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Sure, and the ancient Greeks predicted the heat death of the universe. The premise that all matter has an intrinsic type, and that all types tend to either floa

Sure, and the ancient Greeks predicted the heat death of the universe. The premise that all matter has an intrinsic type, and that all types tend to either float or sink relative to the others, and that in the long run all matter will be organized into perfect spheres of homogeneous layers, is totally in line with our modern understanding of entropy. Every old theory was sort of right if you just ignore all the ways it was wrong and interpret it very liberally.

lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
Right, just like Democritus "predicted" atoms.
- pcwalton 2y ago
  Well, Democritus' theory of matter was closer to the truth than that of Aristotle, despite both being substantially wrong. Perhaps science would have progressed faster if Democritus' ideas had persisted up to the Renaissance instead of Aristotle's. That's all you can really say: ancient Greek philosophy in no way resembled modern science, but that doesn't mean that we can't give the ones who got closer than others any credit.
  - eru 2y ago
    Some of the Greeks were a lot better than others. Aristotle's work for example was mostly trash, but Archimedes did work that still holds up. I guess Archimedes was much closer to a craftsman, and Aristotle was more of what we'd call a liberal arts scholar. Reality puts a check on the flights of fancy of the craftsman. See also the work of whoever build the Antikythera mechanism.
  - lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
    Science is a process, a methodology. It's not a collection of truthful fact. Some got closer by accident, not because they had the right methodology. Because of that I award them no points.
    - pcwalton 2y ago
      But people get credit for scientific discoveries made before the technology to verify them existed all the time. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs field in 1964 and won the Nobel Prize for it in 2013, after it was detected. The reason why the Prize wasn't awarded until 2013 is that it could have been otherwise; in a universe in which the laws of physics were different, the Higgs field might well have gone the way of supersymmetry. Likewise, Democritus correctly described matter as consisting of fundamental particles too small to see in 400 B.C., but verification wouldn't happen for over a millennium. Democritus still deserves credit for this observation.
    - zogrodea 2y ago
      Reading The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler may be interesting for you. Science and cosmology has progressed tremendously because of people like Kepler who have had right conclusions despite incorrect methods. One relevant excerpt: “A phrase seems to have been humming in his ear like a tune one cannot get rid of; it crops up in his writings over and again: there is a force in the sun which moves the planet, there is a force in the sun, there is a force in the sun. And since there is a force in the sun, there must exist some beautifully simple relation between the planet’s distance from the sun and its speed. A light shines the brighter the nearer we are to its source, and the same must apply to the force of the sun: the closer the planet to it, the quicker it will move. This is his instinctive conviction, already expressed in the Mysterium Cosmographicum; but now, at last, he has succeeded in proving it. In fact he has not. He has proved the inverse ratio of speed to distance only for the two extreme points of the orbit; and his extension of this ‘Law’ to the entire orbit was a patently incorrect generalization. Moreover, Kepler knew this, and admitted it at the end of the thirty-second chapter,18 before he became airborne; but immediately afterwards, he conveniently forgot it. This is the first of the critical mistakes which ‘as if by a miracle’ cancelled out, and led Kepler to the discovery of his Second Law. It looks as if his conscious, critical faculties were anaesthetized by the creative impulse, by his impatience to get to grips with the physical forces in the solar system.“

lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago

Right, just like Democritus "predicted" atoms.

pcwalton 2y ago
Well, Democritus' theory of matter was closer to the truth than that of Aristotle, despite both being substantially wrong. Perhaps science would have progressed faster if Democritus' ideas had persisted up to the Renaissance instead of Aristotle's. That's all you can really say: ancient Greek philosophy in no way resembled modern science, but that doesn't mean that we can't give the ones who got closer than others any credit.
- eru 2y ago
  Some of the Greeks were a lot better than others. Aristotle's work for example was mostly trash, but Archimedes did work that still holds up. I guess Archimedes was much closer to a craftsman, and Aristotle was more of what we'd call a liberal arts scholar. Reality puts a check on the flights of fancy of the craftsman. See also the work of whoever build the Antikythera mechanism.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
  Science is a process, a methodology. It's not a collection of truthful fact. Some got closer by accident, not because they had the right methodology. Because of that I award them no points.
  - pcwalton 2y ago
    But people get credit for scientific discoveries made before the technology to verify them existed all the time. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs field in 1964 and won the Nobel Prize for it in 2013, after it was detected. The reason why the Prize wasn't awarded until 2013 is that it could have been otherwise; in a universe in which the laws of physics were different, the Higgs field might well have gone the way of supersymmetry. Likewise, Democritus correctly described matter as consisting of fundamental particles too small to see in 400 B.C., but verification wouldn't happen for over a millennium. Democritus still deserves credit for this observation.
  - zogrodea 2y ago
    Reading The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler may be interesting for you. Science and cosmology has progressed tremendously because of people like Kepler who have had right conclusions despite incorrect methods. One relevant excerpt: “A phrase seems to have been humming in his ear like a tune one cannot get rid of; it crops up in his writings over and again: there is a force in the sun which moves the planet, there is a force in the sun, there is a force in the sun. And since there is a force in the sun, there must exist some beautifully simple relation between the planet’s distance from the sun and its speed. A light shines the brighter the nearer we are to its source, and the same must apply to the force of the sun: the closer the planet to it, the quicker it will move. This is his instinctive conviction, already expressed in the Mysterium Cosmographicum; but now, at last, he has succeeded in proving it. In fact he has not. He has proved the inverse ratio of speed to distance only for the two extreme points of the orbit; and his extension of this ‘Law’ to the entire orbit was a patently incorrect generalization. Moreover, Kepler knew this, and admitted it at the end of the thirty-second chapter,18 before he became airborne; but immediately afterwards, he conveniently forgot it. This is the first of the critical mistakes which ‘as if by a miracle’ cancelled out, and led Kepler to the discovery of his Second Law. It looks as if his conscious, critical faculties were anaesthetized by the creative impulse, by his impatience to get to grips with the physical forces in the solar system.“