoritative text on astronomy.
a 16th - century artist
 His second book was on Geography (see below) and the third is
called the Tetrabiblos (Four books), in which he attempted to adapt
horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his
day.
 Ptolemy's Geocentric Solar System
Example of Aristotelean curse
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Ptolemy had to devise very

complicated explanations of
planetary motion (retrograde
epicycles) to make astronomical
observations fit Aristotle's
geocentric, perfect circles
model - a fine example of
starting of wrong and going
even more wrong.
 Ptolemy's Geocentric Solar System
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 Ptolemy's model of the universe was
geocentric, following Aristotle. This led to
the geocentric model being almost
universally accepted until the heliocentric
model proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus
in the sixteenth century.
 Most of his views came from the ancient
Greeks, particularly Aristotle, but it is
preserved works of Ptolemy which were
known about in Medieval Europe.
 Here we see the five known planets and
the Sun, the stars are held in a place at a
fixed distance from Earth on a crystal
sphere.

Ptolemy's Epicycles
Ptolemy: The Geography
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 The second book is The Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the
geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world, from which Ptolemy
constructed his famous maps.
 These maps were re-created in the 15th century. Christopher Columbus based
his plans to find a short route to India from Europe on them.
 Ptolemy's maps played an important role in the expansion of the Roman Empire
to the East from the 2nd century.
 Many Roman trading ports have been identified in India. From these ports,
Roman embassies to China are recorded in Chinese historical sources from
around 166 AD.
 One of his most significant contributions is the introduction of longitudes and
latitude coordinates.
 When these maps were translated and re-introduced into Western Europe at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, the idea of a global coordinate system
revolutionized European geographical thinking and put it upon a scientific and
numerical basis.
The World according to Ptolemy

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Ptolemy's world map,

reconstituted from
Ptolemy's Geographia
(circa 150AD) in the
15th century:
•Sinae (China) at the
extreme right
•The island of
Taprobane (Sri Lanka,
oversized)
•Aurea Chersonesus
(South-east Asian
peninsula)

- British Library
 East and Southeast Asia
according to Ptolemy 28

Detail of East and South-east Asia:

Gulf of the Ganges (Bay of Bengal) - left
South-east Asian peninsula – center
South China Sea - right

- The British Library

Maybe the earliest reference to Singapore:

Ptolemy identified a coastal port at the
southernmost tip of the Malayan peninsula,
called Sabana.
 Rome and Han China 29

There was trade between

these two civilizations along
the Silk Road.
This also led to the transfer of
ideas, mainly from China to
Rome.

Trade Routes,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkRoad
Christianity
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 Jesus was probably born in 4 BC in Galilee. Very few references to him in the
Roman literature.
 He was executed by crucifixion in Jerusalem in about 33 AD on orders of the
Roman Governor of Judea.
 From the beginning, his followers, Christians, were subject to various
persecutions. Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the
authorities of the Roman Empire, beginning in 64 AD, when the Emperor Nero
blamed them for that year's great Fire of Rome. It was probably under Nero's
persecution that Peter and Paul were each martyred in Rome.
 For the next 250 years Christians suffered from sporadic persecutions for their
refusal to worship the Roman emperor, considered treasonous and punishable
by execution.
 In spite of these at-times intense persecutions, the Christian religion continued
its spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin.
 Neoplatonism and the early Church I
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 In the earliest days, Christianity had little contact with pagan
intellectual culture, but during the 2nd century interaction became
significant as more educated classes embraced Christianity and a
more advanced theology was required.
 “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, or the Academy with the
Church?” was the question posed by Tertullian (~155 – 230, born in
Carthage, in North Africa), the “father of Latin Christianity“, implying
that Christians had no need of pagan learning (including natural
philosophy).
 Another famous quote from him:
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Seems to imply that martyrs are critical and important for the
development of the church.
 But others had a different view.
 Saint Augustine of Hippo 354-430 AD Theology: The study of nature of the divine (humans and gods)

 One of the founders of Christian theology, authority in theology for 32

1,000 years, throughout the Middle Ages.
 His autobiography, the Confessions, show the enormous impact Greek
philosophy (Plato), had on his conversion to Christianity. As a young
man, he famously prayed: “Grant me chastity, but not yet”
 He was Bishop of Hippo Regius (modern-day Annaba, Algeria).
 Four features for correct interpretation of scriptures (mainly Genesis,
the part of the Bible that describes the creation of the world):
Saint Augustine
 You have to be rational Antonio Rodriguez, XVII century

 You must be consistent

 You have to preserve the text
Your interpretation must be consistent with the current state of

knowledge
 St. Augustine’s attitude toward scientific knowledge was that natural philosophy was an ancilla, or
“handmaiden,” to theology, and this was the status throughout the middle ages.
 His attitudes towards Genesis and the means of interpreting scripture are in sharp contrast with
those of modern fundamentalist “biblical literalists”.
 The Roman Contributions

 Roman culture was practically

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minded: useful technology was

