Milesians

● Lot of focus on first principles -- natural principles usually based on some observation
● Mostly omitted divine elements
Thales
● Said water is the first principle
○ Moisture is source and prerequisite for life -- food is “moist” and plants/humans require
water
○ Earth floats on big bed of water (like a wooden plank)
■ Movement of water causes earthquakes
● Also believed everything was “full of gods” -- cosmos are alive and that’s what causes change
● Other facts
○ Predicted (maybe) an eclipse and found ASA triangle for how far ships were from shore
Anaximander
● Said first principle was apeiron “the boundless”
○ Four elements can change between each other, so first principles must be something else
○ Apeiron is eternal, moving, and indefinite
● Earth is a drum surrounded by rings for stars moon and sun -- all enveloped in mist
○ Sun/stars/moon are seen through holes in the mist
○ Is not supported and does not move because it has no reason to move
● Innovations
○ Reductive approach: everything from boundless and through interaction of hot and cold
○ Analogical: cosmos explained through model that resembles what we see
○ Biological model of generations: Cosmos grow from living thing like seed
Anaximenes
● First principle is air (breath of life) and it changes via condensation and rarefaction
○ Qualitative changed to quantitative via one natural principle
○ Less dense = fire, more dense = water → earth
● Did not agree with apeiron -- liked air what a loser
Xenophanes
● First principles are Earth and Water
○ Earth is becoming mixed with sea and will eventually dissolve -- cyclical process
○ Used fossils as empirical evidence -- sea fossils found in mountains/mines
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Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Atomists -- in general
● Nothing created or destroyed -- relatively modern, but obtained philosophically
● Looked closely at whether or not we could trust our senses -- is change really happening
Heraclitus
● Everything is changing -- nothing is stable -- “cannot step twice into the same river”
○ Fire is first principle -- mainly just because fire is always changing what a bitch
● Senses must be used with caution -- understand “language” of the senses with the mind

Parmenides
● Nothing is generated or destroyed -- only appears to be generated or destroyed -- senses deceive
○ Something that is will always be | Something that is not will never be
 ■ Aristotle says that’s no good for science, we cannot observe anything then ]
○ Non-existence does not exist
● Purely philosophical

Empedocles
● Agrees with Parmenides slightly -- Not-being is impossible, but we have to trust senses a little,
then use reason to clear it up
● First principles rooted in four elements (EFWA), but also adds love and strife
○ Love brings things together, strife separates -- change occurs through these two
○ Diff substances formed by roots combining in different proportions

Anaxagoras*
● First principles are homoeomeries (seeds) -- having parts like each other and the whole
○ Food nourishes hair, bones, sinew -- must contain same things humans contain
● Impossible that anything could be generated or perish
○ Things are combined/mixed with existing things and dispersed
○ Source of mixing is the… mind?
■ “Above” nature/things that are mixed, so it can help us understand what we
cannot see
● Cosmos
○ Earth is flat -- carried by the air (not void)
○ Sun, moon, stars are fiery stones taken up by rotation of aither
○ Moon gets its light from the sun, lunar eclipse occurs when earth gets in way of moon
Atomists* (Leicippus and Democritus)
● Introduce the void -- there is what is and what is not
● Only atoms (things that everything’s made of) and void exist
○ Atoms are infinite, disperse in void, and continuously move
○ Atoms differ by Shape (a/n), Arrangement (an/na), and position (upside down)
■ Differences in physical objects due to difference in above qualities
● On knowledge
○ Senses are completely unreliable
■ Why some people like food that others hate
■ Why some people feel cold when others are warm
○ Genuine knowledge gained through the mind, senses can perceive secondary qualities
■ Secondary qualities = arrangement/shape/position of atoms
■ First attempts at account of the physical basis of the senses
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Hippocratic Medicine

