long ago some philosophers worked very
hard to separate myths from what they
actually knew about nature bailey's
theorized that everything in the world
is made of water Pythagoras was a
mathematical mystical vegetarian and
Democritus we all know and love as the
atom guy meet the pre-socratics
the pre-socratics were named for their
leader of course priests Socrates that
is a joke
they were several different philosophers
who lived before Socrates now why start
with the pre-socratics since people have
systematically made knowledge about the
world for millennia there's no single
starting point but a convenient place to
get our footing is ancient Greece these
Greeks were the cornerstone of
scientific inquiry in Western Europe
their theories had a terrific run like
try and imagine coming up with a
question about the nature that puzzles
people for more than 2,000 years I can't
even decide what to have for breakfast
more practical reason to put on our
thinking Tobi's is that the ancient
Greeks left behind sources writing stuff
down makes history possible and here's a
protip if you want to be remembered in
2,000 years keep a diary preferably on
vellum with metallic ink also get super
famous so that your students make plenty
of copies not all the people we think of
as ancient Greeks actually even lived in
Greece their culture stretched across a
prosperous region called Ionia and they
weren't as ancient to some even ancient
er Greeks we typically date ancient
Greece's starting around 800 BCE after
the fall of the Mycenaeans those are the
dudes who burned down Troy because one
of them got dumped zero chill ancient
Greece ends with the Roman conquest in
146 BC II we're focusing on a science
dense period from around 600 to 400 BCE
these Greeks live in small towns and are
very comfy out at sea they trade and
fight with each other a lot and they
sometimes have to deal with invading
Persians they worship nature but their
land is deforested and eroded they love
setting up new colonies all along the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea there is
no public support for anything like
modern science there aren't even schools
in which to study science
the Greeks practiced natural philosophy
meaning self conscious inquiry into
nature a lot of their philosophies were
about answering our first running
question here on history of science what
is stuff I mean really if you watched
our first episode you'll know that we
can divide science into both a body of
knowledge and a set of methods and you
examine the work of these pre-socratic
philosophers you can see two important
things first they weren't
tests in a modern sense they didn't make
detailed accurate knowledge of nature
based on observation but they did come
up with theories that tried to account
for why stuff is the way that it is in
there wonky sounding theories we still
find many of the themes that would drive
centuries of further inquiry that divide
between the abstract and the material or
identifying the smallest possible
particle of stuff second as these
natural philosophers tried their best to
separate myth from truth they developed
first drafts of many of the methods we
still use in value today natural
philosophy became a quest for abstract
knowledge this is important because it
means the pre-socratics started making
general claims about the real world
laws that would apply in every situation
not just specific instances the
pre-socratics also developed schools of
thought that spread their ideas around
geographically and down the centuries
these weren't physical schools they were
groups of teachers and students who
thought about the same problems one of
the reasons we know about these schools
of thought is because they operated as
individuals who took credit for their
ideas and whose names were passed down
this practice differed from many other
cultures of inquiry and became a
foundation for how Europeans later
systematically made knowledge but the
big method of knowledge making here and
the one that we're gonna focus on was
rational debates between all those
schools and individuals and abstract
theories there was a lot of disagreement
to convince people they were right a
natural philosopher had to use reason
logic and observation to attack the
wrong seeming theories of others and
bolster his own awesomeness in fact some
historians argue that there's a link
between rational debate about political
constitutionality or how humans should
govern themselves and rational debate
about the constitution of nature or how
the world governs itself now there are
more pre-socratics than we could
possibly mention so here are a few
highlights this is our rogues gallery of
natural philosophers who all had their
own theories and they argued they
rationally debated themselves into the
history of science the first European
natural philosopher whose ideas survived
down to the present was failings the
first individual known to have proved a
mathematical theorem fail 'yes' theorem
in fact early historians attributed lots
of first to fail e is making it hard
tell exactly what he really accomplished
regardless being the first at a whole
way of doing thought is pretty unusual
bailey's set the natural world off as
separate from the divine for him the
world was something comprehensible by
the powers of the human intellect it
became an object a thing like other
things this meant leaving the gods out
for example bailey's held that wind not
a god caused the Nile to flood this was
a general natural explanation for a
phenomenon bailey's was not however
irreligious he believed that all things
have a God or a soul within them filly's
was also the founder of the first
European school of philosophy the
Malaysians a Malaysian school was known
for its theory of matter a theory of
stuff this theory held that water was
the primary substrate or the most basic
element the earth floats on water like a
ship earthquakes happen when the water
rocks back and forth the soul of things
may have not been material but their
stuff 'no swatter will come back to this
