The First Scientist: Anaximander and his legacy

[marcus]

Clausius's deduction is one of the most amazing to me, especially because it follows from the "everyday language" of the Klevin and Clausius statements.

I had never known the fascinating history of Carnot's contribution. It is a very beautiful title indeed!

Possible revision of ST timeline, including Carnot and Clausius. BTW the timeline seems to divide fairly well into millennia:
...
...
Second Millennium ST:
1010 ST sack of Rome by the Western Goths led by their king Alaric.
1415 ST Muhummad al-Khwarizmi (±35); Persian mathematician and astronomer, wrote a standard algebra text On Calculation by Completion and Balancing (al-Jabr wa'l Muqubalah = completion and balancing) and a book on "Indian" positional notation (decimal numbers.)
1690 ST Omar Khayyam (±42); Persian poet, mathematician, astronomer.
1810 ST Leonardo Fibonacci (±40) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci helped introduce decimal numbering to Europe, learned algebra from Arabic sources, an associate of the in-some-ways enlightened medieval king of Sicily, Frederick Hohenstaufen (1822±28) whom Nietzsche called the "first European" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Third Millennium:
2092 ST Columbus' voyage
2200 ST Kepler (±30) Stated his first two laws in 2205: (i) Orbits are elliptical with sun at one focus (ii) Planet sweeps out area in its ellipse at a steady rate. Third (square-cube) law in 2218: If you square the number of years that a planet takes to orbit what you get is the cube of its average distance from the sun compared with that of the earth. If a planet takes 8 years to orbit then it must be 4 times farther than we are from the sun because 8²=4³.
2203 ST Galileo (±39); in 2210 observed Jovian moons with telescope, in 2232 published "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."
2275 ST roughly accurate measurement of the speed of light by Olaus Roemer at the Paris Observatory.
2388 ST Pierre-Simon Laplace (±39). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace
2391 ST Mozart composed the Magic Flute and Requiem.
2400 ST Laplace's "Celestial Mechanics" in several volumes appeared about this time.
2413 ST Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.
2424 ST publication of Sadi Carnot's book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire.
2429 ST Michael Faraday (±38); first demonstrated an electromagnet motor in 2421. Much more. The idea of a field. Intuiting molecular structure. One of three people (according to report) whose portraits Albert Einstein had on the wall of his study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
2455 ST James Clerk Maxwell (±24) in 2464 published "A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field." Another of Einstein's three portraits.
2455 ST Rudolf Clausius (±33) published On the mechanical theory of heat in 2450. Concept of entropy defined in 2465.
2505 ST Einstein's Wunderjahr.
2515 ST publication of the geometric theory of gravity.
2546 ST semiconductor solar cell patented by Russell Ohl (developed for practical application 2554 at Bell Labs) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_cell
2590 ST Hubble Space Telescope placed in orbit.
2611 ST present :)

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I knew you hadn't asked about the source, but would not have minded if you had, Fuzzyfelt!
Your question made me wonder about it, though, and I was glad to be reminded. :)

Thank you Marcus!
I won’t be suggesting additions, I'm happy to leave that to you and others! For example, I like the inclusion of Omar Khayyam.

 

[marcus]

It's hard to resist the impulse to add shiny magpie bits of unrelated detail, or to stray from complete timeline seriousness. Had to put in Mozart's Magic Flute for year 2391 since Thales.

One of my sources says Fibonacci (who knew Arabic and studied in North Africa) learned algebra from Omar Khayyam's textbook---he wrote one with a similar title to the earlier one by al-Khwarizmi . There's no doubt Khayyam was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer although we know of him mainly as a poet.

As we all know, Medieval courts held tournaments---ceremonial fighting for entertainment. Frederick II of Sicily had the good idea to hold a MATH tournament with a series of problems to challenge a halfdozen contending scholars. Fibonacci emerged as the champion.

A SciAm blog post about The First Scientist:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...m-its-earliest-beginnings-to-quantum-gravity/
Amazon page:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594161313/?tag=pfamazon01-20

========================
EDIT to reply to your next post.
I looked down the page and found your post about a dome in Isfahan, a connection with Omar Khayyam (!)
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2277389#post2277389

 

[fuzzyfelt]

One of my sources says Fibonacci (who knew Arabic and studied in North Africa) learned algebra from Omar Khayyam's textbook---he wrote one with a similar title to the earlier one by al-Khwarizmi . There's no doubt Khayyam was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer although we know of him mainly as a poet.

I've read similar things, too.

