Was ancient Greece the first scientific civilization?
Ancient Greece pioneered many major innovations and contributions that has influenced our modern world today. Some of the most prominent scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and scholars included Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato (among many others). While prominent advances encompassed ancient Greece, we ask the question were the Greeks the first scientific civilization in human history? I will attempt to explore and examine if they truly can be regarded as the first.
Ancient Greece began to distinguish themselves during this “scientific revolution” during
the 6
th
century BCE. (Mark, J. J., 2023). The concept of philosophy flourished throughout Greece, beginning with Thales of Miletus. During this period, Greeks began transforming into a scientific based society, shifting their beliefs away from mythological beings and towards a more
evidence based and logical approach to understanding the universe. “Once the Greeks formulated the idea of a cosmos, and began to try to explain it in terms of theories, then their science and their philosophy began to progress very rapidly, in a way not seen in previous societies. The Greeks developed philosophical logic and geometry as an axiomatized system. Once one has theories, as opposed to myth, one then has to choose which theory to accept.” (Gregory, A., 2005) However, other ancient cultures such as Chinese, Mesoamerican, Egypt and Babylonian heavily influenced ancient Greek scientists of the time such as Thales. The significant difference between ancient Greece versus the other ancient cultures is that the Greeks developed the scientific theory to explain the unexplained phenomenon, rather than excusing it as divine intervention. Previous societies treated knowledge extensively well, logging and drawing up encyclopedic tables (McClellan, J. E., III, & Dorn, H., 2015), but it was the Greeks that took the knowledge to develop theories to explain the natural world.
