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Apr. 30th, 2021|09:04 am |
[The ancient Greeks] didn't have any full-blown science. Natural science in the sense that is relevant was founded by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). He figured out the methodology to invent competing hypotheses and to eliminate the wrong ones by experiments (he first eliminated wrong theories about how marbles accelerate when they fall from the Tower of Pisa). You may quote other "fathers of science" such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) but that won't change anything about the timing.
Ancient Greek Thales (620s BC-540s BC) was a father of "science" only to the extent that he recommended to avoid superstitions. But that is very insufficient to produce real scientific laws – which are needed for the steam engine etc. The ancient Greeks didn't know the parabolic trajectories of Galileo, Newton's laws, the quantitative concept of force, and even the temperature scales, among lots of other things (I am not even talking about electromagnetism let alone quantum mechanics, relativity, and string theory). The "pure scientific knowledge" was clearly the main thing that prevented them from introducing technologies of the modern era – and it is almost always like that. Idiots such as this retarded xer_wjeblenskiy never respect any science and how incredibly hard it is. They think it always exists and leftist activists who make it work for the people are the only hard thing!
How did the industrial revolution start, and it did so mainly in England? Do you remember James Watt (1736-1819)? He constructed the steam engine, right? Muscles were suddenly replaced with burning coal and steam. Was Watt – whose surname is used as the international unit of power today – a purely skillful guy who didn't need any insights from Newton and two centuries of physicists who were building on him? Don't be silly. Watt had to get – and did get – an extremely good education in mathematics and physical technology of his era.
Watt's father was a ship builder and ship contractor and James could have played with the ships. This shipwright's father, James' granddad Thomas Watt, was a teacher of mathematics, surveying, and navigation. His family had a direct access to the state-of-the-art STEM fields. Was James building on the science of ancient Greece? Well, Wikipedia makes it clear that he displayed aptitude for mathematics and no interest in Greek and Latin! ;-) Surely this relationship with mathematics was only a matter of James' childhood, right? No. He worked in his dad's factories but when those ran to business problems, James Watt left for Glasgow to build... mathematical instruments!
Then you see he was inspired by seeing a kettle boiling and started to play with steam and steam engines. But without the (nearly) state-of-the-art knowledge of physics, no one could possibly build such a thing. (Thomas Newcomen built an earlier steam engine that Watt has improved. Newcomen also had some science background, mostly from the things taught to priests, but it wasn't enough, his engine wasn't great, and the improvement from Newcomen's to Watt's engine took 1776-1712=64 long years.) A particular reason is that almost everyone who is illiterate in physics gets stuck in inventing various "perpetuum mobile" devices which just cannot work (just like physically illiterate 21st century people are excited by superluminal warp drives, cold fusion, loop quantum gravity, anti-Copenhagen "interpretations" of quantum mechanics, and dozens of similar pseudosciences). Watt knew what creates the power, the required watts to make things moving. Aristoteles just couldn't possibly complete these tasks. The ancient Greeks failed to understand not only the basic mechanics but also thermodynamics, chemistry, technologies to change the shape of iron, and many other crucial things.
I am convinced that most fifth-graders still do understand that the ancient Greeks didn't know the temperature, didn't have any pistons (1826... in the combustion engines), didn't understand the laws of thermodynamics, electromagnetism... and almost everything else that we count as physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences, so they could not have "applied" this non-existent knowledge. This commenter's stupidity is off the charts. But I am also almost certain that this kind of stupidity has become widespread and it is being tolerated if not encouraged. His teachers have failed to spank this bastard. And when he says a lie against slavery, he escapes the spanking lesson once again, every single day.
But it is not just the lack of education about the history, mathematics, and physics. He must completely lack any common sense. It is simply common sense that all scientific theories and technologies have their time and there are pretty good reasons why they didn't arrive centuries earlier. There are reasons – and these reasons are not just an insufficiently left-wing political leadership – why the cavemen didn't drive electric bikes and Homo Australopithecus didn't land on the Moon. The scientific and technological advances almost always depend on many other things. Sid Meier's Civilization games must have been very useful pedagogic instruments because they must make the players understand how science depends on a previous one – and some degree of overproduction or economic prosperity – and vice versa. Scientific and technological breakthroughs depend on others. And an excess of wealth (which often needs to be produced by brute force if not many slaves' drudgery) is needed for luxurious activities such as the scientific research that is needed for a higher level of luxury (and less back-breaking occupations) in the future, and so on. |
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