Science before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy

by Daniel W. Graham

In Science before Socrates , Daniel Graham argues against the prevalent belief that the Presocratic philosophers did not produce any empirical science and that the first major Greek science, astronomy, did not develop until at least the time of Plato. Instead, Graham proposes that the advances made by Presocratic philosophers in the study of astronomy deserve to be considered as scientific contributions.

Whereas philosophers of the sixth century BC treated astronomical phenomena as ephemeral events continuous with weather processes, those of the fifth century treated heavenly bodies as independent stony masses whirled in a cosmic vortex. Two historic events help to date and account for the a solar eclipse in 478 BC and a meteoroid that fell to earth around 466. Both events influenced Anaxagoras, who transformed insights from Parmenides into explanations of lunar and solar eclipses, meteors, and rainbows.

Virtually all philosophers came to accept Anaxagoras' theory of lunar light and eclipses. Aristotle endorsed Anaxagoras' theory of eclipses as a paradigm of scientific explanation. Anaxagoras' theories launched a geometrical approach to astronomy and were accepted as foundational principles by all mathematical astronomers from Aristarchus to Ptolemy to Copernicus and Galileo-and to the present day.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, History Of Science, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2013

Reviews

[Sanjay Prabhakar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not especially on board with Graham's philosophy of science in principle, and not convinced that his study has particularly strong implications for the philosophy or historiography of science more generally but there is no doubting that his willingness to see genuine empirically-grounded progress in the historical record has produced a convincing narrative and analytically-useful schematisation of the history of presocratic astronomy in terms of transition, due to Parmenides and Anaxagoras, from the 'meteorological model' to the 'lithic model'. Inspired by Popper, the position given to Parmenides is massively illuminating, in terms of understanding both the Eleatic himself and the wider narrative of progress - especially in comparison to the rather paltry 2.5 pages given to him by such an authority (still) as Dicks (Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle). Finally I understand the significance of the often mechanical statements in works on early Greek astronomy that so-and-so thought x or y about heliophotism or eclipses.

In a way, it is a shame that the book basically ends with the 5th century reception of Anaxagoras. The relatively brief considerations of how Plato and Aristotle developed his hints of teleology in the role of Nous in initiating the vortex are pregnant.