Phil./Hist./Chem. 380
Ancient and Modern Science
Instructor:  Henry Mendell

Required Reading:

Books

Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science (Cambridge:  MIT, 1982)

Carl Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs:  Prentice-Hall, 1966).

G.E.R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science:  Thales to Aristotle (New York:  W.W. Norton, 1970)

G.E.R. Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle (New York:  W.W. Norton, 1973)

Michael Matthews, Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1989)

Xeroxes (on-line, available from Kennedy Library Reserves on-line)

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge, 1963), pp. 33-9.

Thomas Kuhn, "The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions," ch. 9 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970), pp. 92-110.

Thomas Kuhn, "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" in The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 320-339.

McMullin, Ernan. “The Goal of Natural Science,” Proceedings of theAmerican Philosophical Association 58 (1984): 37-64.

The Creation Epic (Enuma Elish), From James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts: relating to the Old Testament (3rd ed. with supplement, Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1969 (1st ed. 1954), 60-73, 501-503).

From Hippocrates of Cos.  Hippocratic Writings.  Trans. E. Chadwick, W.N. Mann et al.  Ed. with intro. G.E.R. Lloyd.  Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
 "The Nature of Man," 260-271.

Plato. Republic VI 507B-VII 541B. From Republic (trans. G.M.A. Grube; Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1974).

Plato.  Timaeus 30E-47E.  From Plato, Timaeus (trans. Donald Zeyl; Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000).

Aristotle. On the Heavens (De caelo) II 13-14. From The Complete Works of Aristotle (The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols.,  Ed. Jonathan Barnes, Bollingen Series, vol. 71, Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1984).

Osiander, Andreas. Introduction to the first edition of Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions (from Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions,trans. and comm. by Edward Rosen, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1978).

PDF PACKET (The packet is in the book store; we will decide Tues. what to use)

Table of Contents

1. Syllabus, Spring 2006.................................................................................................... 1
2. How to Write a HPS Paper............................................................................................ 5
3. HPS Essay suggestions...................................................................................................8
4. Bibliography................................................................................................................ 10
5. Greek Science Dates.................................................................................................... 17
6. Egyptian Mathematics.................................................................................................. 19
7. Egyptian Arithmetic..................................................................................................... 22
8. Moscow Papyrus......................................................................................................... 26
9. Babylonian Mathematics.............................................................................................. 27
10. Plimpton 322 (text)...................................................................................................... 30
11. General Introduction to Ancient Astronomical Concepts............................................. 31
12. Babylonian Methods (contained with ch. 11)................................................................41
13. Uruk Calendar (19 year lunar/solar cycle).................................................................... 48
14. Astronomical Cuneiform Text (ACT) 604: Jupiter in System A..................................50
15. Astronomical Cuneiform Text (ACT) 620: Jupiter in System B................................. 53
16. Selections from a very familiar text.............................................................................. 56
17. A much too complex summary of the planetary models of Eudoxus........................... 57
18. Aristotle on the models of Eudoxus (Met. xii 8).......................................................... 68
19. Selections from Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens,
    Commentary on Aristotle's Physics; Geminus, The Elements of Astronomy;
    Proclus, Summary of Astronomical Assumptions, and Commentary on Plato's
    Republic.  All pertain to the history of astronomy in the 4th century BCE.
    A table of contents occurs at the beginning of the collection........................................70
20. Greek number systems................................................................................................. 94
21. Hippocrates of Chios (ca. 450-420 BCE) and the squaring of the lunule
    (a curved figure)........................................................................................................... 95
22. Ways of showing that the diagonal and side of a square are incommensurable............ 97
23. Euclid, Elements i, definitions, postulates, and common notion................................... 99
24. Euclid, Elements i, prop. 1 and 5................................................................................ 100
25. Euclid, Elements xii 2................................................................................................. 101
26. Cleomedes (2nd cent. CE) on the measurements of the earth by Eratosthenes (late
    3rd cent. BCE) and Poseidonius (early 1st cent. BCE), with passages from Strabo
    (1st cent. BCE) and Pliny (died 79 CE)...................................................................... 102
27. Epicycles and Eccentric models of planetary motion and their equivalence................ 106

CD-ROM for studying ancient mathematics and astronomy prepared by the instructor, for use on Macintosh (OS 9).

