Greek Science After Aristotle

Although there is no exct equivalent to our term "science" in Greek, Western science may still be said to originate with the Greeks. In this volume, the author discusses the fundamental Greek contributions to science, drawing on the rich literary and archaeological sources for the period after Aristotle. Particular attention is paid to the Greeks' conceptions of the inquiries they were engaged on, and to the interrelations of science and philosophy, science and religion, and science and technology. In the first part of the book the author considers the two hundred years after the death of Aristotle, devoting separate chapters to mathematics, astronomy, and biology. He goes on to deal with Ptolemy and Galen and concludes with a discussion of later writers and of the problems raised by the question of the decline of ancient science.

Although there is no exact equivalent to our term "science" in Greek, Western science may still be said to originate with the Greeks. In this volume, the author discusses the fundamental Greek contributions to science, drawing on the rich literary and archaeological sources for the period after Aristotle. Particular attention is paid to the Greeks' conceptions of the inquiries they were engaged on, and to the interrelations of science and philosophy, science and religion, and science and technology. In the first part of the book the author considers the two hundred years after the death of Aristotle, devoting separate chapters to mathematics, astronomy, and biology. He goes on to deal with Ptolemy and Galen and concludes with a discussion of later writers and of the problems raised by the question of the decline of ancient science.

In this new series leading classical scholars interpret afresh the ancient world for the modern reader. They stress those questions and institutions that most concern us today: the interplay between economic factors and politics, the struggle to find a balance between the state and the individual, the role of the intellectual. Most of the books in this series centre on the great focal periods, those of great literature and art: the world of Herodotus and the tragedians, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Caesar, Virgil, Horace and Tacitus. This study traces Greek science through the work of the Pythagoreans, the Presocratic natural philosophers, the Hippocratic writers, Plato, the fourth-century B.C. astronomers and Aristotle. G. E. R. Lloyd also investigates the relationships between science and philosophy and science and medicine; he discusses the social and economic setting of Greek science; he analyses the motives and incentives of the different groups of writers.

Greek Science, first published in 1999, is written for scientists, classicists, historians of science, and anyone with an interest in the beginnings of science. It surveys the range and scope of ancient work on topics now called science, at a lively pace and with colourful examples. It encompasses ancient empirical studies as well as theoretical works, the life sciences and the exact sciences, and is written by one of the foremost authorities on ancient science and technology. No knowledge of Greek, Latin, or ancient history is assumed.

A collection of the most important papers published by G. E. R. Lloyd on Greek science since 1961.

Although there is no exact equivalent to our term science in Greek, Western science may still be said to have originated with the Greeks, for they were the first to attempt to explain natural phenomena consistently in naturalistic terms, and they initiated the practices of rational criticism of scientific theories. This study traces Greek science through the work of the Pythagoreans, the Presocratic natural philosphers, the Hippocratic writers, Plato, the fourth-century B.C. astronomers, and Aristotle. G. E. R. Lloyd also investigates the relationships between science and philosophy and science and medicine; he discusses the social and economic setting of early Greek science; and he analyzes the motives and incentives of the different groups of writers.