It's hard to resist the impulse to add shiny magpie bits of unrelated detail, or to stray from complete timeline seriousness. Had to put in Mozart's Magic Flute for year 2391 since Thales.
A SciAm blog post about The First Scientist:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...m-its-earliest-beginnings-to-quantum-gravity/

I appreciated the mention of Mozart, and enjoyed the article too.

 

[marcus]

I see they just brought out a kindle (e-book) version of The First Scientist.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NI3BWI/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Clausius's deduction is one of the most amazing to me, especially because it follows from the "everyday language" of the Klevin and Clausius statements.

I had never known the fascinating history of Carnot's contribution. It is a very beautiful title indeed!

...
I won’t be suggesting additions, I'm happy to leave that to you and others! For example, I like the inclusion of Omar Khayyam.

Fuzzyfelt, thanks for your appreciation and encouragement of the timeline.

Atyy's suggestions were helpful (Carnot, Clausius...thermodynamics).
I'm hoping other people will give me some ideas. There is no way a compact selective timeline like this can avoid being a bit idiosyncratic. At best emblematic, not exhaustive. Out of the hundreds of insights and inventions that underlie how we live I can only think of a few. Things I especially admire or approvingly rely on.

The refrigerator, for one thing. This laptop. The electric generators turned by falling water in the mountains, now driving the dishwasher. The stainless steel vessels and implements my family cooks and eats with. Some excellent polymers. The foam we sleep on. Efficient lighting. The internet. Orbital observatories that let us continue Anaximander's program of figuring out the sky. The disc of a favorite opera.

Probably all our lists would be different. I mention the refrigerator as paramount because I just had breakfast. It is based on something like a Carnot cycle and on ideas that Clausius worked out. Like the laptop as well, it is run by a grid of Faraday-invented generators. Breakfast was good and made entirely of items found in the refrigerator. I feel a touch of gratitude to the many inquiring minds woven into that machine. Children of the Ionians. Breakfast makes me glad they asked the questions they did.

If anyone wants to see Rovelli's piece at the online Scientific American, google "sciam rovelli science revolution". Or even just "sciam rovelli revolution". In effect The First Scientist is about a revolution in how we think the world that was started by some Ionian Greek--Anaximander being a prime example. That revolutions permeate our lives.
Part of the interest in The First Scientist is the urge to understand the consequences of what began in Ionia around 600 BC: the year we take to be our SciTech timeline's "Year One" = 1 ST. (if the ST tag didn't mean sci-tech, it could stand for "since Thales") To illustrate the year numbering convention used here: Columbus sailed the ocean blue in twentyhundred-ninetytwo (2092 ST) and the first demonstration of an electromagnet motor was in 2421 ST by Faraday. Approximate lifespans will be shown here by midpoint (± halflife). For instance, Faraday lived 2429±38, fewer digits to remember than with the alternative style b. 2391 and d. 2467.
The timeline (post #54) breaks up nicely into millennia. As a reminder I will bring forward the first part of it. Please contribute if you have any suggestions or comment!

First millennium ST
(SciTech timeline: a series of thoughts and events starting around 600 BC)
3 ST Solon lived 3±40.
16 ST Thales of Miletus lived 16±39; systematic natural explanations; calculated height of pyramids and distance of ships from the shore; predicted eclipse that occurred in 16 ST.
22 ST Anaximander of Miletus 22±32; Earth unsupported in space, “first geometrical model of the world...”; improved on Thales natural explanations. Nature governed by natural laws analogous to laws of a city?
70 ST Pythagoras of Samos (±40); mathematical formulation of natural laws.
137 ST Anaxagoras (±37); moon shines with the light of the sun, explaining phases and eclipses.
167 ST Socrates of Athens (±35)
218 ST Eudoxus of Cnidus (±28) detailed cosmic model with concentric spheres reproducing observed (e.g. retrograde) motions.
248 ST Aristotle (±31)
270 ST founding of the port city of Alexandria which became a hub of learning and scientific activity; among Mediterranean cities, second only to Rome in size and wealth.
300 ST publication (in Alexandria) of Euclid's Elements
302 ST Strato of Lampsacus (±32); performed physics experiments, noted the acceleration of falling bodies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strato_of_Lampsacus
330 ST Aristarchus of Samos (±40); Inferred from observation that the Sun was much farther away than the Moon, and therefore much larger in actual size. Conceived the heliocentric model. According to Archimedes and others, he held that the Moon revolved around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun, which remained stationary like the stars.
351 ST Archimedes of Syracuse (±38) contributed numerous advances to science including the principle that a body immersed in fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. "His method was to select definite and limited problems. He then formulated hypotheses which he either regarded, in the Euclidean manner, as self-evident axioms or could verify by simple experiments. The consequences of these he then deduced and experimentally verified" [Crombie 1952, page 278]. Constructed cosmic models using gearwheels. For a later example which has survived, see:


