Greek Natural Philosophy Research Articles

Arthur E. Haas, from the Atom to the Cosmos—Struggles for a Scientific Career in the Early 20th Century

Arthur E. Haas, from the Atom to the Cosmos—Struggles for a Scientific Career in the Early 20th Century

Sabine Hossenfelder and the crisis of modern physics

The book of one of the currently most famous female physicists, Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, is a reason for discussing the crisis in which modern physics has fallen, as well as new tendencies in physics as possible ways to overcome the situation. Part of the responsibility for decades of stagnation in the development of physics is borne by certain aspects of the heritage of ancient, specifically Pythagorean-Platonic philosophy, which have found their place in modern science. The critical insights presented by Hossenfelder are very well founded. However, the author can be criticized for overlooking some ways of thought in physics that represent a strong alternative to aesthetic theoretical approaches, mostly inspired by ancient Greek natural philosophy. For example, physicist Fritjof Capra?s book The Tao of Physics points to numerous parallels between Eastern systems of thought and 20th century physics.

The Androids of Hephaestus: Between Human and Machine in the <em>Iliad</em>

The description of Hephaestus’ workshop in Iliad 18 presents several kinds of fanciful automata. Contrary to several previous treatments of this topic, this paper argues that it is not anachronistic to think of these figures as “robots”—i.e., as having some kind of inner-workings, even though Homer does not explicitly say what they are. This discussion helps to situate the Homeric poems within the pre-history of Greek natural philosophy.

Decoding the Urban Plan of the City of Pilsen (Plzen)

The historic centre of the city of Pilsen in western Bohemia, today a region of the Czech Republic, was constructed at the end of the thirteenth century, at a time when Gothic architecture was universal across most of western and central Europe. The Gothic style had emerged and developed during an era when social and economic changes were favouring the development of new urban settlements, and when the translation of ancient Greek natural philosophy, including astronomy, was giving rise to a new intellectual movement. This revival of the natural sciences was inevitably bound up with the Roman Catholic Church, since much of this knowledge had been preserved within monastic institutions and was now being used by theologians/natural philosophers who wanted to apply reason to theology. This paper’s analysis of the urban plan of the historic centre of Pilsen is an attempt to investigate the possible influence that the science of astronomy had on architectural thought and creativity in western Bohemia, and how this was represented in the light of scientific advancement.

From mythology to science: the development of scientific hydrological concepts in Greek antiquity and its relevance to modern hydrology

Abstract. Whilst hydrology is a Greek term, it was not in use in the Classical literature, but much later, during the Renaissance, in its Latin form, hydrologia. On the other hand, Greek natural philosophers (or, in modern vocabulary, scientists) created robust knowledge in related scientific areas, to which they gave names such as meteorology, climate and hydraulics. These terms are now in common use internationally. Greek natural philosophers laid the foundation for hydrological concepts and the hydrological cycle in its entirety. Knowledge development was brought about by searches for technological solutions to practical problems as well as by scientific curiosity. While initial explanations belong to the sphere of mythology, the rise of philosophy was accompanied by the quest for scientific descriptions of the phenomena. It appears that the first geophysical problem formulated in scientific terms was the explanation of the flood regime of the Nile, then regarded as a paradox because of the spectacular difference from the river flow regime in Greece, i.e. the fact that the Nile flooding occurs in summer when in most of the Mediterranean the rainfall is very low. While the early attempts were unsuccessful, Aristotle was able to formulate a correct hypothesis, which he tested through what appears to be the first scientific expedition in history, in the transition from the Classical to Hellenistic periods. The Hellenistic period brought advances in all scientific fields including hydrology, an example of which is the definition and measurement of flow discharge by Heron of Alexandria. These confirm the fact that the hydrological cycle was well understood in Ancient Greece, yet it poses the question why correct explanations were not accepted and, instead, why ancient and modern mythical views were preferred up to the 18th century.

