Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy

Chapter 1
THE IONIAN PROGRAM
This man [Thales] is supposed to be the originator of philosophy, and from him the Ionian school gets its name. It became the longest tradition in philosophy. (Ps.-Plutarch Placita 1.3.1)
TODAY MILETUS is a mound rising above a flat plain dotted with olive trees. On the crest of the mound stands a Roman-era theater, and off to the east some stately marble facades line a swampy depression that is the remainder of a once proud seaport on the Aegean, from which little merchant ships sailed to far-off colonies in the Black Sea, the central Mediterranean, and the Nile laden with amphorai of olive oil from the ancestors of today's orchards. With her three harbors and a numerous progeny of daughter colonies, Miletus was the "jewel of Ionia,"1 and she counted among her citizens not only wealthy traders but also wise men whose names have long outlived their native city. For it was here that Western philosophy and science were born, in the first days of the sixth century BC. The little ships carried with their perishable cargoes words that would echo across the Mediterranean Sea and eventually around the world.
Miletus was the most illustrious of a chain of city-states dotting the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, colonies of Greeks from the Ionian tribe, who gave the name Ionia to their coastline.2 The first prose books were written in their alphabet and dialect, and their culture combined the best of a resurgent Greek civilization, recently emerged from a dark age,3 with borrowings from Egypt and the Middle East. Themselves great traders and colonizers, they had daughter cities in the south from the Nile and Libya, west to the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy, France, and Spain, and north to the Black Sea. Thus they were in touch with almost the whole Mediterranean world including three continents. They had trading posts in the Levant and served as mercenary soldiers in Egypt. Like the European voyagers of the Age of Exploration, they looked at lands of less advanced cultures as ripe for their own taking, but they traveled to the more advanced civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia to learn their secrets.
These great civilizations had managed to organize kingdoms and empires under the direction of a single autocratic ruler. Vast bureaucracies ran complex operations from fielding armies to taxing produce. In Babylonia temple priests kept detailed observations of the skies in order to report--and, wherever possible, anticipate--ominous phenomena. Handbooks of omens were kept from about 1700 BC and records of eclipses from around 747 BC. The Babylonians developed a powerful if complex system of mathematics based on the number sixty, which they eventually (in Hellenistic times) used to track the motions of the sun and moon. The most important element of their calendar was the lunar month, which being of variable length, caused them to make minute observations. The Egyptians in their bureaucracy used skilled scribes who had a good knowledge of basic arithmetic on which to base practical questions of ordering supplies and the like. They used a simple but highly practical year of 365 days and made simple astronomical observations.
Both of these great civilizations developed some powerful tools for scientific research, but neither had the concept of a scientific research program. For the Babylonians, astronomical observations served astrology, while for the Egyptians they served both to determine religious festivals and to anticipate the Nile floods and the agricultural seasons. Both civilizations furnished textbooks to teach mathematical procedures and the solution of practical problems, but neither had a system of proofs.4 The Greeks learned highly developed crafts and skills from their neighbors,5 but could have found no real sciences to borrow. Babylonian archives contained vast stores of mathematical and astronomical data on cuneiform tablets, and Egyptian archives contained vast collections of practical documents on papyrus rolls, which could be used in the service of science. But there was nothing recognizable as an institute or association or organized practice of scientific research.
What the Ionians themselves accomplished, and what their contribution to Western knowledge was, have been the subject of ongoing scholarly debate. Some partisans argue that they fairly invented science, others that they merely speculated about the world in a manner incapable of producing scientific knowledge.6 Recently most commentators have been willing to grant to them a modest status as forerunners of scientific thought, part of a complex combination of activities that were destined to contribute to scientific thought and method, including mathematics, medicine, technology, and public speaking.7