essential dualism of soul versus matter
in future episodes later Plato and
Aristotle were dismissive of fáil ease
and part of their argument was that
they'll ease once predicted an upcoming
harvest to cornered the market on olive
oil using his philosophy for personal
gain is that ok depends on who you ask
Bailey's is a star student was
Anaximander he's thought to have been
the first European philosopher to write
down his own ideas like Bailey's
Anaximander believed that nature is
ruled by discoverable laws but
Anaximander rejected a faiis watery
Universal substrate proposing instead a
formless initial state called the
appearin Anaximander proposed that this
primal formlessness would then devolve
into opposite properties that could be
experienced like hot or cold wet or dry
heavy and light etc Anaximander worked
in astronomy geography and mathematics
one of his contributions was introducing
the gnome on the part of the sundial
that cast the shadow to Greece these had
already been used in China for two
millennia the Noman was good for more
than just telling time it helped people
better understand the movement of the
Sun and it helped Anaximander develop a
model of the cosmos that envisioned
heavenly wheels
shirt by holes letting leg through one
of our earliest examples of natural
philosophers tried to conquer the where
are we question the last great thinker
associated with the Malaysians was
empedocles who was probably also
influenced by Pythagoras and pair
amenities almost every Greek philosopher
had a book called on nature it's super
confusing in empedocles on nature he put
forward the theory of the four classical
elements earth air fire and water mixed
by two forces love and strife while this
theory of course seems hopelessly
misguided now remember that simply by
asking what is stuff the Malaysians were
moving away from mythology and toward
modern physics probably the pre-socratic
philosopher most well-known today is
Pythagoras that triangle guy
Pythagoras studied the philosophy of the
Malaysians but he was a more mystic
thinker which is a nice way of saying
Pythagoras was a cult leader he believed
in reincarnation and outlawed beans
seeing them as impure probably
historians love to debate the bean thing
at least we're pretty sure he was a
vegetarian
how can he be vegetarian without beans
hi grace is focused on the pure
dovetails with the fact that we think of
him as having introduced the notion of
idealism to science idealists generated
abstract models of perfect stuff this
was unlike Malaysians who were
materialists they started theorizing
about actual stuff in terms of math
Pythagoras's idealism meant a shift from
practical arithmetic inherited from
egypt and mesopotamia to a new pure
geometry for pythagoras numbers were not
just a way of counting stuff they were
sacred pythagoras loved whole numbers he
hated irrational numbers of such as the
square root of 2 he called the square
root of 2 the Allegan or the unutterable
to even know that irrational numbers
existed you had to join the cult of the
pythagorean's and work your way into the
innermost circle this is so great for
our purposes the thing that Pythagoras
added to science is the role of the
mathematical proof Egyptians and
Babylonians knew about Pythagorean
triplets that is like the whole number
solutions to the Pythagorean theorem
that was useful a practical guide that
can be in
lamented by ancient engineers but
Pythagoras understood it and proved it
in a purely mathematical abstract with
Pythagoras creating an elegant abstract
proof became a model for justifying a
new claim to knowledge another major
threat in Greek thought before Socrates
was Adam ISM the theory that the world
is made of particles that you can't
divide any further this was associated
with Democritus who made heavy use of
rational debate through dialogues our
wonder of this period for this he is the
star of this episode's thought-bubble
Democritus held that everything is made
of atoms indestructible uncreated always
in motion and infinite in number and
they came in all kinds of shapes and
sizes and his focus on matter Democritus
was a materialist like the Malaysians
he's even credited with holding a bottle
of air underwater to show that air is
made of stuff thus giving rise to the
experiment as a way to illustrate a
theory still Democritus had a lot to
prove
he would ask what is air and people
would be like nothing Democritus and
that's when he'd say that's where you're
wrong most famously Democritus argued
against other theorists Parmenides and
Zeno using something that we call the
void hypothesis Democritus was like
everything is made of little indivisible
bits of stuff
I call them atoms then Zeno is all but
Democritus my friend what is between two
atoms then Democritus says nothing
between the atoms there is only a void
and then Zeno replies
you're caught in a paradox friend if
everything is made of atoms and the void
is a thing then the void is made of
atoms but then what is between the atoms
of the void and then presumably Zeno
dropped a 450 BCE equivalent of a mic
and the crowd went wild thanks thought
bubble
this was rational debate this particular
debate would go on for centuries but
more importantly the structure of the
dialogue the celebration of rational
debate as almost a sporting event for
these nerds was a new and valuable way
to analyze our universe this debate is
just one example of how the
pre-socratics elevated being curious
about the world into Natural Philosophy
it's important
remember that the natural philosophers
of ancient Greece lives in a very
different world both physically and
socially from that of like jeopardy and
github but the way that this group of
thinkers framed problems about stuff
changed nothingness mathematical
elegance perception truth than the
cosmos has echoed across the centuries
next time we'll watch Plato and
Aristotle Duke it out over idealism and
empiricism it's gonna be a Throwdown for
the ages crash course history of science
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