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The existence of thoroughly reasoned and empirical fields such as architecture (and is implementation with regards to civic engineering) in the Roman world is a

The existence of thoroughly reasoned and empirical fields such as architecture (and is implementation with regards to civic engineering) in the Roman world is an obvious disproof with regards to this sort of Christian-centric worldview being a necessary factor. If they as a thinking culture believed the universe was not consistent and reliable, there is little reason to believe that the lessons learned that made Roman aqueducts stand to this day would have stuck the way they did. And, similarly, this lesson holds for societies not so comfortingly Western; there's little reason to believe that "but gods!" held back the the Chinese or the Indians, either. The ancient world--not just Rome, but across the board--didn't have what you have chosen to provincially define as "real science" because not having the tools to build the tools to disprove theories tends to put a damper on things. Instead they had sciences based on what they could and did measure: geometry and astronomy are explicitly called out by Vitruvius as being necessary topics for an architect to understand. I mean, hell. Greek and Roman thinkers (and, indeed, most Roman science was Greek) defined the scientific method as being a deterministic thing, induction via observation, in the first place.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Why then did Oppenheimer (not a Christian, BTW) say that science could not have begun without Christianity? How much of your example is survivor bias? How many roman aqueducts didn't stand to this day (and in fact failed in use)? Well, we'd only know if someone made a record of it, and the record survived, or if we found the remains in an archaelogical exploration. Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? And you point me back to the Greeks as originators of the scientific method. A quick glance at Wikipedia reveals the claim that Aristotle originated that way of thinking. But that would be the same Aristotle who claimed that it was philosophically or logically obvious that men had more teeth than women but who, despite being married twice, never actually bothered to check. (That may be to say, induction via observation is fine, but I think the real scientific method requires experimental verification, and I don't think Aristotle was very big on that.)
- eropple 9y ago
  I can't speak about Oppenheimer, but I can speak to how we understand that scientific practice in antiquity worked as they themselves described it. Have you studied the Pythagoreans through Plato? Or read Vitruvius? This is not oh, those capricious gods! stuff, this is "what can we think about?", "how do we know what we know?", and "how does it apply?" stuff. And, when you spend time reading them, it is pretty obvious that there is no need to backfit a just-so-story of a narrative. > Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? What do you think the iterative process of developing those rules of thumb is, if it isn't science? If it isn't literally how science has progressed since...well...antiquity? And if Aristotle being wrong about the observation rankles you, then Epicurus's canonics are right there, too.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    The Pythagoreans? The guys who couldn't separate their geometry from their mysticism? The guys who murdered the man who proved the existence of irrational numbers for (essentially) heresy? Whose "how do we know what we know" was at least sometimes "because mysticism"? They grappled with the question, I'll grant you. But their answer left a fair amount to be desired. > What do you think the iterative process of developing those rules of thumb is, if it isn't science? Well, it's technology. We observe that, if we want to build a bridge for an aqueduct, if it's higher than X feet, we have to build the bridge in layers, or else it will fall down. And we can't have more than Y layers, or it will fall down anyway. That's observation, and engineering, but it isn't science. To me, science is: 1) Systematic observation, 2) The search for regularities in the observations, 3) Proposing an explanation for the observed regularities, and 4) Testing the proposed explanation. Without that fourth step, it isn't science. And I don't think that "we can't build higher than Y layers" should be the end point of "proposing an explanation". > And if Aristotle being wrong about the observation rankles you... What rankles me isn't that Aristotle was wrong. It's that he never made the observation. He stated something that seemed obviously right (to him), but he never checked it in any way, even though he had the means to do so in his own house. (And no, I don't think Epicurus is the answer to what Aristotle did wrong.)

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Why then did Oppenheimer (not a Christian, BTW) say that science could not have begun without Christianity? How much of your example is survivor bias? How many roman aqueducts didn't stand to this day (and in fact failed in use)? Well, we'd only know if someone made a record of it, and the record survived, or if we found the remains in an archaelogical exploration. Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? And you point me back to the Greeks as originators of the scientific method. A quick glance at Wikipedia reveals the claim that Aristotle originated that way of thinking. But that would be the same Aristotle who claimed that it was philosophically or logically obvious that men had more teeth than women but who, despite being married twice, never actually bothered to check. (That may be to say, induction via observation is fine, but I think the real scientific method requires experimental verification, and I don't think Aristotle was very big on that.)

eropple 9y ago
I can't speak about Oppenheimer, but I can speak to how we understand that scientific practice in antiquity worked as they themselves described it. Have you studied the Pythagoreans through Plato? Or read Vitruvius? This is not oh, those capricious gods! stuff, this is "what can we think about?", "how do we know what we know?", and "how does it apply?" stuff. And, when you spend time reading them, it is pretty obvious that there is no need to backfit a just-so-story of a narrative. > Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? What do you think the iterative process of developing those rules of thumb is, if it isn't science? If it isn't literally how science has progressed since...well...antiquity? And if Aristotle being wrong about the observation rankles you, then Epicurus's canonics are right there, too.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  The Pythagoreans? The guys who couldn't separate their geometry from their mysticism? The guys who murdered the man who proved the existence of irrational numbers for (essentially) heresy? Whose "how do we know what we know" was at least sometimes "because mysticism"? They grappled with the question, I'll grant you. But their answer left a fair amount to be desired. > What do you think the iterative process of developing those rules of thumb is, if it isn't science? Well, it's technology. We observe that, if we want to build a bridge for an aqueduct, if it's higher than X feet, we have to build the bridge in layers, or else it will fall down. And we can't have more than Y layers, or it will fall down anyway. That's observation, and engineering, but it isn't science. To me, science is: 1) Systematic observation, 2) The search for regularities in the observations, 3) Proposing an explanation for the observed regularities, and 4) Testing the proposed explanation. Without that fourth step, it isn't science. And I don't think that "we can't build higher than Y layers" should be the end point of "proposing an explanation". > And if Aristotle being wrong about the observation rankles you... What rankles me isn't that Aristotle was wrong. It's that he never made the observation. He stated something that seemed obviously right (to him), but he never checked it in any way, even though he had the means to do so in his own house. (And no, I don't think Epicurus is the answer to what Aristotle did wrong.)