Additional information in this as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc&feature=fvst
He also got some nice math results, for instance in solid geometry, and calculated the value of pi.
365 ST Eratosthenes of Cyrene (±40); calculated the circumference of the Earth and basically got it right (accurate to within a couple of percent).
445 ST Hipparchus of Rhodes (±35) Besides much else, he determined that the distance to the moon was about 60 times the radius of the Earth.
Around 500 ST Roman expansion (the Macedonian Wars) disrupted the Hellenistic east Mediterranean. Learning endured in dumbed-down version from which, however, it would eventually be revived. Negligible scientific progress during the second half of the millennium ST.
1010 ST Rome sacked by the Visigoths led by king Alaric.

 

[marcus]

A couple of things to add to the timeline: in the third millennium people understood how the sun works. The basis for the proton-proton chain reaction (releasing energy in the core) is a key step proposed in 2539 ST by Hans Bethe 2555±49. Also in a series of papers 2448-2556 ST Melvin Calvin elucidated photosynthesis and traced how carbon in CO2 is absorbed and built into the yummy carbs. http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/documents/fullText/ACC0325.pdf
...
...
Second millennium ST
1076 ST Odoacer becomes king of Italy (no more Western Roman Empire, but the Eastern part will continue another 1000 years, preserving a partial record of Greek science in suspended animation.)
1415 ST Muhummad al-Khwarizmi (±35); Persian mathematician and astronomer, wrote a standard algebra text On Calculation by Completion and Balancing (al-Jabr wa'l Muqubalah = completion and balancing) and a book on "Indian" positional notation (decimal numbers.)
1690 ST Omar Khayyam (±42); Persian poet, mathematician, astronomer.
1810 ST Leonardo Fibonacci (±40) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci helped introduce decimal numbering to Europe, learned algebra from Arabic sources, an associate of the in-some-ways enlightened medieval king of Sicily, Frederick Hohenstaufen (1822±28) whom Nietzsche called the "first European" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
2053 ST Constantinople falls to Turks, no more Eastern Roman Empire.

Third millennium ST
2092 ST Columbus' voyage
2200 ST Kepler (±30) Stated his first two laws in 2205: (i) Orbits are elliptical with sun at one focus (ii) Planet sweeps out area in its ellipse at a steady rate. Third (square-cube) law in 2218: If you square the number of years that a planet takes to orbit what you get is the cube of its average distance from the sun compared with that of the earth. If a planet takes 8 years to orbit then it must be 4 times farther than we are from the sun because 8²=4³.
2203 ST Galileo (±39); in 2210 observed Jovian moons with telescope, in 2232 published "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."
2275 ST roughly accurate measurement of the speed of light by Olaus Roemer at the Paris Observatory.
2388 ST Pierre-Simon Laplace (±39). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace
2391 ST Mozart composed the Magic Flute and Requiem.
2400 ST Laplace's "Celestial Mechanics" in several volumes appeared about this time.
2413 ST Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.
2424 ST publication of Sadi Carnot's book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire.
2429 ST Michael Faraday (±38); first demonstrated an electromagnet motor in 2421. Much more. The idea of a field. Intuiting molecular structure. One of three people (according to report) whose portraits Albert Einstein had on the wall of his study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday
2455 ST James Clerk Maxwell (±24) in 2464 published "A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field." Another of Einstein's three portraits.
2455 ST Rudolf Clausius (±33) published On the mechanical theory of heat in 2450. Concept of entropy defined in 2465.
2505 ST Einstein's Wunderjahr.
2515 ST publication of the geometric theory of gravity.
2546 ST semiconductor solar cell patented by Russell Ohl (developed for practical application 2554 at Bell Labs) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_cell
2554 ST Melvin Calvin (±43) advanced the understanding of photosynthesis.
2255 ST Hans Bethe (±49) explained the proton-proton chain reaction that heats the sun's core. His first insight was in 2539 when he realized how deuterium can form (helped by a p-to-n beta swop). This was the first of several steps in the process, which he then went on to elucidate.
2590 ST Hubble Space Telescope placed in orbit.
2611 ST present :)

 

