How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (5 page)

Similarly, the Greeks perfected the water clock (or clepsydra), a great improvement on sundials (since they were more accurate and worked in the dark). The water clock measured time by releasing a flow of water at a carefully calibrated rate. Earlier water clocks in China, Egypt, and Babylon saw their accuracy suffer as the water level declined in the vessel of origin. The Greeks introduced a method for regulating the flow. They also devised water clocks that propelled a dial indicator to show the time, and even clocks that set off noisemakers to serve as alarms. These Greek water clocks were the most accurate timekeepers in the world until replaced by mechanical clocks in medieval Europe. It also was the Greeks who invented the astrolabe, an astronomical instrument used to locate and predict the location of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. In addition to being useful for astrologers, the astrolabe was of immense value for navigation.

Often overlooked is the Greek invention of maps. The first maps probably were produced by Anaximander (610–546 BC), but it was Dikaiarch of Messina (350–285 BC) who introduced longitude and latitude to mapmaking. Related to maps is the Greek invention of calipers, the earliest example having been found in the wreck of a Greek ship dating from the sixth century BC.

Of major importance was the Greek development of the catapult (from the Greek word
katapeltes
, “to throw into”). Invented in the city-state of Syracuse, catapults were used to shoot large arrows or stones with great force. They revolutionized siege warfare; missiles could be hurled long distances and over walls, and breeches could be knocked into walls.
⁷¹

There were many other Greek technological innovations, including new techniques for creating and casting bronze, new mining methods, even a steam engine (although it was embodied only in a toy). But in the end what counted most in the Greek heritage were thoughts, not things.

Greek Rationalism

The Greeks were not the first to wonder about the meaning of life and the causes of natural phenomena. But they were the first to do so in systematic ways. In the words of the eminent scholar Martin West, “they taught themselves to reason.”
⁷²

The ancients believed that the fundamental feature of the universe was
chaos
, a state of disorder and confusion. One may meditate on such a universe, one may attribute phenomena to the whims of various gods, but one may not usefully attempt to reason about why things happen as they do. So long as this assumption prevailed, natural explanations of nature seemed utterly absurd, “being too naive for the subtlety and complexity of the universe,” as the Chinese Taoists put it.
⁷³
Thus, as Herodotus noted after a trip to Egypt, it never occurred to “the priests or anyone else” to investigate “why [the Nile] floods every year.”
⁷⁴
It was enough to attribute it to the goddess Isis. Herodotus went on to summarize three naturalistic explanations of why the Nile floods that Greek visitors to Egypt had formulated. He correctly dismissed all three as false, but the point is that Greek visitors had addressed the question of why, whereas the Egyptians had sought no natural explanation even though their entire civilization depended on the Nile’s annual flooding.

As Herodotus’s example illustrates, the ancient Greeks took the single most significant step toward the rise of Western science when they proposed that the universe is orderly and governed by underlying principles that the human mind could discern through observation and reason.
⁷⁵
It is uncertain who first took this step, or when. But the assumption that the universe is orderly and predictable was given an immense boost by Thales (ca. 624–546 BC) when he correctly predicted a solar eclipse on May 28, 585 BC. Thales was born into the nobility in the Greek city-state of Miletus in Asia Minor (now Turkey). Early on he began to speculate about natural causes as opposed to supernatural explanations of worldly phenomena. We know that Thales was an early geometrician, that he tried to explain earthquakes, and that he believed that all matter must consist of a single, basic component. But since none of his writings survived, we know few details about his work.

Pythagoras (ca. 570–ca. 500–490 BC) powerfully reinforced the claim that the universe is orderly. He and his followers taught that the universe is a
cosmos
, that term originally meaning orderly and harmonious (it soon was equated with
universe
, thus blending the object with its fundamental property). Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos off the coast of modern Turkey. At the age of forty he emigrated to the Greek city-state of Croton in southern Italy, where he gathered followers and spent the rest of his life. Today, Pythagoras is known as the father of numbers because he stressed the importance of mathematics in explaining the cosmos. He is also celebrated for the theorem in geometry named after him and for inventing the term
philosopher
(lover of wisdom) to describe himself. In ancient Greece, however, Pythagoras was best known for his religious doctrines—that all living creatures have souls, that souls are immortal, and that after death each soul enters a new body.

The next Greek philosopher of lasting importance was Anaxagoras (ca. 500–428 BC). Born and trained in the Greek city-state of Clazomenae in Asia Minor, he is credited with bringing philosophy to Athens. Anaxagoras was remarkably perceptive about cosmology, proposing that the sun and stars are red-hot stones, that the moon does not produce its own light but merely reflects light from the sun, and that eclipses of the moon occur when the earth comes between it and the sun. But perhaps his most original contribution was the one that almost cost him his life: that behind the entire cosmos was a Mind (
Nous
). It was this Mind that made all things and put them in motion. “Mind is unlimited and self
ruled and is mixed with no thing, but is alone and by itself.… It is the finest of all things and the purest, and it has all judgment about everything and the greatest power.”
⁷⁶
In this way Anaxagoras articulated an early form of monotheism, attributing divinity only to Mind and ignoring the traditional gods. For this, an Athenian court sentenced him to death for impiety, but Pericles was able to secure his release if he left Athens. So Anaxagoras retired to Lampsacus in Asia Minor, where he died the year Plato was born.

The magisterial British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was not being entirely whimsical when he remarked that Western philosophy is but “a series of footnotes to Plato.”
⁷⁷
Plato (ca. 428–348 BC) is one of the two most famous and influential figures in Western philosophy—the other being his student Aristotle (384–322 BC). Because Plato used the dialogue form in his writings and, for many years, used Socrates (who had been his teacher) as the spokesman for the “correct” views, there is some disagreement as to which ideas were Plato’s own and which ones should be attributed to Socrates. This is a valid concern for intellectual historians, but the more important point is that we know of these ideas only because Plato wrote about them. Thus it is correct to identify these ideas as Platonic.