ЗАРОЖДЕНИЕ ДРЕВНЕГРЕЧЕСКОЙ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ МЫСЛИ И АРХАИЧЕСКАЯ ИОНИЙСКАЯ НАУКА

Ancient Greek historical thought came into existence in the 6th century B.C. It was the period when two tendencies, the rationalist and mystic ones, struggled with each other in the Hellenic Weltanschauung (world view). Early historians were influenced both by the latter and – especially – by the former, which gave birth to the Archaic Ionian science (Thales, Anaximander). The paper shows that the influence of natural scientists upon historiographers manifested itself, for instance, in the fact that from the works of the latter, starting with Hecataeus, lacked parts devoted to theogony disappear (in Acusilaus, such a part was still present). The author also traces the serious interest in geography among both Greek natural philosophers and first historians. Anaximander made the earliest in Greece geographical map and Hecataeus improved it. The historians of the first generations after Hecateus can be divided into two groups: those who, like Hecateus, had a special interest not only in history, but also in geography, and those who did not. The second group includes the Athenian Ferekides and Gellanik. As for the first group, Charon of Lampsak and Damast of Sigei can be added to it – this line comes up to Herodotus.

Демистификация идеи трансцендентного бога, или возможно ли объединение религии и науки?

The article considers the historically determined relation of two essential forms of social consciousness, science and religion. The condition for the productivity of its disclosure is going beyond the limits of a simple and non-reflective preference for a state of faith or scientific knowledge. It gives the opportunity of formation of veracious cognitive discursive-conceptual practice. First of all, it presupposes philosophic formulation that is a non-idealized approach to comparative-analytical view on the existence of science and religion as social life phenomena. Secondly, it needs a valid socio-culturally determined essential basis for this or that view on a given relation. Thirdly, it reaches its determinacy in the desired transformation of socially determined types and ways of perception. Preliminarily, religion and science are to be determined in their principal autonomy. In sociohistoric regard, religion is the basis and vital condition for the appearance of the archaic patrimonial form of the social. Science, starting from the era of Greek natural philosophy, asserts such a cognitive dialectic of concepts, where there is no place for external compulsion, but the sphere of freedom of the thinking individual is formed. In both cases, we observe the output into limiting statement of sensually-material or conceptual-ideal regards. Their further existence requires well-known separation of the spheres of the essential presence of science and religion. Also, it is necessary to preserve the religious sense of the cosmically-generic significance of man with the retention of humanity as its immanent quality, but without the Old Testament cosmologically-oriented traditions. Natural science, on the other hand, establishes a monopoly on true knowledge of nature, society, history, and thought, without, accordingly, the positivist limitations of its own premises. The result of these differentiations will be the procedure of dearchaization of theological thought, its establishment in the perspective of the predominant moralethical and subject-rationalistic orientation.

Rhythms of the past, rhythms of the future

The subject of this research is rhythm as the cultural and fundamental philosophical principle of time organization of systems of various rank. The goal consists in the analysis of possibilities of creating the general theory of rhythm. The author set the following tasks: analyze ethnocultural traditions, which in the cognitive aspect lean on the maturity of rhythm-sensible  way of thinking; analyze the reflections of Ancient Greek natural philosophers on the meaning of rhythm; trace the theme of rhythm in art, science and practices of the XIX – XXI centuries.; problematize the question on the meaning of rhythmology in interpretation of the new vectors of cognitive evolution at the present time. Articulation of the problem of rhythm as the universal requires consideration of cosmic-nature, planetary, social, cultural, and personal realities (worlds). In examination of historical artifacts and ethnographic material, the author takes into account the principles of evolutionary epistemology. The analysis of natural philosophical and ancient Greek worldview is completed with analysis of the language. The novelty consists in articulation and analysis of the problem of rhythm as a cultural universality as the ultimate basis, covering natural, sociocultural and creatively-personal rhythms. The transformations of mentality and way of thinking in cognitive evolution stemmed from matured sensibility in the archaic towards the development of intellect. Rhythmically sensible way of thinking that empathically connects human with nature was developed until the Early Middle Ages. Culture and natural philosophical reflections on the concept of harmony are of essential for comprehension of sensible worldview. Beauty as a formative principle of the universe was conveyed through the set of concepts adopted in the language of modern science. Rhythm as an aesthetic category in natural sciences attracts the attention of researchers dealing with correlations of biosphere, social and cosmic processes. Reflections on the universality of rhythm in the complex evolutionary systems allow reassessing the discord of rhythms (desynchronosis) of the modern global crisis.

