– Socrates
“Know thyself”
– Socrates
It’s appropriate that we begin our journey through the history of science and our cultural consciousness (worldview) with Ancient Greece – the western birthplace of science and rational thought. Of course, there are very relevant developments in Asia (India and China), but it is a particularly western point of view that seems to have come to dominate our world, and it is our interest to trace this heritage. It is quite clear that our culture is profoundly influenced by its origins in Ancient Greece. Something apparently occurred in this civilization – an emergence of a new kind of thought and a new way of knowing the world. We call it reason. We have to be careful here, however, because this word “reason,” (related to rationality) in all probability meant something quite different in Ancient Greece than it does today (see sidebar on reason).
