About this item
The birth of science in ancient Greece had a historical impact that is still being felt today. Physicist Demetris Nicolaides examines the epochal shift in thinking that led pre-Socratic philosophers of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE to abandon the prevailing mythologies of the age and, for the first time, to analyze the natural world in terms of impersonal, rationally understood principles. He argues not only that their conceptual breakthroughs anticipated much of later science but that scientists of the twenty-first century are still grappling with the fundamental problems raised twenty-five hundred years ago.Looking at the vast sweep of human history, the author delves into the factors that led to the birth of science: urbanization, the role of religion, and in Greece a progressive intellectual curiosity that was unafraid to question tradition.
About the Author
Demetris Nicolaides, PhD, is an award-winning professor of physics at Bloomfield College. He has authored two books, many scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and presented his research at conferences nationally and internationally. His interests include science in general, and the history and philosophy of science. He believes that all things in nature, even the apparently different, share a subtle underlying commonality, which he strives to find. He likes the journey better than the destination and doesn't mind getting lost now and then. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the International Association for Presocratic Studies.
