Produced by Charles Keller
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.
ASSISTED BY EDWARD H. WILLIAMS, M.D.
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME I. THE BEGINNINGS OF SCIENCE
BOOK I.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. PREHISTORIC SCIENCE
CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE
CHAPTER III. SCIENCE OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET
CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE
CHAPTER VI. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY
CHAPTER VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD
CHAPTER VIII. POST-SOCRATIC SCIENCE AT ATHENS
CHAPTER IX. GREEK SCIENCE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN OR HELLENISTIC PERIOD
CHAPTER X. SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD
CHAPTER XI. A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE AT CLASSICAL SCIENCE
APPENDIX
A HISTORY OF SCIENCE
BOOK I
Should the story that is about to be unfolded be found to lack interest, the writers must stand convicted of unpardonable lack of art. Nothing but dulness in the telling could mar the story, for in itself it is the record of the growth of those ideas that have made our race and its civilization what they are; of ideas instinct with human interest, vital with meaning for our race; fundamental in their influence on human development; part and parcel of the mechanism of human thought on the one hand, and of practical civilization on the other. Such a phrase as "fundamental principles" may seem at first thought a hard saying, but the idea it implies is less repellent than the phrase itself, for the fundamental principles in question are so closely linked with the present interests of every one of us that they lie within the grasp of every average man and woman--nay, of every well-developed boy and girl. These principles are not merely the stepping-stones to culture, the prerequisites of knowledge--they are, in themselves, an essential part of the knowledge of every cultivated person.
It is our task, not merely to show what these principles are, but to point out how they have been discovered by our predecessors. We shall trace the growth of these ideas from their first vague beginnings. We shall see how vagueness of thought gave way to precision; how a general truth, once grasped and formulated, was found to be a stepping-stone to other truths. We shall see that there are no isolated facts, no isolated principles, in nature; that each part of our story is linked by indissoluble bands with that which goes before, and with that which comes after. For the most part the discovery of this principle or that in a given sequence is no accident. Galileo and Keppler must precede Newton. Cuvier and Lyall must come before Darwin;--Which, after all, is no more than saying that in our Temple of Science, as in any other piece of architecture, the foundation must precede the superstructure.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A History of Science — Volume 1 by Williams
- 2: The word prehistoric seems to imply barbarism
- 3: Not merely what primitive man knew
- 4: Even at a relatively late period
- 5: This is the law of universal terrestrial gravitation
- 6: An elementary knowledge of toxicology
- 7: Was a rudimentary therapeutics
- 8: But memory is observed to be fallacious
- 9: Here are the rudiments of a system of ethics
- 10: Primeval man did not escape this danger
- 11: Susceptible of other interpretations
- 12: The recent explorations of such archaeologists as Amelineau
- 13: Such mementos as flint implements
- 14: All subsequent ages have marvelled at the pyramids
- 15: The new year of the Egyptians dates from the summer solstice
- 16: Which bore the Egyptian name Sothis
- 17: Is spoken of as the Sothic cycle
- 18: The arbitrary groupings of figures
- 19: We know how essentially eye minded the Egyptian was
- 20: On the 12th of Tybi no mouse might be seen
- 21: If we may believe the explicit statement of Diodorus
- 22: The essential characteristic of Egyptian science
- 23: All this seems very cumbersome indeed
- 24: Issuing from their palaces in Nineveh
- 25: But the writings of Berosus also
- 26: BABYLONIAN ASTRONOMYOur first concern naturally is astronomy
- 27: Are perhaps reckoned in lunar years
- 28: But at the new moon next before the equinox
- 29: He adds that from Mesopotamia
- 30: Written in the Accadian language only
- 31: From the evil spirit of the ulcer
- 32: On the same tablet just quoted
- 33: He shall receive five shekels of silver
- 34: But to return to the Chaldeans
- 35: And one Sign of the Twelve in the Zodiack
- 36: Conceived of grammar as a science
- 37: Babylonia impressed her superstitions on the Western world