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Requirements:

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Overview of the Course

How do modern conceptions of science differ from ancient conceptions. Modern natural philosophy (as it was called until recently) emerges from the intellectual ‘revolutions’ of seventeenth century Europe. There are two principal influences on seventeenth century science on which scientists of that period build and against which they rebel, scholasticism and Greek mathematics and astronomy as developed by Arab and European philosophers and scientists in the Middle Ages. Scholasticism is a philosophical approach which primarily involves an attempt to create a system built on the philosophy of Aristotle and to harmonize that interpretation of Aristotle with some other philosophical or religious system, whether Plato (Simplicius), or Islam (Averroes), or Judaism (Maimonides), or Christianity (Aquinas). Our goal in this course will not be to examine scholasticism or Medieval science. We shall rather be concerned with the more distant contrasts of ancient Greek and contemporary science. How do we conceive science today. How did ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks conceive it. As time permits we will also discuss seventeenth century European science. What characterizes the modern science of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton? Crudely put, seventeenth century natural philosophy as it develops into modern science explains natural phenomena by means of mathematical models in which a major goal is to reduce all qualities to primary geometrical qualities and later algebraic relations. In seventeenth century science, one only admits non-geometrical qualities as are necessary (e.g. gravitational force).

Greek natural science itself did not emerge from nothing. It depended, at the very least, on Babylonian astronomy and mathematics and Egyptian medicine, although these are very different in character from Greek science. Very crudely, Babylonian science, in particular, is descriptive and predictive; early Greek science is explanatory and usually foundationalist, but rarely predictive. In addition, those viewpoints among the Greeks which best survived tended to be teleological (the universe as well-crafted) and anti-reductionist (qualites cannot usually be reduced to geometrical qualities). We shall examine a variety of very different viewpoints, especially those of Democritus, 'Hippocrates,' Plato, and Aristotle. The focus of the course, however, will be on ancient astronomy, and the ideas of the Babylonians, Eudoxus, Aristarchus, Apollonius, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy.

For modern philosophers of science the 'demarcation problem' is a common entry into the question how we should characterize modern science, namely, how do sciences differ from other intellectual or social activities? For us the demarcation problem raises a different issue. If we are to use modern discussions of the demarcation problem, then very few, if any ancient intellectual endeavors will turn out to be science.

In this course, we shall begin by examining a contemporary view of modern science. Kitcher's study is actually a defense of evolution, a non-mathematical science. However, he provides a lucid account of many general features which contemporary philosophers of science point to when they try to explain what makes some theory a scientific theory. Ironically, in class we shall focus on the astronomical examples in Kitcher's discussion. Ancillary to Kitcher's introduction, we shall look at three others texts, a brief discussion by Karl Popper of his views that scientific theories must be falsifiable, an except from Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where Kuhn famously argues that in scientific revolutions conversion from the old scientific theory to the new cannot solely be based in rational arguments that determine one theory to another, an essay from his Essential Tension, where Kuhn lays out objective criteria for debate between advocates of an old and new theory. Additionally, we will look at two chapters from Carl Hempel's introduction to the philosophy of science, where he explains very clearly the hypothetical-deductive method in science.

We shall then switch back to the ancient world, first with a survey of Egyptians mathematics, Babylonian mathematics and astronomy, and then with Lloyd's survey of early Greek science. Plato's dialogue, Timaeus and selections from Aristotle's Physics and Posterior Analytics will provide us with two views of what a scientific theory is supposed to accomplish. We shall interlace this discussion with examinations of ancient astronomical theories and mathematical practice, especially the planetary systems of Eudoxus and Hipparchus, and Ptolemy.

Time permitting, we shall then turn to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton in order to see what they keep, what they modify, and what they reject. This is an ambitious project, so we might not get all the way there.

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Schedule and Topics

(with approximate times of arrival; some topics will be cut at the end):

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