Greek Natural Philosophy: The Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy, by J. Baird Callicott, with John van Buren and Keith Wayne Brown

Greek Natural Philosophy: The Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy, by J. Baird Callicott, with John van Buren and Keith Wayne Brown

Theories on Tornado and Waterspout Formation in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract Tornadoes and waterspouts have long fascinated humankind through their presence in myths and popular beliefs and originally were believed to have supernatural causes. The first theories explaining weather phenomena as having natural causes were proposed by ancient Greek natural philosophers. Aristotle was one of the first natural philosophers to speculate about the formation of tornadoes and waterspouts in Meteorologica (circa 340 BCE). Aristotle believed that tornadoes and waterspouts were associated with the wind trapped inside the cloud and moving in a circular motion. When the wind escapes the cloud, its descending motion carries the cloud with it, leading to the formation of a typhon (i.e., tornado or waterspout). His theories were adopted and further nuanced by other Greek philosophers such as Theophrastus and Epicurus. Aristotle’s ideas also influenced Roman philosophers such as Lucretius, Seneca, and Pliny the Elder, who further developed his ideas and also added their own speculations (e.g., tornadoes do not need a parent cloud). Almost ignored, Meteorologica was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, initially from an Arabic version, leading to much greater influence over the next centuries and into the Renaissance. In the seventeenth century, the first book-length studies on tornadoes and waterspouts were published in Italy and France, marking the beginning of theoretical and observational studies on these phenomena in Europe. Even if speculations about tornadoes and waterspouts proposed by Greek and Roman authors were cited after the nineteenth century only as historical pieces, core ideas of modern theories explaining these vortices can be traced back to this early literature.

Uncertainty in Cognition and Social Practices

The article discusses the theoretical status of the category of uncertainty. Instead of the classical definitions of uncertainty as an ontological or epistemological concept, a composite theoretical construct is proposed. In classical science, the objectivist representation of the subject of research was preferred. With the nonclassical type of rationality, there rises problem of including subjective elements in a theoretical description. Attention to subject-subject-object methodologies is increasing due to the complication of communicative interactions in science and society in the digital era. One of the consequences of active innovative projective activity on a planetary scale and increasing risks is the perception in the public mind of uncertainty as a challenge. The author considers it appropriate to study the uncertainty-certainty as a paired category. The category of uncertainty was considered in philosophy, science, and management. The status of uncertainty as infinity and formlessness was recognized by Greek natural philosophers. Classical science developed the methodology of knowing the “infinite limit” through the construction of theoretical schemes (forms) and types of empirical testing. The paradox served as a means of destroying dogmatic schemes. In the context of increasingly complex communications in science, the importance of cognitive problems in the study of collective thinking and the personal beginning of creativity is increasing. Modern economic positivism is distinguished by its rejection of objective uncertainty, and the installation of the ability to efficiently manage exclusively accurate calculations is brought to extremes.

J. Baird Callicott, John van Buren, and Keith W. Brown: Greek Natural Philosophy: The Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy

J. Baird Callicott, John van Buren, and Keith W. Brown: Greek Natural Philosophy: The Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy

The roots of human responsibility

Starting from Hans Jonas’ works, this essay researches the bases of human responsibility and its reasoning is made up of four points. 1. He was aware of how his experience had influenced his thought and he questioned what means reflecting starting from extreme situations: «The apocalyptic state of things, the threatening collapse of a world, the climatic crisis of civilization, the proximity of death, the stark nakedness to which all the issues of life were stripped, all these were ground enough to take a new look at the very foundations of our being and to review the principles by which we guide our thinking on them». 2. Faced with these situations he rediscovered the richness of the Ancients’ thought. For example, the Stoics inherited and transformed the illuminating aspects of the theory that conceived of the ‘being’ as contemplation of the whole, which had permeated Greek natural philosophy and scientific speculation. They took it on as the capacity to identify one’s own most internal principle with the principle of the whole, in a more religious sense. The discovery in the whole of what is felt to be the highest and noblest in human beings – like reason, order, and form - makes our orientation towards a super-regulating end a liberating wisdom. 3. Jonas considers that starting from XVII century the two aspects, here distinct as external and internal, remain at the core of the issue so far as the problem of freedom is concerned. Moreover, theoretical efforts now move in the direction of rendering, of discovering a conception of freedom which is logically compatible with causal determinism, while in the history of philosophy, the problem of freedom was not born in the sphere of logic. So it is necessary to rethink Modernity and how it is possible to found human freedom and responsibility nowadays.