- 38: By any individual named Kadmus
- 39: In part of symbols having the phonetic value of syllables
- 40: They used symbols as phonetic equivalents very frequently
- 41: But in practice the most perfect syllabary
- 42: It did not seem a simplification
- 43: And by adopting an arbitrary sign for each consonantal sound
- 44: And the alphabet has remained imperfect
- 45: Miletus is usually accepted as his birthplace
- 46: Geometry we again find evidence of the Oriental influence
- 47: The disciples or successors of Thales
- 48: But the answer given by Anaximander
- 49: The other great Italic philosophers just named
- 50: The alleged witticisms of a Whistler
- 51: May have been known to Pythagoras we cannot say
- 52: Which Diogenes himself quoted from the work of a predecessor
- 53: From the monad proceeds an indefinite duad
- 54: A younger contemporary of Pythagoras
- 55: As against these scientific doctrines
- 56: Among the pupils of Xenophanes was Parmenides
- 57: Empedocles is an imposing figure
- 58: However postulated as immutable
- 59: Who lived twenty three hundred years after Empedocles
- 60: The name of this new comer was Anaxagoras
- 61: Not with some vague saying of Anaxagoras
- 62: The cosmogonic guess of Anaxagoras remains
- 63: Do you think of accusing Anaxagoras
- 64: Anaxagoras may never have seen an eclipse of the moon
- 65: But Anaxagoras and Diogenes Apolloniates
- 66: Anaxagoras found such an explanation
- 67: And unmixed particles are imbued with
- 68: For an Anaxagoras as for a Spencer
- 69: The atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus
- 70: But the Daltonian hypothesis conceived
- 71: Just as Anaxagoras preceded Democritus in time
- 72: Before the time of Hippocrates
- 73: But on the death of Polycrates
- 74: Was common before the time of Hippocrates
- 75: Post socratic science at athens plato
- 76: Plato himself had travelled widely
- 77: The doctrine of the spherical figure of the earth
- 78: Aristotle accepted the sphericity of the earth
- 79: In this regard the work of Theophrastus
- 80: From Alexandria to Syracuse and from Syracuse to Samos
- 81: The father of systematic geometry
- 82: The name of Herophilus is still applied by anatomists
- 83: Heraclides belonged to the Empiric school
- 84: But Archimedes having told King Hiero
- 85: Nothing grieved Marcellus more than the loss of Archimedes
- 86: Notwithstanding Archimedes had such a great mind
- 87: With the aid of multiple pulleys
- 88: The writings of Archimedes himself are still extant
- 89: Is based on the measurements of Aristarchus
- 90: Fully to understand the theory of Aristarchus
- 91: As a Pythagorean doctrine cannot be questioned
- 92: That the geocentric idea is of all others the most natural
- 93: As Aristarchus correctly believed
- 94: If we admit these six hypotheses
- 95: And we may pass to the final conclusions of Aristarchus
- 96: For it is recorded that Eudoxus
- 97: Yet the method of Eratosthenes
- 98: According to the measurement of Eratosthenes
- 99: The observations of Hipparchus were absolutely accurate
- 100: But since that hub is constantly going forward
- 101: Hipparchus must have known of that measurement
- 102: Hipparchus is a most heroic figure
- 103: He mentions the law of Archimedes regarding a floating body
- 104: The water was siphoned back from the bucket
- 105: The siphon is repeatedly used in these mechanisms of Hero
- 106: The coin slides off and the valve closes
- 107: While Hipparchus of Rhodes was in his prime
- 108: And Hecaeus his fellow citizen according to Eratosthenes
- 109: This measurement of Posidonius
- 110: Strabo had much to tell us concerning zones
- 111: And the journeyings of Pytheas in the far north
- 112: You must be either Livy or Pliny
- 113: From this it derived the word Almagest
- 114: The Almagest treats of all manner of astronomical problems
- 115: In the footsteps of the great Hippocrates
- 116: Known as the archiatri populaires
- 117: As was taught by many anatomists
- 118: By God's help I have never been deceived in my prognosis
- 119: Maintained that this septum was permeable
- 120: As we leave this classical epoch
- 121: We reflect that here were born such men as Thales
- 122: Racial mingling gives vitality
- 123: Five centuries after the time of Herophilus
- 124: See Alexander the Great balked at the banks of the Hyphasis
- 125: If we are to accept the account of Xiphilinus
- 126: Mortillet divides the prehistoric period
- 127: Tyler's Primitive Culture and Anthropology
- 128: The fragments of Berosus have been translated by L
- 129: Winckler's Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens Berlin
- 130: The First Philosophers of Greece London
- 131: SCIENCE OF THE ROMAN PERIOD1 p