Science

Physics
Physics - "Grow" was a book on natural science by Aristotle who lived in Athens c.350 BC when he was a young man, then in Macedonia. He also wrote a "history of animals"

History
"Story" derives from the word "History", in Greek and Latin "Historia" is related to Greek eido "to see", "wistor"-wise, visuals, ideas. See its use (just the once) in the New Testament

Galatians 1:18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see G2477 i.e. "get some history with" Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days.

Histories Herodotus c.350 BC, no records of his life at the time, was probably a contemporary of Aristotle, and lived probably 100 years later than traditional records show.

First Maps

Anaximander (in Wikipedia 610BC - 546BC) lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia (in modern-day Turkey). According to Strabo who lived at the time of Christ, Anaximander was the first geographer.

Pythagoras, an early Greek teacher

Arguably Pythagoras (in Wikipedia 570BC - 495BC) of Samos (an island off the coast of Turkey) was one of Anaximander's pupils. When Pythagoras was 40, it is thought Pythagoras left Samos and set up a school in Croton in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy) where he lived the rest of his life.

Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. Famously taught on the "transmigration of souls after death" i.e. reincarnation. The lifestyle of his community/school entailed a number of dietary prohibitions. Eventually, the school collapsed due to opposition from the main community. It is uncertain if Pythagoras was killed, or escaped somehow.

Plato who considered himself a "Pythagorean" and Aristotle subsequently are said to have regarded Pythagoras as primarily a religious figure, not a mathematician or natural philosopher.

Note, there are no physical maps from this time.

See Babylonian World Map

It is a Babylonian clay tablet written in Akkadian containing a labeled depiction of the known world, with a short and partially lost description, dated to roughly the 6th century BC. Possibly the earliest existing diagram.
The map is centered on the Euphrates, flowing from the north (top) to the south (bottom). The city of Babylon is shown on the Euphrates, in the northern half of the map. The mouth of the Euphrates is labelled "swamp" and "outflow". Susa, the capital of Elam, is shown to the south, Urartu to the northeast, and Habban, the capital of the Kassites is shown (incorrectly) to the northwest. Mesopotamia is surrounded by a circular "bitter river" or Ocean, and seven or eight "regions", depicted as triangular sections, are shown as lying beyond the Ocean. It has been suggested that the depiction of these "regions" as triangles might indicate that they were imagined as mountains.

Extract from Putting the world in Order

Geo-graphy Eratosthenes of Cyrene Libya (276-194 BC), and Strabo of Pontus (Turkey) who wrote "Geographica" at the time of Christ.

Geo-metron Euclid of Alexandria 300 BC who wrote "Elements", followed by Archimedes 250 BC who lived in Syracuse in Sicily.

They taught Mathematics, based on the Greek word "Mathetes" - a Learner - in Latin, a Disciple. The "tic" suffix is based on "teknion", used in the New Testament as meaning "little children", or "little productions".

Astronomia Ptolemy of Alexandria 150 AD who published "Mathematical Syntax", a handbook on astronomy. Unparalleled, apparently, for more than 1200 years. Called "Almagest" (The Greatest) in Arabic.

Ptolemy also wrote on the related subject "Astrologos", the "Telling of the Stars" i.e. people's horoscopes, a subject which was condemned by Josephus (and other Jews and Christians) as the error of the "Kasdiy"-Chaldees in Babylon.

Reading and 8. Writing Seen in Old English as derived from Germanic and old Norse words "Raten", "Rita", "Reißen", similar to old French "Reisun" and Latin "Rationalis" i.e. "Reason".

Arithmetic from Greek "Arithmos" meaning to "Go up" or Number. Similar to Art, meaning to "Fit together".

Chemistry Robert Boyle 1661 Alchemy-pour, Greek-"Cheimon"-stormy, winter

Zoology 1660s meaning the Science of Animals.

Calculus of infinitesimals, published in the late 1600s by Isaac Newton and in German by Gottfried Leibniz.

Geology In Medieval Latin, "Geologia" (14c.) meant "Study of Earthly things" i.e. Law as distinguished from Arts and Sciences, which concern the works of God. It was the time of the Renaissance.

In 1785 "Geologie" was published as a German word meaning the "Science of Earth's crust".

In 1795 Geology was published as an English word.

Biology The word was apparently first published in English in 1799, then in French in 1802 by Lamarck to classify the Science of all Life and Living Things.

Biazo and Bios were words used in scripture to signify the violence and pressure in the history of individual human lives. Written in Latin as "biographia" or biographies.

Further notes on Astronomy / Astrology

Gaius Julius Hyginus wrote a book in the 1st century "Astronomica" about Roman mythological figures.

Extract from
[9789004307971 - The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi]

It is often said that there was no distinction or separation between astronomy and astrology in the ancient world. Such a statement, when it is made in the most general terms, is practically meaningless. In reality, the relationship between astronomy and astrology varied from one cultural milieu to another; moreover it makes a big difference whether one is considering the practices or the practitioners.

For the purposes of this chapter, I will adopt an ahistorical definition of astronomy and astrology, according to which astronomy is concerned with observed or theoretical configurations of the heavenly bodies (fixed stars, Sun, Moon, and planets) and the observable celestial phenomena connected with them, whereas astrology is concerned with relations between these celestial configurations and phenomena and mundane, human circumstances.

By ‘ahistorical’ I do not mean that this distinction was never made in antiquity; in fact, it is essentially the distinction that Ptolemy draws at the outset of his astrological treatise, the Tetrabiblos

Of the things that serve a prognostic purpose by means of astronomia, O Syros, two are greatest and most important: one being first in both rank and power, in accordance with which we grasp the configurations that arise at all times in the motions of Sun and Moon and stars relative to each other and to the Earth, and a second one, in accordance with which, by means of the physical specific tendencies of their configurations, we make inquiry into the changes effected in the things that are enclosed within . . .

Ptolemy expresses his distinction (which for him is between two predictive faculties depending on a single science that he calls astronomia) in terms of the basically Aristotelian cosmology that he accepts. According to this cosmology, we and our immediate environment constitute a spherical world composed of the four elements earth, water, air, and fire, which are kept in a perpetual condition of change and interchange through physical agencies transmitted from the heavens, a surrounding spherical shell composed of a fifth element, ether, and comprising the visible heavenly bodies embedded within a plenum of invisible etherial bodies. Leaving this rationale aside, his definitions provide a criterion for deciding whether a particular kind of prediction involving the heavenly bodies falls within the scope of his first faculty or his second.

End article

** End of page

Go back to top