Greek philosophers

Stapleton, H.E. The antiquity of alchemy. Ambix 5, no. 1-2 (Oct 1953) 1-43. Transmission of alchemical ideas from China Near East through Greek philosophers to Jabir. Use of magic squares... 

As would be expected from such a fundamental problem, the root of the quest to unravel the composition of matter goes back to the pre-Socrates Greek philosophers. Even then the great minds pondered what made up nature and how it all came about. 

Mercury (chemical symbol Hg, from the Latin name of the metal, hydrar-gyrium, liquid silver), previously also known as quicksilver is, at ordinary temperatures, a silvery white liquid metal that boils at 360°C. The metal is occasionally found in nature in the native state. Most mercury has been derived, however, from the red mineral cinnabar (composed of mercuric sulfide) that was also used in the past as a red pigment known as vermilion (see Textbox 41). The Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing in the fourth... 

In 1804, John Dalton proposed the existence of atoms. He not only postulated that atoms exist, as had ancient Greek philosophers, but he also attributed to the atoms certain properties. His postulates were as follows ... 

But now let us go back again, many centuries the Greek philosophers tried to explain the formation of living systems by compounding matter (which is by nature lifeless) with the active principle of gestalt . The gestalt principle is so powerful that it can breathe life into inert matter. 

Many centuries passed between the hypotheses of the Greek philosophers and the development of new ideas, and of vague models of how life on Earth might have developed. However, a completely new methodology was now used while the Greeks had merely reflected on how things might have happened, their successors used experiments. 

The concept that all matter, however complicated it may be, is made up of some combination of only a few basic substances began in ancient Greece. The Greek philosophers believed there were four such elements fire, water, earth, and air. They thought that all substances were combinations of these four basic things. 

Greek philosophers thought that everything could be learned by logical thinking. They did not believe in experimenting or observing. Therefore, they made many mistakes. Today scientists 1 know that neither fire, air, earth, nor water are really elements, but it was many years before the ideas of these early thinkers were questioned. 

Plato, the famous Greek philosopher, taught that the things of the world around us are merely copies or shadows of greater, eternal realities. He used a metaphor of people living inside a cave to convey his ideas. The people inside the cave could not see the world outside the cave, they could only see shadows of people and animals as they passed by. 

Several strands of evidence came together at the beginning of the twentieth century to suggest that the atom, originally envisaged by the Greek philosophers as the smallest indivisible unit of matter, was, in fact, composed of smaller particles, subsequently named protons, neutrons, and electrons. The story begins in the nineteenth century with efforts to identify the atom itself, followed by research which led to the identification of the... 

Around 440 BCE—that s over 2,400 years ago—Greek philosophers tried to understand the nature of the universe. 

Eat, drink, and he merry, is a label associated with Greek philosopher Epicurus, but like most catchy slogans, they simplify what is actually a rich and complex message. 

Circa 580-490 The great Greek philosopher, mathematician, and magician, Pythagoras, studies the wisdom of Mesopotamia and Egypt and founds a mystical sect in the Greek colony in Croton, Italy, in which numbers are seen as emanations. 

The life of the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who developed the theory of the four elements. 

Some of the Greek philosophers who lived four or five hundred years before Christ formed a theory of the transformations of matter, which is essentially the theory held by naturalists to-day. 

Instead of blaming the Greek philosophers for lack of quantitatively accurate experimental inquiry, we should rather be full of admiring wonder at the extraordinary acuteness of their mental vision, and the soundness of their scientific spirit. 

People have been thinking about tiny objects for a long time. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus (ca. 460-370 b.c.e.) believed that properties of matter depended on the shapes of small, indivisible bits of matter called atoms. Although this idea failed to catch on at the time— no one could see these atoms because they were so small—in 1803, the British chemist John Dalton (1766-1844) proposed a similar theory. Dalton s theory was an important advance and helped scientists understand chemical reactions—for example, the reaction of two atoms of hydrogen (H) and one atom of oxygen (O) to form H O—but atoms themselves remained cloaked in mystery. 

Greek philosopher Democritus (ca. 460-370 b.c.e.) proposes the theory that matter consists of tiny, indivisible atoms. 

One of the first people to apply science to medicine was the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 b.c.e.). Influenced by the idea that the world is composed of four substances—earth, air, fire, and water—as taught by the Greek philosopher Empedocles (ca. 495-435 b.c.e.), Hippocrates proposed that four fluids are critical in determining a person s state of health. These fluids, known as humors (from a Latin term for moisture), were called blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. According to Hippocrates, an imbalance in these humors caused disease. Later, people associated a specific temperament or personality with these humors, a theory that was one of the earliest attempts to explain moods and emotions. Blood, for example, was associated with an optimistic disposition, while black bile corresponded to depression. 

Early scientists and philosophers invested much effort in the search for the fundamental substance or substances—the simplest kind of matter that comprises the world and all of its various materials. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales (ca. 635-556 b.c.e.) postulated that water is the fundamental substance. Although this idea may not sound realistic today, the hypothesis was a reasonable one. Life depends on water and Earth contains a huge quantity of water in oceans and rivers water falls from the sky as rain and seeps through the ground in wells. The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles (ca. 495-435 b.c.e.) expanded the list of fundamental substances to four—water, earth, air, and fire. 

---