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But then who among Ancient Greek philosophers was good at physics? They only tried to explain, that is, tell stories about how things worked. They did not try t
by _0w8t 4y ago
But then who among Ancient Greek philosophers was good at physics? They only tried to explain, that is, tell stories about how things worked. They did not try to make predictions and verify that they matched the reality.
- eimrine 4y agoThere is no physics in Liberal Arts but there were Geometry, Music, Astronomy - some parts of which are parts of what today is called Physics. All I know about pure Physics in Ancient times is Zeno's paradoxes which is how they used to analyze movement and maybe three Archimedean simple machines among the 6 classical ones which is how they applied their knowledge about movement into practice.
- kromem 4y agoEpicurus. The comment above is using the quotes of people who didn't understand modern science ('physics' meant the study of nature) to dismiss the guy who in retrospect was the closest to modern science. For example, Lucretius (the Epicurean poet) nailed survival of the fittest and roughly described Mendelian trait inheritance nearly two millennia before Darwin. But I very much doubt Cicero or even Leibniz would have recognized that as a correct understanding of nature.
- _0w8t 4y agoEven Epicurus just tried to explain according to his surviving works. As for Lucretius preceding Darwin by 2 millennia, then consider that the idea of survival of the fittest by itself is not a scientific theory in the modern sense that makes predictions that can be verified. Basically one can explain anything with it by defining what “fittest” means post-factum. The science begins when one tries to predict with it things like speed of evolution or the existence of species not yet observed in paleontological records. There is nothing like that in Lucretius works AFAIK.