Science before Socrates

CONTENTS

Introduction: Cosmic Conjunctions

1 Looking for Science 1.1 Unfounded speculation 1.2 Footnotes to Thales 1.3 Footnotes to Pythagoras 1.4 Science without knowledge 1.5 History of science without history 1.6 History of science without science 1.7 Old-time history of science Notes

2 Azure Pastures: An Early Ionian Model 2.1 Hesiod's mythical cosmography 2.2 Ionian theories 2.3 The Meteorological Model Notes

3 Borrowed Light: The Insights of Parmenides 3.1 Fifth-century advances 3.2 Three insights: Heliophotism, planetary unification, sphericity 3.3 The power of a model 3.4 Conjectures 3.5 Conceptual advances Notes

4 Empire of the Sun: Implications of Heliophotism, and a New Model 4.1 Antiphraxis and other theoretical implications 4.2 A new physics 4.3 Anaxagoras' new cosmology and astronomy 4.4 The Lithic Model Notes

5 Darkened Suns and Falling Stars: Heaven-sent Proofs 5.1 Lives of the eminent philosophers 5.2 Eclipses 5.3 The meteor 5.4 The comet 5.5 The Nile floods Notes

6 Lunar Revolutions: The Triumph of the New Astronomy 6.1 A community effort 6.2 Anaxagoras' theory 6.3 Other theories of the fifth century 6.4 Characteristics of the Lithic Model 6.5 The doxography 6.6 Plato's heavenly sphere 6.7 Aristotle's paradigm 6.8 A scientific consensus Notes

7 The Geometry of the Heavens 7.1 The story of early Greek astronomy 7.2 Scientific Progress 7.3 Historical and Philosophical Significance Notes

Appendix 1: Anaxagoras in the Historiography of Science Notes Appendix 2: Science and History Notes

Bibliography