The Scientific Spirit of the Greeks

Abstract

“WE must endeavour,” wrote Plato in the “Timæus”, “to construct the four forms of bodies which excel in beauty, and then we shall be able to say that we have sufficiently appre hended their nature.” To wrest this sentence from its context, and to take it as a characteristic ex pression of a prominent aspect of Greek science, is to do no great violence to truth. The modern conception of science scarcely becomes recognisable until the days of Galileo, and in any judgment of early science we should remember that our present standards of sufficient apprehension of the nature of a body do not necessarily apply. That we believe them to be better is not strictly relevant; the essential factor in judgment must be: given the contemporary standards, what results might have been expected, and what were actually achieved?

The Heroic Age of Science: the Conception, Ideals and Methods of Science among the Ancient Greeks.

By Prof. William Arthur Heidel. (Published for the Carnegie Institution of Washington.) Pp. vii + 203. (Baltimore, Md.: The Williams and Wilkins Co.; London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, 1933.) 12s. 6d.