The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy

The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy

Music and the making of modern science

Music played a significant role in the making of modern science. In ancient Greek natural philosophy, music formed the earthly meeting place between numbers and perception. For the next two millennia, music remained a central part of higher education, united with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the quadrivium. Accordingly, innovations reverberated between all these fields. This book presents the “scientific revolution” more as a phase in the restoration and augmentation of the ancient project of musicalizing the world than a change in the basic project of natural philosophy. After discussing the original Pythagorean synthesis of music, mathematics, and sense-experiment, the book presents cases in which prior developments in music led to some new direction in science from the fourteenth century to the twentieth. These include encounters between harmony and fifteenth-century cosmological controversies, between musical initiatives and irrational numbers, between vibrating bodies and emergent electromagnetism. The book presents new accounts of Johannes Kepler’s use of music, of René Descartes’s and Marin Mersenne’s interweaving of music and natural philosophy, of Isaac Newton’s imposition of the musical scale on color, of Leonhard Euler’s musical work in relation to his mathematics and optical theory, of Thomas Young’s musical optics, of Hermann von Helmholtz’s and Bernhard Riemann’s development of new concepts of space from studies of seeing and hearing, of atomic spectra as overtones, of Max Planck’s experiments with harmoniums and choruses in relation to his subsequent quantum theory, and of the continuing quest for cosmic harmonies in contemporary physics.

The "balance of nature"-evolution of a Panchreston.

The earliest concept of a balance of nature in Western thought saw it as being provided by gods but requiring human aid or encouragement for its maintenance. With the rise of Greek natural philosophy, emphasis shifted to traits gods endowed species with at the outset, rather than human actions, as key to maintaining the balance. The dominance of a constantly intervening God in the Middle Ages lessened interest in the inherent features of nature that would contribute to balance, but the Reformation led to renewed focus on such features, particularly traits of species that would maintain all of them but permit none to dominate nature. Darwin conceived of nature in balance, and his emphasis on competition and frequent tales of felicitous species interactions supported the idea of a balance of nature. But Darwin radically changed its underlying basis, from God to natural selection. Wallace was perhaps the first to challenge the very notion of a balance of nature as an undefined entity whose accuracy could not be tested. His skepticism was taken up again in the 20th century, culminating in a widespread rejection of the idea of a balance of nature by academic ecologists, who focus rather on a dynamic, often chaotic nature buffeted by constant disturbances. The balance-of-nature metaphor, however, lives on in large segments of the public, representing a fragile aspect of nature and biodiversity that it is our duty to protect.

Greek underpinnings to his methodology in unraveling De Motu Cordis and what Harvey has to teach us still today

William Harvey's writings betray amazing insights born out of countless hours of thoughtful experimentation. Throughout his life, Harvey worked as a tireless and thoughtful researcher and a transmitter and intermediary between the ancient Greek natural philosophers and physicians and the "moderns," for whom he founded two forward-looking, interlinked sciences: modern physiology and nascent cardiology. Harvey's methodology and demonstrations were of such fundamental and standardizing nature as to secure the sure progress of these two sciences. Thus, he rendered to them such a service as Descartes's cogito ergo sum furnished to Philosophy in giving it a rational standard of certainty, for want of which the more speculative minds of that era were inundated with extraordinary conjectures. If Harvey disproved Galen, he absorbed and continued in his physiologic research many a principle from Aristotle, whose supreme disciple he remains. The guidance and authority of Aristotle were strong with him to the end. Harvey's account of the motions of the heart and blood in the circulation demonstrated that complex physiological systems can be represented in straightforward mechanical terms, a concept which has remained fundamental to the present day. The philosophical implication of William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was the resolute application of the experimental method to cardiology. In my judgment, he established today's forward-looking discipline of translational cardiovascular research. In due course, he should be widely acknowledged to have done so.

