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Science, Philosophy, and Technology in the Greco-Roman World: I1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Desmond Lee
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Extract

My title is an ambitious one, and defines a field which is more suitable for a book than for a single lecture, and which has the added disadvantage that it crosses the boundaries between a number of disciplines: history, science, philosophy, and technology. Anyone who chooses such a theme is in danger of being told by those well-versed in the individual disciplines that his knowledge of each of them is inadequate; which may well be true, and is certainly true of me. But cross-disciplinary exploration is in itself a desirable activity; and if a few explorers perish in the process no great harm is done, and others may follow their example more successfully. I should not, however, in saying this, like it to be thought that I am claiming any great novelty for what I shall say to you today. Little of my material is new; all I can hope to do is to suggest to you a particular interpretation of it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , April 1973 , pp. 65 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

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page 66 note 2 Science in History (Penguin, 1969), 31 ff.Google Scholar

page 66 note 3 Greek Science (Pelican, 1953), 20.Google Scholar

page 67 note 1 Economic History Review xviii (1965), 29 ff.Google Scholar

page 67 note 2 History of Greek Philosophy, vol. iii (Cambridge, 1969), 63 and 79.Google Scholar

page 68 note 1 Farrington, , op. cit. 23.Google Scholar

page 68 note 2 A History of Science (London, 1953), i, p. xii.Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), 28.Google Scholar

page 69 note 2 Forbes, R. J. and Dijksterhuis, E. J., A History of Science and Technology (Pelican, 1963), i. 76.Google Scholar

page 69 note 3 Cf. Edelstein, L., Ancient Medicine (Baltimore, 1967), 247Google Scholar; the Hellenistic period at Alexandria seems to have been an exception.

page 69 note 4 Farrington, , Science and Politics in the Ancient World (London, 1939).Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 Finley, (ed.), Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1960), 234.Google Scholar

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page 70 note 3 Cf. Perkins, , The Origins of Modern English Society (London, 1969), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; labour must not be cheap and plentiful if ‘labour-saving innovation’ is to be encouraged.

page 70 note 4 Slavery in Classical Antiquity, 68.Google Scholar

page 71 note 1 Perkins, op. cit. 24; cf. Hume, quoted by Guthrie (op. cit. 410), ‘poverty and hard labour debase the minds of the common people, and render them unfit for any science or ingenious profession’.

page 71 note 2 Sambursky, S., The Physical World of the Greeks (London, 1956), 226.Google Scholar

page 71 note 3 Slavery in Classical Antiquity, 1 ff.

page 72 note 1 Economic History Review, loc. cit. 29 and 43.

page 72 note 2 Diod. v. 35–8: Farrington, , Head and Hand in Ancient Greece (London, 1947), 69.Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 Grain Mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1958), 102.Google Scholar

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page 73 note 4 Op. cit. 13.

page 73 note 5 Studies in Ancient Technology (Leiden, 1964–), ii. 82.Google Scholar

page 73 note 6 Op. cit. 84.

page 74 note 1 des Noëttes, op. cit. ch. v.

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page 74 note 5 Cf. Vigneron, op. cit. 161: ‘l'équitation antique était rude: chevauchure en tous terrains sans étriers exige des cavaliers vigoureux et regulièrement exercés.’ See also page 149 on ‘la médiocrité du réseau routier’.

page 74 note 6 Op. cit. 136: cf. 135, ‘in a.d. 39 or 40 Caligula could still endanger the city's bread supply by commandeering the mill-animals.’

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page 76 note 1 For detail see my Aristotle Meteorologica (Loeb edition, 1952), 324 ff.Google Scholar

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page 77 note 1 White, Lynn T. (ed.), Transformation of the Roman World (Berkeley, 1966), 34–5, 303.Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 Todd, Lord, report in The Times of 3 09 1970Google Scholar: ‘What we call the Industrial Revolution–I would prefer to call it the First Industrial Revolution—had little to do with science. It involved technological advances due to the exploitation of chance discovery or invention, and in this respect was no different from anything that had gone before. Men like Boulton and Watt were essentially inventor-entrepreneurs rather than scientists. Natural science had been advancing but prior to the mid-nineteenth century its impact on everyday life was small. Around the middle of the last century, however, men of science began to apply scientific method and the results of scientific research to the solution of industrial problems.’