NATS 1745 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Ancient Greek Astronomy, Aswan, Anaximander
12 Feb 2016
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They were the turning point because they focused more on rational reasoning than story telling. Before (ancient egypt): they observed the sun, moon, planets and stars; watched for patterns and couldn"t make prediction. So reasoning laid with gods --- no attempt at rationality. Ancient greeks: constructed their world view based on sense and perception. They changed the modes of thinking: with years that have inter calary" month --- adding a 13th month, positions of planets problematic. Greeks developed the geometric model of the movement of the planets, that could predict position all the time. Movement away from just straight observation of the nature and the prediction based on patterns: forwards artificial construction of model representing nature, underpinning of modern science. Thales of miletus: material unity underlying the world that our sense can register, not an infinite set of possibilities for events. Pythagoras & the followers: perceived the relationship between arithmetic + numbers + harmonic intervals (music)