Aspects of Greek Medicine

● Divine: Asclepius, god of healing, visits people in dream therapy “incubation”
○ Hippocratic doctors eliminate all divine causes
● Philosophical:Medicine formerly based on general theory of nature (physis = nature)
● Rhetorical: Doctors had to convince clients/towns w/ public lectures to let them practice
Nature of Human Body -- initial theories and later developments
● Cause behind disease is natural because nature has a regularity to it -- find pattern
○ Doctor needs a causal (aitiai) explanation and to know the forces (dynameis) that certain
substances can impact upon the body
○ Causes can be discovered by human mind
○ At first: tried to reduce variety of phenomena to few principles
● Anatomy/Physiology
○ Dissection was taboo, so Greeks mainly knew surface/skeletal anatomy
○ Main elements at play in body: Parts(organs), substances(humours),
properties(hot/cold/dry/wet), relationships ((im)balance), processes(heating/cooling),
functions(perception, thinking, digestion)
“Tradition in Medicine” -- what we read
● Medicine is a techne - set of procedures organized in systematic fashion
○ Not arcane or divine -- understandable and accessible
○ Stresses importance of causes: Cheese is harmful, but why?
● Limited by fact that sometimes there’s not other criteria to describe something other than bodily
feeling
○ “Infallibility is rarely to be seen” -- approach infallibility through reasoning
○ And everybody is different
■ Body is more complex that just balancing cold and hot
● Trial and error is a big part -- learn more as you go
○ Food example: Food is bad, don’t eat it
Epidemics and Experimentation (log of symptoms of the diseased)
● Records symptoms and progressions, but no records of actual treatments - observations
○ Inference from external signs -- touch, smell, taste etc.
■ Infer invisible from visible - microscopic from macroscopic
○ Do not differentiate disease, differentiate at patient level
■ Not distinguishing diseases - divide important from unimportant symptoms
○ Importance of prognosis -- likely course of the disease
■ Doctors would establish credentials through knowledge of prognosis
● “Signs” of illness most important: Nature of patient, way of life, age, mannerisms, excretions, etc.
● Cures -- patients death not seen as fault of doctor
○ Tried: Blood letting, surgery, cauterization, trepanation (skull drilling)
○ Usually focused on diet -- food can “rebalance” body and replace deficiencies
○ Drugs seen as rebalancers -- we know now they did not actually work -- placebos?
Embryology
● Theory that embryo grows like a seed and acquires breath and emits breath
○ Uses wood burning/bread baking analogy: Everyday stuff explains what is hidden
● Six day embryo
○ Problems: induced abortion; numerology(7), and unlike human development after 7 days
● Egg Experiment
○ Twenty eggs, break one each day to see development cycle
■ Analogy between human qualities and embryo qualities
 ○ Systemic test -- almost a full experiment of a single point
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Pythagoreans - mostly religious/mystic, but did math good

Central concepts/thoughts
● Numbers as first principles -- numbers in everything -- world/universe is numeric
○ Attempted to give nature a quantitative, mathematical foundation
● Tetraktys = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 = ‘the fount of ever-flowing nature”

Harmonic Principles
● Finding ratios between frequencies in a chord
○ Hippasus’ discs - thicknesses have ratio and produce harmonies
○ Pleasing sound is mathematically based -- senses align with mathematics
Cosmology - philosophical poop -- everything is ten when it’s not
● Nine visible heavenly bodies, then 10th is counter earth, with some fire at the center
● Don’t hear sound of heavenly bodies cuz it’s always been there
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Plato
● Theory of forms
○ Reality = bad copy of “ideal form” -- completely devalues senses
■ Knowledge happens in the mind only
■ Senses only used to stir memory of forms and can lead to higher knowledge
○ How does natural science develop if you can’t observe anything in natural world
○ Allegory of cave: all we can see is shadows until we escape and see real world
● Change: Realm of forms is perfect/unchanging, corporeal realm is imperfect/changeable
● Important principle: Science aims at generalization and shared characteristics and to define
these into a class -- set aside peculiar and seek shared
● Two basic triangles make up four elements -- change is recombination of these -- almost atomist
○ Also believes in demiurge who put order to shapes
○ No void like atomists, tiny parts are not infinite in number like atomists, tiny particles are
not solid, they are planes
● Conclusions for Plato and science
○ Interested in rational phenomena only: not zoology or biology
○ Need to discover abstract laws that lie behind empirical data
■ Don’t focus on individual characteristics, look at overarching pattern
○ Conception of ideal mathematical astronomy and physics

