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After 3500 B.C., when cuneiform writing was developed and recorded
history began, science first emerged among stargazing astronomer-priests
in ancient west Asia. The gods were identified with the stars
(which could influence events on earth); "foundation cosmologies"
expressed a view of how the world began, usually with flood
themes related to the end of the Ice Age in 8000 B.C..
After
the 5th century B.C., Greek thinkers (such as Thales, Pythagoras,
Euclid, Protagoras, Democritus, and Archimedes) began
to challenge the myths of Homeric poetry; they developed logic
and philosophy as new ways of knowing. Epicurus developed a
materialistic philosophy, based on Democritus'
theory of atoms. Zeno and his Stoic
philosophy opposed Epicureanism,
finding reality in an ever-present vital spirit that controls
the physical world. Hippocrates founded medical
practice on the theory that the body has four
humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile); the 1st
century Roman physician, Galen, later produced anatomical
studies that would remain influential until the Renaissance.
Galen's contemporary, Ptolemy, produced a cosmology that
also would last almost 1500 years.
Plato
had used reason to envision truth and to discern the
unchanging laws or principles of nature - but his ideas were
often detached from observation and experience. Aristotle,
in the 4th century B.C., relied much more heavily on direct
observation of nature's objects and processes; he is regarded
as the first empiricist. Aristotle's on cosmology, physical
cause and effect, and the basic elements (fire, earth, water,
and air) were to prevail for 2000 years.
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