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"Aristotle’s philosophy was the intellect’s Declaration of Independence. Aristotle, the father of logic, should be given the title of the world’s first intellectual, in the purest and noblest sense of that word. No matter what remnants of Platonism did exist in Aristotle’s system, his incomparable achievement lay in the fact that he defined the basic principles of a rational view of existence and of man’s consciousness: that there is only one reality, the one which man perceives—that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of any perceiver)—that the task of man’s consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality—that abstractions are man’s method of integrating his sensory material—that man’s mind is his only tool of knowledge—that A is A." Introductory essay "For the New Intellectual,” in For the New Intellectual, page 22.
See: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ari...
Two others you may be interested in are Burstal, A History of Mechanical Engineering, and Klemm, A History of Western Technology. Both begin with the pre-historic to Egyptian or Greek periods. They are not philosophical, which is the point of your post, but they do provide straightforward descriptions of the early developments of technology documenting what was accomplished as a result of focused rationality.
In my review of Hawking's Brief History I note that he wrongly blames Aristotle for much. It is the accepted narrative. Aristotle's observation of the chick embryo is considered one of the greatest experiments in the history of science.
It is the use of the word "experiment" that takes some discussion. We mean the modern sense, from Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Previously, a experiment could be just an observation, as Aristotle's work with the development of the chick in the egg. It was not an accidental, isolated, or random noticing of something in passing. A scientist observes from motivation based on prior thought and seeks by observation to test, if nothing else, the theory that understanding a phenomenon can lead to a new discovery of truth.
And the rigor of a double-blind experiment is very modern, perhaps only accepted as the standard in the 20th century. Objectivists do not like Karl Popper and we assert that science does not proceed by disproof (which is true). Popper's contribution was showing that when you offer a theory, you must state the standard by which it can be challenged and disproved. Popper's claim rested on the fact that astrology and Freudian psychology both offered "explanations." It takes more than that to discover truth.
This is just what young minds need in this day and age.
I thought that was true. I thought Galileo started or at least publicized the idea of testing hypotheses with experiments. Have I learned lies told to children?
(Similarly, while just about every culture had merchants, capitalism was impossible before the Renaissance.)
That all being as it is, nonetheless, the Greek philosophers did theorize based on obserrved fact. Even Plato nods to experience. In the dialog "Protagoras" is a debate between the sophist from Abdera and Socrates on the nature of justice. Can justice be taught or is it known to all innately? Along the way, one example - I think from Socrates, maybe Protagoras - it is said that at the assembly, when the question is carpentry or shipbuilding, then the craftsman speaks with authority and if anyone ignorant offers an opinion, no matter how high born or well placed, he is shouted down, and if he persists, he is dragged from the assembly by the guards. So, facts were important. Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy all measured the locations of the fixed stars and planets. They were not just ideating. What was lacking was another 1500-2000 years of intellectual development.
Think of medicine. Without the germ theory of disease, they were pretty much working in the dark -- but the dark was exactly the place that Hippocrates took sick people out of and put them in the open air and sunshine. Ultraviolet kills germs. Who knew?
Your remark about "ice gives off cold" being in error reminded me of an ad I read, yesterday. In it, a special tray was designed to "draw the cold" from frozen meat, to thaw it. I guess advertisers have a better grasp of thermodynamics than scientists.
(Similarly, while just about every culture had merchants, capitalism was impossible before the Renaissance.)"
I'm fascinated by the ancient world. I can't imagine a world without science, without scarcity being modeled by supply and demand, without means of production having a certain value based on the return they yield. I also can't imagine the brutal practices: beating children, slavery, massive armies killing one another with no concept of war crimes. I understand the concept of people stealing or committing sexual assault in a war zone, but I don't get how a soldier might kill someone, take his house and possessions, and move in with his wife and children as the new man of the house. It doesn't seem logical. We say they were behaviorally modern, supposedly just like us, but I would not be able to communicate with someone unaware of science, capitalism, and basic human decency. They'd be like dangerous abused children in adults' bodies. It's kind of how I imagine Islamist extremists, except I suspect many of them actually know better and are just criminals. In the ancient world, I imagine most people really things that feel innate to me.
In fact, Copernicus acknowledged the acceleration of free fall. in the original edition, Copernicus wrote: “Et quaecunquae decidunt a principio lentum facientia motu velocitatem augent cadendo.” That is rendered today as: "And those which fall downward possess a slow movement at the beginning but increase their velocity as they fall." (Book I Section 8. Page 520 EB) See also Book III Section 3 where he mentions the motion of a pendulum being faster at the bottom of the arc and slower at the tops.
The acceleration of a body in free fall apparently was known to the “Oxford calculators” of the Merton School who worked about 1325-1350. They developed a geometric solution for the “mean rate.” The “mean rate” is the average of the initial velocity and the final velocity. Galileo cited their results in The Two New Sciences, Third Day, Theorem I, Proposition I.
from http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
Francis Bacon was a contemporary of Galileo and is also credited with discovering (inventing or creating) the scientific method. But it was not like turning on a light. A hundred years later, in The Skeptical Chymist Robert Boyle argued up front that experiments must be publicized, that secret methods were unscientific.
It is a point made by Thomas Kuehn that we teach physics especially but science generally as if it were all just like it is now. We just deliver it to students as whole cloth. The narrative is never explored or developed or questioned. Galileo did this... Newton said that... Einstein proved... now we think that ...
Netwon made the leap of making the averaging period approach zero.
"It is a point made by Thomas Kuhn "
You mean we don't teach the errors normal science was finding with the dominate paradigm and how it lead to a revolution? Now I'm suddenly interested in how new models take hold. Even reading Kuhn, I sort of imagine scientific revolutions being a eureka moment of paradigm shift. You suggest paradigm shifts are sloppier.