attitude that developed with Socrates was to cast a blight on philosophy for centuries to come.
Largely as a result of Socrates’ antiscientific attitude, the few great scientific minds of the ancient Greek world worked outside philosophy. Archimedes (in physics), Hippocrates (in medicine), and to a certain extent Euclid (in geometry) were isolated from philosophy and thus from any developing tradition of knowledge and argument. Ancient Greek scientists knew the earth went around the sun, knew it was round, and even calculated its circumference. They observed electricity and were aware that the earth had a magnetic field. Outside the “universal wisdom” of philosophy, such factual bits of knowledge were isolated to the status of oddities. We owe a great deal to Socrates for placing philosophy on the sound basis of reason. But the fact that philosophy came of age under the aegis of an antiscientist must count as one of the great misfortunes of human learning. It is difficult to overemphasise the significance of this missed opportunity. The mental energy expended in the Middle Ages calculating the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin might instead have been dealing with the atoms first posited by Democritus.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