Perspective: Trans-realm biogeography: an immergent interface

perspectives ISSN 1948-6596 Trans-realm biogeography: an immergent inter- face 1 Michael N Dawson School of Natural Sciences, University of California at Merced, 5200 North Lake Road, Merced, CA 953443 USA e-mail: mdawson@ucmerced.edu; http://mnd.ucmerced.edu/ Introduction In his influential paper on geographic speciation in sea urchins and jellyfishes, Ernst Mayr (1954:16) concluded that “marine animals agree in [their] pattern of variation and distribution completely with terrestrial animals.” Yet the sentiment that “it is useless to think of [the sea] as we think of the terrestrial world” (Hardy 1962), i.e. that ma- rine and terrestrial realms are fundamentally dif- ferent, has remained commonplace (e.g. Smeta- cek and Pollehne 1986, Secord 2003). The persis- tence of this bipolar abstraction of the natural world is troubling. Aquatic, atmospheric, and ter- restrial systems can be tightly coupled such that an almost Gaian perspective is needed to meet the challenges of climate change (Menge et al. 2009) yet perceived irrelevance of research from different realms maintains the barriers to multi- disciplinary understanding that slow scientific pro- gress. Background The perception of a vital difference between ma- rine and terrestrial environments, which echoes terrestrial human bias (Smetacek and Pollehne 1986, Hamner 1988, Dawson and Hamner 2008) and ancient Greek natural philosophy, has been propagated in part by the balkanization of 20th century scientific infrastructure (Steele 1995, Sarkar 2005, Stergiou and Browman 2005). Heaney and Lomolino (2009:1-2), for example, noted during their editorial in the first issue of this magazine that “marine and terrestrial biogeogra- phy [have been] discussed in different journals using different terminology”. This lack of meme flow afflicts many relevant disciplines. Menge et al. (2009) bemoaned the lack of cross-referencing between papers in ecological journals serving pri- marily marine or primarily terrestrial audiences. In journals that do cater to both audiences, such as Journal of Biogeography, papers are generally ei- ther marine or terrestrial, and rarely link realms 2 . When marine and terrestrial systems have been discussed together, the environments often are contrasted as having “fundamental differ- ences” (e.g. Steele 1985, Smetacek and Pollehne 1986, Hamner 1988, Thomson and Gilligan 2002, Carr et al. 2003, Lourie and Vincent 2004, Halley 2005). Such a radical position, which implies at least two kinds of ecology, two kinds of evolution, etcetera, is not supported by any empirical study nor enshrined in any biological theory. Dawson and Hamner (2008) thus proposed that concep- tual integration of marine and terrestrial natural history was awaiting only development of a com- pelling quantitative comparative framework. A suitable quantitative comparative frame- work might be provided by expanding Aleyev’s (1977:1) “biohydrodynamic conception of life” in which fluid mechanics provides a suite of tools for comparing the aerial and aqueous fluid environ- 1. ‘Immergent’, a play on ideas, is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as either “Not merging into something else” or “Erroneous spelling of ‘emergent’, in sense ‘Unexpectedly arising’, ‘urgent’.” 2. A search of Thompson’s Web of Science on 15 November 2009 was conducted for articles containing the topic words ‘marine’, ‘terrestrial’, or ‘marine and terrestrial’ published in the Journal of Biogeography. All titles, and the abstract of papers with ambiguous titles, were read before final categorization. Articles categorized as ‘marine’ (n ≈ 119) or ‘terrestrial’ (n ≈ 139) outnumbered those that discussed ‘marine and terrestrial’ (n ≈ 4) issues; a total of 2842 records for the Journal of Biogeography were recovered, of which 2558 referred to neither “marine” nor “terrestrial” in the fields included in the topic search. © 2009 the authors; journal compilation © 2009 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 1.2, 2009

About Vortex Physics and Vortex Losses

As quantum physics nowadays tries to reframe and explain electric and magnetic field phenomena, we must not be mislead over the fact that quantum physics remains a stepdaughter of field physics based solely on postulates until eventually it will have found a way to calculate its quanta. Furthermore, field physics is at least 25 times older and can be traced back all the way to the early Greek natural philosophers. Vortex physics is another offspring of field physics, however, it has been systematically rejected by quantum physics. Which in turn often times has a lot to do with politics and not always with science. It could in fact be the case that vortex physics has been suppressed by its own sister, ever since it also has produced distinguished representatives. A mathematical derivation shows that the currently known formulas and laws of electrodynamics are incomplete and insufficient in describing all its associated phenomena. Via a new formulation and extension of Maxwell's equation it becomes possible to calculate a potential vortex, its effect on the dielectric medium can be measured and its existence made evident through observable natural phenomena.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors