How Greek Thought Set Back Chemistry 1000 Years

The ancient Greek philosophers are often accredited with laying the foundation of modern science. Individuals like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are said to have been the greatest minds of their time with regard to logical predictions about the world. However, that was one of the fatal flaws in Greek thought – predictions. The same ancient Greek scientists, merely philosophers by today’s definition, were always curious about the universe and never stopped trying to reason though phenomena that they observed. Although scientific advancement did occur through the long line of Greek philosophers, Greek culture ultimately inhibited them from making any major breakthroughs. In ancient Greek society there were two classes of people: slaves and free men. The mantra was ultimately that any work with hands is a slave’s work, while work with the mind was for the free man. This actually prohibited philosophers from ever testing any of the theories that they developed. Conducting an experiment would be considered work for the hands and was subsequently work for a slave; obviously slaves had no real interest in discovering the mysteries of the universe. The “social taboo” that would revolve around physical experimentation is what caused Greek thought to set back chemistry by 1000 years. Without the acceptance of a need for experimentation to test theories, they remained simply sweeping generalizations coupled with vast speculation. Without any data to support their theories, philosophers ultimately justified their ideas as thoroughly as possible with logic [1].

References

[1]. H.M. Leicester. The Historical Background of Chemistry, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, USA, (1971) pp. 16-30.