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Aristotle

Speaking about science

● Need correct language to express science
 ● Method to writing: Define subject, address common opinions, survey other writer’s opinions,
present own findings
Goals of his science
● “what” is basis for science, but he’s concerned with the why, the causes of natural phenomena
● Four causes: Material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause (reason/purpose)
Natural world
● Nature is observable so we can get a complete understanding of it
● Nature is ladder -- some plants diff., some plants close to animal, some animals close to plant,
animals continue up close to humans
○ Rational soul( sensitive soul( vegetative soul() ) )
● Groups animals via characteristics -- taxonomy based on analogous attributes/functions
● Against chance development in nature -- nature works with purpose
○ When things happen with frequency, they cannot be attributed to chance
○ Nature gives small animals (spiders/bees) purpose
● Nature’s purpose:reproduce the eternal form (like plato was talking about)
● Aristotle vs. Plato on Nature
○ Agree on order in natural world, and true forms are important (final cause)
○ Disagree on Demiurge (Aris says order is innate), and Plato devalues matter completely
Cosmology
● Astronomer knows the what (finds model to save phenomena), but physicist knows why
● Physics - bases everything in cosmos off his physics and makes some wrong conclusions
○ Fire/air move up, earth/water move down -- aither moves circle and is in cosmos
○ “immovable mover”: first, eternal mover of everything that is itself immovable
● Stars are attached to celestial sphere, which moves (not stars) -- hot with friction in air
○ Reductio ad absurdum: Nature did not give stars organ for motion, so they can’t move
● Earth is sphere and fixed: Natural movement toward center when you drop stuff also lunar eclipse
line that is on moon is spherical
○ Small sphere: same animals opposite ends and diff countries see different sky
○ Fixed -- any other movement is unnatural and would not be eternal -- against physics
● Movement of other planets
○ Rejects eudoxus’s math model that correctly lets you track movement -- not physics
○ No void, so spheres must interact for movement -- adds like 55 reacting spheres
Meteorology
● Three parts: Aerial (winds), aqueous (rain/snow), luminous (halos/rainbows)
● Elements = material cause, movement of sun heats sublunary world
○ Sun’s dry exhalations (from air) more windy/drier -- earthquakes when trapped in ground
○ Sun’s wet exhalations (from water) more vaporous - denser air
● Optics (for halos/rainbows)
○ Extramission vision: Eyes release rays -- vision goes to objects and sees them where they
are
○ Intramission “”: Object emits material to eye -- reception of something like other senses
○ Need four things to see: eye, medium(transparent), object, illumination
○ Everything is blend of black and white -- two primary colors
○ Rainbow/halos -- light our sight reflects off water/air
 ■ Reflects colors not form
■ Halo is when sight reflects off air, rainbow when reflects off water/condensed air
● Air is bright, so no colors, while water is dark, so colors
■ 3 assumptions about color: white left reflected on dark medium = red, vision
weaker with distance, and appearance of darkness is due to failure of our sight
● Strong/close vision = red, middle = green, far = blue

What are the BIG ideas/advancements that each person/group made

● What are significant steps in the scientific direction? Non-scientific?
● Aristotle
○ Gives extreme weight to inherently flawed physics
■ Explained everything physically when we didn’t know enough about physics to
explain everything -- systematic/scientific yes, but accurate no
○ Understands need to gather info/observe to come to plausible conclusions
○ Develops language to speak about science
○ Systematization of branches of knowledge e.g. cosmology, biology, meteorology
○ Begins method of field research and introduces teleology to biology
● Plato
○ Mostly philosophical -- disregards senses/observations
■ Interested in rational phenomena only -- no biology/zoology
○ Main ideas for science
■ Need to discover abstract laws that lie behind empirical data
● Don’t focus on individual characteristics, look at overarching
pattern
● Milesians/Pre-socratics
○ Tried to explain natural world with first principles -- usually based on observations
■ Mostly omitted divine elements
○ 3 main Q: first principles, change, and reliability of senses
○ Pioneer reductionist approach -- everything occurs through few principles
● Atomists
○ Emphasis on void -- idk man
● Pythagoreans
○ Pleasing sound is mathematically based -- senses align with mathematics
○ Attempted to give nature a quantitative, mathematical foundation - very explainable
● Hippocratic medicine - techne
○ Medicine is a techne - set of procedures organized in systematic fashion
■ Not arcane or divine -- understandable and accessible
■ “Approach infallibility through reasoning”
○ Inference from external signs -- touch, smell, taste etc.
■ Infer invisible from visible - microscopic from macroscopic
○ Do not differentiate disease, differentiate at patient level
■ Not distinguishing diseases - divide important from unimportant symptoms
○ Importance of prognosis -- likely course of the disease
○ Concerned with observing to find pattern