[marcus]

I just happened to check to see how the "kindle" e-book version of The First Scientist is doing:Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,394 Paid in Kindle Store
#23 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > History > Ancient > Greece
#41 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > History & Philosophy > History of Science

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NI3BWI/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[marcus]

http://www.amazon.it/dp/8861840752/ #8766 at 10AM Pacific
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594161313/?tag=pfamazon01-20 #35,536 at 10AM.
#36 in Books > History > Ancient > Greece
#36 in Books > History > Europe > Greece > Ancient
#79 in Books > Science > History & Philosophy > History of Science
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NI3BWI/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Out of historical curiosity I looked up some of the other things that were happening around the time of Anaximander, Solon, Pythagoras. They turn out to have been contemporaries of Confucius and Gautama (aka Buddha). So all these people trying different ways of thinking about the world, life, ethics, society etc were living in the years 600-500 BC. And according to the Oxford Bible Commentary the initial versions of the first five books were being composed around then too (Gen Ex Lev Num Deut). Optical illusion? It seems by coincidence that the beginnings of a quite a few important traditions go back to that century.

 

[marcus]

On 10 November Rovelli gave a talk on how our picture of the universe affects how we think and then took part in a panel discussion (wide ranging topics, I gather, role of science in culture, arts, society...possible subversive or revolutionary potential of scientific ideas?) at a famous old theater in Rome----Teatro Valle.

http://www.teatrovalleoccupato.it/incontro-con-la-fisica-giovedi-10-carlo-rovelli-al-teatro-valle

Teatro Valle has been "occupied" for several months to save it as a historical landmark.
It is the oldest regular operating theater in Rome and kind of "belle epoque" velvet romantic looking. Very grand.

So artists and theater people have been occupying it, preventing its destructive remodeling or whatever, and giving interesing persentations and performances which are at least in this case FREE to the public, donation requested.

So Rovelli and some others went down to Rome and gave an evening live talk-show on the 10th and now on the 13th the Anaximander book is doing rather well.
it was just #375 among all books at Italian Amazon, and #3 in the special category of philosophy.

==quote==
http://www.amazon.it/dp/8861840752/
As of 9:50 AM Pacific time, on 13 November

Posizione nella classifica Bestseller di Amazon: n. 375 in Libri (Visualizza i Top 100 nella categoria Libri)
n.3 in Libri > Società e scienze sociali > Filosofia
n.21 in Libri > Scienze, tecnologia e medicina

 

[marcus]

Google translator is amazing. I wanted an example of the use of the early Greek word for feudal lord or tribal leader ANAX

So I monkeyed around with a traditional Jewish prayer and got this

ακουει ισραελ Αναξ ο Θεός σου ένας Αναξ μονοσ

I'm sure that this has grammar mistakes and anachronisms etc but Google translated it.

I will have to try that again. Yes it translates it this way:
hear Yisrael lord your God is one lord ALONE

 

[alt]

Google translator is amazing. I wanted an example of the use of the early Greek word for feudal lord or tribal leader ANAX

So I monkeyed around with a traditional Jewish prayer and got this

ακουει ισραελ Αναξ ο Θεός σου ένας Αναξ μονοσ

I'm sure that this has grammar mistakes and anachronisms etc but Google translated it.

I will have to try that again. Yes it translates it this way:
hear Yisrael lord your God is one lord ALONE

Hi Marcus - I find your posts very interesting and insightful. Yes, Google translate is amazing.

If you didn't know already, there is an on line bible at;

http://www.onlinebible.org/

You can download various modules such as Hebrew, Byzantine Greek, etc, and run them in parallel to the English (and numerous versions of that) so as to compare language, meanings, tranlation (or loss thereof) etc. I toy with it often and occasionally find it quite revealing.

 

[marcus]

Anaximander was the primary person at the root of the tradition where there is an idea of natural or physical law, and a model of the cosmos with the Earth surrounded by empty space (not supported by elephants etc.) and where natural causes are found for phenomena (like life, rain, eclipses, day and night, etc.) rather than explaining mythically by divine agency.
So I was playing around some more with Google translator and this occurred to me:

ακουει ισραελ το νομος του κοσμου σου ενας νομος μονος

Again I do suspect that this has grammar mistakes etc but it translates more or less this way:
Hear O Israel the Law of your cosmos is one Law.

Played around with it some more and got:
Ακούστε Ιωνες, το νομος του κοσμου σου ενας νομος μονος

Listen Ionians, the Law of your world is one Law.

