Thinking During Classical Antiquity

4000 years ago we saw the very first civilizations develop a system of writing, complex mathematics and invent the wheel. Today we have already sent exploration rovers to mars, and are looking to send people there within the next 10 years. With the first homo sapiens appearing 200000 years ago, it is quite amazing that most advancement in technology and science has happened in the past few thousand years. However the progression in science has not always increased at a steady rate.

For example during classical antiquity, especially in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, scientists studied natural philosophy, the study of nature; which helped to progress our understanding of the world greatly. However this idea of thinking was nearly diminished

Classical Antiquity

The classical era is the period from the beginning of Ancient Greece to the fall of the Western Roman Empire (approximately 8th century BCE – 5th century CE), with the most influential civilisations being the Greek city states, and the Roman Empire.

There were scientists before this time period but their way of studying was not well persevered. Babylonians and Mesopotamians were one of the first astronomers to make observations of stars, planets and the moon. However they believed astronomy and astrology were the same thing, so the scientific community was mostly based superstition.

Many people believe that the Greek philosophers were the first scientists, in the form of natural philosophy. This is commonly described as the study of nature, which helped develop modern day sciences.

But why did Greek philosophy help scientific progress? Philosophers mainly focused on using reason to explain the natural world, rather then mythology. Thales of Miletus, the founder of western philosophy, is the first person to explain natural objects and phenomena by theories and hypothesis; laying the foundations for