The Greek sciences are all at the same time a whole of questionings, methods and results in the beginning of the mathematical and scientific thought, which will develop as from eighth century BC until our days on all the continents. Historically, it is in the ancient Greece that sciences as a rational thought are born, under the impulse of at the same time philosophical thinkers all and physicists, or even religious leaders. However, the term of science should not be taken literally: the influence of the philosophers, the speculation, the invention belong to the Greek knowledge, and it is the scientific attitude which interests us here, both for it even its historical influence.
The Ionian influence
The Greek culture is relatively well-known starting from the VIIIe and VIIe front centuries J. - C., period as from which the language, the habits and the cities are sufficiently unified so that the inhabitants of the Ionie leave direct or indirect traces of their life of then. It is there that Greek science, as rational progress, begins and settles in the cities which are Milet, Chios, or Samos. It is certain that this development is tributary of a very old heritage, coming from civilizations Minoan and mycénienne initially, sumérienne and mésopotamienne then. But it is also more directly the demonstration of conditions of new possibilities, because the Ionian ones are the first with living under a political regime chosen by them, as well as notable tradesmen. A particular dynamics is set up, which makes it possible science to be born under the aegis of the number.
It is indeed with the Mathématiques that Greek science begins, by the hands of Thalès de Milet. The teaching of Thalès is partly reported by texts apocryphal books, but its contribution seems quite real taking into consideration scientific turning which the ancient Greece saw at that time. Thalès is not interested in the only numbers, and its influence will be even very different: it adopts a singular attitude, which consists in trying to explain the world by a natural principle deduced from the observation and not by supernatural principles. That required many speculations, largely animists, and which appear to have only very little scientific value taking into consideration modern criterion. However, it is precisely this manner of seeing the world under an understandable angle which is the base of the rational step. Moreover, these speculations were not completely fortuitous: Thalès thus advances the idea that the life would find its origin in the Eau, on the basis of its daily observation.
This step is taken again by several other thinkers of which one with the trace by the discussions that they caused in later scientists. Anaximandre, contemporary of Thalès, also proposes a complete explanation of the Earth and the Man, by proposing assumptions where the gods of mythology do not intervene. Anaximène advances then that it is the air which is the paramount element of the world and the man: the heart is a breath which gives its form and its consistency to the normally inert matter. More original still the thought of Héraclite, which explains why cosmos, the matter and the man in perpetual movement, unstable by nature, are devoured by the untameable Feu, which prevents any perfect knowledge of the things. This idea of a limit in the knowledge of the man, who supposes already a questioning on knowledge like ideal goal, is shared by several of the first Greek philosophers (for example Démocrite), and will be largely taken up to criticize the concept of gasoline.
Birth and development of Greek science
Following these precursors of the Ionian school, the Greek thought gathers around several schools whose characteristic is to be related to an original teaching, mainly oral. These various schools are contemporary one of the other or follow one another over three centuries fertile, in a relatively restricted geographical surface; from there are born the first historical antagonisms and the first influences.
Pythagoricians
Biography: Pythagore
The thought nuclear physicist
detailed Article: Atomism
Euclide and formalization
Biography: Euclide
The thought aristotelician
The school of Alexandria
The epicureanism
The skepticism
Heritages of Greek science
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