Wikipedia: Benh LIEU SONG

valued, not speculative natural
philosophy.
 The Roman Empire required fast
communication and roads for
military and trade: an extensive
network of paved roads was built.
 The Romans developed
technologies of mass production in
milling, metal extraction from ore, The Pont du Gard (Southern France) is the most famous part of the roman
and other fields. aqueduct which carried water from Uzès to Nîmes (19 km) until the 9th century,
when maintenance was abandoned. It is 49m high and now 275m long (it was
 The Roman Republic (509 BC - 27 360m when intact) at its top.
AD), had a constitution that
combined democratic and
aristocratic features.
 A new element was introduced in the government of the Roman Republic): Separation of powers,
leading to a form of checks and balances limiting any one person’s powers. For example, term
limits, age requirements, and the election of two men to the top job (consul) instead of one.
The Julian calendar
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 It was commissioned by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC, the task of
constructing it was given to Sosigenes the Alexandrian.
 Sosigenes based his calendar on the Egyptian 12-month solar calendar.
 He determined the length of the solar year as 365.25 days and Sumerian calendar: 30-days
implemented a four-year cycle: three years of 365 days, followed by a
fourth with an extra day in February.
 The earlier Roman calendar (10-month, winter period just not counted) had
to be adjusted to this new scheme. Therefore (our) 44 BC was 445 days
long to bring the vernal equinox (the beginning of spring) back to the 25th
of March.
 Sosigenes’ year was still 11 minutes too long. Over many centuries the error
accumulates, and finally a reform to its present state (the Gregorian
calendar) was necessary in the 16th century.
Roman Education
 In the Roman Empire, Greek schools were available, as were Greek tutors. A new
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kind of schooling with a “standardized” curriculum developed, based on late
Hellenistic models.
 The seven liberal arts were at the core of this curriculum:
 Verbal arts: rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic - constituted the first course of
study (the trivium, our “trivial”, simple, derives from this).
 Mathematical arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the
quadrivium).
 An important innovation of the Romans came in the form of professional schools:
law and medicine.
 Many Roman authors wrote for the educated class, rather ‘popular’ than
‘specialist’ books. This created a new genre of writing: the encyclopaedia.
 Lucretius’ poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) was a popularization
of Epicurean atomism and philosophy. (See the upcoming Renaissance lecture).
 The most important of these works is the Historia naturalis (Natural History) by Pliny
the Elder (AD 23 – August 25, AD 79.
 36
 A historical fiction with a blend of fictional
characters with the real-life eruption of Mount
Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD that
overwhelmed Pompeii and its surrounding
towns. A good read, a thriller with a lot of
history, Roman engineering and (of course), a
love story.
 He also shows a disturbing and rather
reprehensible fact we have not discussed
much: both the Greeks and the Romans had
economies largely based on slavery.
 Aristotle may have had some hope it could be
overcome:

If the hammer and the shuttle could move

themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.
Aristotle
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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 Christianity was initially persecuted throughout the Roman Empire.
 Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 313 AD, there is only
speculation if this was a religious or a political move.
 By 380 AD Christianity had become the official religion throughout the entire
Roman Empire.
 In 330 AD Constantine moved the Imperial capital to Byzantium, which became
Constantinople (now Istanbul). This eventually resulted in the Empire being split in
two in 395 AD.
 The western Roman empire, Latin speaking and Christian, remained governed
from Rome, and lasted only another hundred years before being destroyed by
invading Goths in 410 AD and again in 476 AD.
 This was a complete disaster for western Europe. Most knowledge and wisdom of
the ancient Greeks was lost or forgotten, though much was preserved in the
Eastern Roman Empire and later by Islamic civilizations.
 Countries and kingdoms collapsed, in some places even the potter’s wheel was
lost.
395 AD: The Empire divided.

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 http://sitemaker.umich.edu/mladjov
39
Rise of Christianity and the Dark Ages
(following the fall of Constantinople)
40
 The eastern Roman Empire was Greek speaking and Greek Orthodox.
 A break-up, a schism of the church occurred in 1054, triggered by the “filioque
controversy”: to do with theological arguments regarding the procession of the
holy spirit in the trinity.
 Governed by Constantinople, it included Greece, Turkey and the Balkans.
 Constantinople lasted another 1000 years until it was taken by the Ottoman
Empire in1453, becoming Istanbul. This led to many Greek speaking scholars
fleeing to Italy and contributing to the Renaissance (as we shall see later).
 In 529 AD the Byzantine emperor Justinian closed Plato's academy in Athens
since it did not teach Christian beliefs and suppressed all learning and forms of
religion which did not agree with Christianity.
 In this same year, 529 AD, the first of the great Christian monastic orders was
founded, the Benedictines. They had a monopoly on education, meditation
and thinking.
 This year can be conveniently thought of as what many consider the triumph
of Christianity and others call the start of the Dark Ages in Europe.
 41

A good overview of the ancient

world:

The Classical World: An Epic History

From Homer To Hadrian
by Robin Lane Fox
693pp, Penguin