Until the sixth century, the Greeks were content with mythological explanations about the nature and meaning of life and the universe, as in other cultures. Beginning around 600 BC, several thinkers in the city of Miletus began to take a different approach, one that involved observation, analysis and reasoning about reality. The first of these was Thales (636 - 546). Some of this analysis was prompted by practical needs. Miletus was a major Greek trading center on the coast of Asia Minor. Thales traveled through Egypt and Mesopotamia seeking knowledge and he was interested in facilitating navigation. He took an interest in what we would now call Astronomy and Meteorology, and he attempted to develop his understanding of nature into a generalized cosmology, a system of knowledge. During the next three centuries, a number of Greek thinkers developed their own cosmologies, the most accurate being that of Democritus (460 - 370 BC), which espoused the atomic composition of all matter.
Although most of the details of the scientific thought of Thales and the other Cosmologists that came after him were largely incorrect, we owe to them the beginning of an analytical approach to understanding nature. Aristotle compiled and elaborated on these earlier ideas, and with a more methodical approach, he is considered to have established the foundations of what we consider Science. His teachings of Physics remained the authority until Galileo and Newton. He and his disciples also engaged in the systematic study of animals, including the use of dissection.
Thales again is credited with being the first Greek to develop Geometry, based on knowledge that he acquired from his travels through the Ancient world, and he made some practical applications of this knowledge to navigation. It is believed that Egyptian surveyors used Geometric principles to reestablish property markers after the Nile floods, and the precise knowledge of numbers probably developed from the activities of the Phoenicians in commerce and exchange.
Pythagoras (582 – 507 BC) was born in the island of Samos, another commercial center. He and his disciples significantly developed Geometry and Arithmetic, and Euclid (323 – 285 BC) systematized this knowledge into a series of influential books. Archimedes (287-212 BC) made significant advances in Physics and Mathematics. He designed a number of military engines that were used in the defense of his native city of Syracuse.
The Roman architect Vitruvius wrote a major work on Architecture, in which he applied many of the known principles of Physics and Mathematics:
Geometry, in turn, offers many aids to architecture, and first among them, it hands down the technique of compass and rule, which enables the on-site layout of the plan as well as the placement of set-squares, levels, and lines. Likewise, through knowledge of optics windows are properly designed so as to face particular regions of heaven. Through arithmetic the expenses of buildings are totaled up, and the principles of measurement are developed, the difficult issues of symmetry are resolved by geometric principles and methods [1].
[1] Vitruvius,
Ten Books on Architecture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 1999), 22.