Oh, Science. Considered its success during the last century, like Nuclear Physics and Genetics, we could think its importance to be absolute and timeless; but apparently it’s not like this.
I read this book because fantastic people suggested it and because I wanted to examine a quite contemporary problem: the continuation of Science. What I fear is that after all conquers of scientific thinking, our posterity will only keep the tecnologies and, why not?, flush the rest. Exagerated, you may think. But this book gives a convincing example that happened in the past.
Greeks like Euclid (Geometry and Optics, 4th-3rd century), Herophilus (Anatomis, 335-280), Aristarcus of Samus (Astronomer, 310-230), Archimedes (287-212), Ctesibius(Pneumatics, 285-222), Apollonius of Perga (Conics, 3rd-2nd century), Ipparcus (Astronomer, 200-120), Hero of Alexandria (Automata, 10-70) and many others, were undoubtly following a knowledge method which was: abstract, deductive and that was leading to practical experiments and machines. Aka scientific method. What they wrote lead to results like the Lighthouse of Alexandria (300 BC – 1480). With a height of 130 meters, it lasted more than 1500 years, its light being based upon the Conics study of Euclid and Apolonius of Perga. Quite cool.
It’s a long list, but I’ll skip that to the main point, the one I was missing before reading the book. The great majority of written texts, ideas, computations, prototypes, has been lost. Partly because much knowledge was considered (rightfully) strategic, so it wasn’t divulged. But also because the coming of Romans destroyed those ideas, that were then clumsily re-introduced in later writings, such as in Plinus the elder (Naturalist, 23-79) and Ptolomy (Geocentrism, 100-175). But those attempts looks, in my opinion, ridiculous.They couldn’t understand or appreciate what the Greeks were saying, they were mocking them whilst providing their own idea (that was usually quite wrong).
The result is that we didn’t have a knowledge bubble like the Greek one for a long time. For example, nobody knew how to build a lighthouse like the Alexandria’s. The lighthouse of Genova is 77 meters tall and its light is not based on conic sections like the Greek ones because they didn’t know how to apply them. But they did know that something was there, they really did. Thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) or Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) probably had access to some, now lost, Greek writings; surely they knew about some lost ancient Greek-Roman knowledge.
I conclude this overview, not review, of the book, that is not an easy reading. What happened to Greek Science is sad, but it’s also interesting because it’s human, too human.