Early in his career, Plato devoted himself to explaining natural phenomena. As he put it: “I thought it was a glorious thing to know the causes of everything.”
⁷⁸
Eventually, however, he became convinced that the causes he was seeking lay not in the natural world but rather “that all things are ordered by a mind or minds”—that is, by divinity.
⁷⁹
Plato argued that the existence of divinity is implicit in the order of the universe, for this order “cannot be explained without an intelligent ordering cause.”
⁸⁰

Pursuing his new approach, Plato proposed that the universe is divided into two realms, the
visible
and the
invisible
. He asserted (through the mouth of Socrates) that the invisible is real, the visible being merely a fuzzy, reflected shadow of the invisible. This is known as the Theory of Forms.

According to Plato, every object in the visible universe is an imprecise and inferior manifestation of an ideal object, a pure
Form
. He held that only the ideal Forms are truly real—illusion being involved in all visible things. Thus all circular objects reflect a pure and perfect circle; all trees reflect the ideal, perfect tree; all horses represent the perfect horse.
Human emotions and even virtues also reflect perfect Forms that exist only as “ideals” in the invisible world.

Plato also noted that the cosmos is filled with motion and activity. What causes this? Plato’s answer drew on Pythagoras: everything, both animate and inanimate, is inhabited by a
soul
. It is its soul that causes the sun to move; it is the human soul that is capable of thoughts such as philosophy. Plato further distinguished the soul as consisting of three aspects:
logos
(the mind, reason),
thymos
(emotion), and
eros
(desire). Souls existed before anything else and are immortal. In fact, Plato believed in reincarnation: that after death souls pass into new beings or things. And, of course, there must be a soul of all souls, and a Pure Form of absolute goodness. These conclusions carried Plato back to his conception of divinity, earning him the designation as the founder of rational theology (the application of reason to expand the understanding of religious questions such as the nature of God).
⁸¹

Plato claimed in
Laws
that gods exist and, indeed, are the cause of all things; they have perfect knowledge and perfect goodness.
⁸²
They are moral rulers of the universe and cannot be influenced by sacrifices or gifts. Echoing Anaxagoras’s concept of Mind, Plato concluded that there is one supreme god who is “in every way perfect.”
⁸³
He deduced that God is immutable, for if he changed it could necessarily only be to become less perfect. God is all-knowing and all-powerful.
⁸⁴
God is timeless; he has always existed and always will. But Plato conceived of this supreme God as so remote and impersonal that he took no part in anything. Even the creation of the universe was the work of a lesser divinity, whom Plato designated the
demiurge
—the personification of reason. Here Plato differed from most other Greek philosophers, who believed that the universe was uncreated and eternal, locked in a never-ending cycle of being. Aristotle, for example, condemned the idea “that the universe came into being at some point in time … as unthinkable.”
⁸⁵
Plato also accepted the existence of the traditional Greek gods as a species of lower godlings.

Aristotle was not only Plato’s student but also the tutor of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). He was born in Macedon and at eighteen went to Athens to study under Plato. After Plato’s death he traveled in Asia Minor and then returned to Macedon to tutor Alexander and two other future kings: Ptolemy, who became the first Greek king of Egypt, and Cassander, who succeeded Alexander as king of Macedon.

Unlike Plato, Aristotle never lost interest in explaining the natural world. His reflections led him to the conclusion that there must be an “unmoved mover,” a first cause of all motion. He defined the first mover as God.
⁸⁶
In his conception, God was as remote and impersonal as Plato’s supreme divinity. Once having put the universe in motion, according to Aristotle, God can contemplate only the perfect—that is, his own contemplation. From this Aristotle deduced that God must be unaware of the existence of the world.
⁸⁷
Hence, God compels our wonder, but worship of him is pointless.
⁸⁸
Aristotle also had no time for the traditional Greek pantheon and was openly contemptuous of Alexander’s claims to divinity. Following Alexander’s death, there was a movement in Athens to bring Aristotle to trial for not honoring the gods, so he fled Athens for the family estate in Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, where he died the next year.

Aristotle’s major impact on Western civilization came neither from his metaphysics nor from his many observations of natural phenomena. Most important was his recognition that philosophical debates typically turned on one or more of the participants’ being guilty of faulty reasoning. This led him to develop rules for correct reasoning, whereby formal logic was born. It is unnecessary to pause here to outline what came to be called Aristotelian logic—the syllogism being the primary example. It is enough to recognize that an emphasis on logical reasoning, as opposed to mysticism and meditation, became the defining hallmark of Christianity.
⁸⁹

The final touches on the Greek heritage came from the Stoics, a school of philosophers founded by Zeno (334–262 BC). The name
Stoic
derived from the fact that Zeno met with his followers at the Stoa Poecile (painted porch) in Athens. The son of a Phoenician merchant, Zeno came to Athens at the age of twenty-two in search of an education in philosophy. He divided philosophy into three parts: logic, physics (including especially metaphysics), and ethics (right living). But he and the Stoics are best remembered for their ethics, which stressed self-control and correct reasoning as the keys to a satisfying and virtuous life. Zeno held that because God is the cause of everything that happens—indeed, the universe
is
God—humans ought to calmly accept life as it comes and avoid emotional responses, whether joy or sorrow. The emphasis on self-control turned out to have great appeal to the Romans, especially the elite. Stoicism became the leading pagan philosophy, moral shortcomings included.