 

[marcus]

Rovelli just gave a couple of (I think interesting) talks at Princeton. One of them, on Anaximander, was yesterday 25 April at 4:00 PM:
http://philosophy.princeton.edu/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=161&extmode=view&extid=809

Anaximander Of Miletus: Early Beginning And Conceptual Aspects Of Scientific Thinking
Carlo Rovelli, Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Aix-Marseille University, France

The other talk was at the Institute for Advanced Studies, on the current definition, status, open problems, and prospects of Loop quantum gravity. That was two days earlier.

Monday, April 23, 2012
High Energy Theory Seminar
“Loop Quantum Gravity: Recent Results and Open Problems”
Location: Bloomberg Lecture Hall
Time: 2:30 PM
Speaker(s): Carlo Rovelli, Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Aix-Marseille University, France
Description: The loop approach to quantum gravity has developed considerably during the last few years, especially in its covariant ('spinfoam') version. I present the current definition of the theory and the results that have been proven. I discuss what I think is still missing towards of the goal of defining a consistent tentative quantum field theory genuinely background independent and having general relativity as classical limit.
http://www.princeton.edu/physics/events/viewevent.xml?id=347


Ακούστε Ιωνες, το νομος του κοσμου σου ενας νομος μονος

Hear, O Ionians, the Law of your world is one Law.
_____

 

[marcus]

Here's an online video of a talk by Rovelli about Anaximander and the birth of the scientific tradition
http://www.cerimes.fr/le-catalogue/comment-est-nee-la-science-anaximandre-premier-scientifique.html
The first 8 minutes are by someone else (a French astrophysicist) and if you want to you can skip that by dragging the time button sort of 10% of the way along or however much you need to to get to around 8 minutes into the program.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Thank you, yet again, Marcus!

 

[marcus]

I'm glad to be able to share an interest in the early science of the Ionians, Fuzzyfelt. I am thankful to you for this opportunity!
Also I think you are comfortable with French---it presents no obstacle to you. So if you watch it you can tell better than I can how well the lecture went.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

No, I don't find it that easy, but I've had some help, and I've enjoyed it.

 

[marcus]

I'm forgetful, I think of you as speaking some Italian, possibly bilingual, because of having lived some time in Italy. But I could easily be confused. And that does not mean you would automatically understand a lecture by Rovelli in French. But you probably come closer than I do

BTW the Anax book was doing well last time I looked. At noon Pacific time (which I guess is 9 PM over there) today 19 May it was #497 in all Amazon books:

==quote Italian Amazon==
Posizione nella classifica Bestseller di Amazon: n. 497 in Libri (Visualizza i Top 100 nella categoria Libri)
n.26 in Libri > Società e scienze sociali > Filosofia
n.39 in Libri > Scienze, tecnologia e medicina
==endquote==
http://www.amazon.it/dp/8861840752/

"Anaximander's Revolution"--La rivoluzione di Anassimandro--I like that part of the title.

And number 26 and 39 on a couple of their "top 100" bestseller lists. Not bad!
====================

Just for comparison I checked with Usa Amazon to see how the e-book is doing.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NI3BWI/?tag=pfamazon01-20
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,299 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#79 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > History > Ancient > Greece

This Greek phrase still echoing in my head:

Ακούστε Ιωνες, το νομος του κοσμου σου ενας νομος μονος

[Akouste Iones, to Nomos tou cosmou sou enas Nomos monos. (The "to" pronouced "toe". The "ou" pronounced "oo")]

Hear, O Ionians, the Law of your world is one Law.
___

 

[OmCheeto]

Sometimes I wish I had a million hours of spare time to find all of the PF Jewel threads.

Thank god they pop up once in awhile for me to catch glimpse of.

I do like the way this Rovelli thinks:

The core of science is therefore not a quest for certainty. Rather, it is a deep acceptance of our persisting uncertainty, and our vast ignorance. Science is born from the discovery that in front of the innumerable aspects of the world that we do not (yet?) understand, accepting our ignorance and being open to learn step by step is far more productive that making up a story and sticking to it.

from his SciAm blog

Reminds me a bit of something Andre said the other day:

...it should be a high ethical duty of any phycisian to monitor clinical pictures and medical treatments and investigate and report anything he considers irregular.

bolding mine
from his Ethics in science thread

Physicians probably more than anyone should study Anaximander. One set of their studies, pathogens, tend to evolve much more quickly than their patients.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

We enjoyed the french with the rolling "R", Marcus. :)

And good thoughts, Om, about uncertainty.