Chapter 1 – Historical Antecedents

• From Ancient Times to 600 BC

  Science during ancient times involved practical arts like healing practices and metal tradition. Some of the earliest records from history indicate that 3,000 years before Christ, the ancient Egyptians already had reasonably sophisticated medical practices.
• A man named Imhotep was renowned for his knowledge of medicine. Most historians agree that the heart of Egyptian medicine was trial and error.
• Egyptian doctors would try one remedy, and if it worked, they would continue to use it. If a remedy they tried didn’t work, the patient might die, but at least the doctors learned that next time they should try a different remedy. Despite the fact that such practices sound primitive, the results were, sometimes, surprisingly effective.
• Papyrus - is an ancient form of paper, made from the papyrus plant,

  a reed which grows in the marshy areas around the Nile river. As early as 3,000 years before Christ, Egyptians took thin slices of the stem of the papyrus plant, laid them crosswise on top of each other, moistened them, and then pressed and dried them.
• Egyptian medicine became the most respected form of medicine in the known world.
• Papyrus was used as a writing material as early as 3,000 BC in ancient Egypt, and continued to be used to some extent until around 1100 AD.
• the Mesopotamians were making pottery using the first known potter’s wheel. Not long after, horse-­drawn chariots were being used.
• As early as 1,000 years before Christ, the Chinese were using compasses to aid themselves in their travels. The ancient world, then, was filled with inventions that, although they sound commonplace today, revolutionized life during those times. These inventions are history’s first inklings of science.
• The Advent of Science (600 BC to 500 AD)

  The ancient Greeks were the early thinkers and as far as historians can tell, they were the first true scientists. They collected facts and observations and then used those observations to explain the natural world. Although many cultures like the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese had collected observations and facts, they had not tried to use those facts to develop explanations of the world around them.
• Scientific thought in Classical Antiquity becomes tangible from the 6th

  century BC in pre-­Socratic philosophy (Thales, Pythagoras).
• In circa 385 BC, Plato founded the Academy. With Plato's student Aristotle begins the "scientific revolution" of the Hellenistic period culminating in the 3rd to 2nd centuries with scholars such as Eratosthenes, Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus and Archimedes.