Ancient Great Minds

This thread is not in opposition to the Ancient aliens thread. Moreso, a reply I gave in that thread gave me the idea for this one. Archaeology is in part about those people from the past who played central roles in history because of their great contributions. With wonderous intellectual capacity they helped to give rise to many of the ideas and concepts we still employ today as the basis of modern society. To me this is real Indiana Jones stuff. This would have thrilled him as much in the class room as well as in the field on archaeological digs and excursions.

Inspired by Carl Sagan's book, 'Cosmos', I would like to introduce Eratosthenes. He lived in the third century B.C. in the great metropolis, Alexandria, in ancient Egypt. He was an astronomer, historian, geographer, philosopher, poet, theatre critic and mathematician. He wrote a range of books and was also the director of the great library of Alexandria.

He was also the first to work out the circumference of the earth after deducing that the surface of the Earth must be curved in order to account for differences in the angles of shadows cast at the same time in different places. He actually worked out with simple tools the earth's circumference to within only a few degrees of error 2200 years ago.

Sourced from 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan

Great new thread, Mickiana!!

Right up front, I'll put in Imhotep. Before he was the star of Mummy movies (from those of Boris Karloff to those with Brandan Fraser), he was the world's first known architect and engineer (roughly 2650 BC). And he didn't need any aliens' help designing and building the step pyramid at Saqqara in Egypt. He also branched out enough to be known as one of the earliest physicians in recorded history. Quite a guy.

I like the idea for this thread. I would also like to personally thank Mickiana for it "not being in opposition" to the ancient alien thread. Just to touch on that and sort of bring it closure (since, as has been said, it's an argument that will never be won, at least not at The Raven), when I began that thread, despite the title, I said aliens was just a "possibility", but that so too were great ancient civilizations of human origin, be they known or unknown (such as Plato's Atlantis). Like many here, I am fascinated with the ancient world. And since aliens seem to just fan the flames of an endless argument (can't call it a debate), I welcome this change of pace. Thank you again for bringing some sense of reason back to things.

Matt deMille said:

when I began that thread, despite the title, I said aliens was just a "possibility",

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No you didn't. You used the words "fact" and "reality."


Stop lying. It's not very becoming.

Mickiana said:

I would like to introduce Eratosthenes. He lived in the third century B.C. in the great metropolis, Alexandria, in ancient Egypt. He was an astronomer, historian, geographer, philosopher, poet, theatre critic and mathematician. He wrote a range of books and was also the director of the great library of Alexandria.

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Eratosthenes had some great friends including Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and inventors of all time.

Archimedes is said to have remarked about the lever: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth."

What about Abu Rayhan Biruni?

Well, that's much tidier now.

Now, onto the ancients...Sophistry excluded.

Pale Horse said:

What about Abu Rayhan Biruni?

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Did you have something in mind?

On topic . . . Herodotus.

I frickin' love Herodotus. He's acknowledged by many to be the father of history, with a text (his Histories) full of stories and histories, many of which are obviously made-up or unreliable, but nevertheless tell a lot about what the Greeks perceived of the world around them. I highly suggest reading The Histories--its focus is allegedly on the Greco-Persian War, but about two thirds of the work is a essentially a tangential travel guide of the ancient world. It's my favorite ancient piece of literature.

And Herodotus isn't a damn hypocrite like Thucydides.

Homer (the name generally attributed as the author the epic Illiad and Odyssey).

The remarkable thing is that these works are believed to have been committed to writing around 800 BC. The story of a Trojan War bound in myth, and the fantastic adventures of Odysseus.

For me, they not only present the great imaginative mind of their author, but what was in the minds of people in ancient times.

I'm still sourcing 'Cosmos':

The greatest ancient astronomical observer, Hipparchus, who mapped the constellations and estimated the brightness of stars. He was also an astrologer, geographer and mathematician. He is known to be the father of trigonometry and first used trigonometry tables to compute the eccentricity of the orbits of the moon and sun. Google more on this guy and read about him. Amazing! But there's plenty more of them to enumerate here...

"But the greatest marvel of Alexandria was the library and its associated museum (literally, an institution devoted to the specialities of the Nine Muses)... this place was once the brain and glory of the greatest city on the planet, the first true research institute in the history of the world. The scholars of the library studied the entire Cosmos. Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together. Here was a community of scholars exploring physics, literature, medicine, astronomy, geography, philosophy, mathematics, biology and engineering. Science and scholarship had come of age. Genius flourished there. The Alexandrian Library is where we humans first collected, seriously and systematically, the knowledge of the world."

Excuse the double post. I think this fits into the topic and I couldn't wait.

Rocket Surgeon said:

Archimedes is said to have remarked about the lever: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth."

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And American Cinematographer did their own variation, saying on the April 1923 cover of their magazine, "Give us a place to stand, and we will film the universe."



I have the cover on a tshirt I got from AC after they published a few of my behind the scenes photos of the filming of Gods and Generals.

Euclid, who brilliantly systematised geometry and told his king, struggling over a difficult mathematical problem, "There is no royal road to geometry."

*yawn aliens yawn*

There was Dionysius of Thrace, who defined the parts of speech and did for the study of languages what Euclid did for geometry.

And in reference to Goodeknight, look up on YouTube, Building The Pyramid for an interesting theory. I have not looked up anything else on this particular theory, but it sounds plausible.

The physician called Empedocles performed the first recorded experiment on air. He used the clepsydra, or 'water thief', to show that air was composed of innumerable fine particles, deducing that to allow the water to pour out of the small holes in the bottom of the clepsydra, there must be something to replace it as putting your thumb over the hole in the top of the device stopped water from leaving.

Plato quoted best:

I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Rocket Surgeon said:

Plato quoted best:

I do not think that I know what I do not know.

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^
Plato quoted poorly.

"I know that I know nothing." (Plato, quoting Socrates)
^Plato/Socrates quoted accurately.

goodeknight said:

^
Plato quoted poorly.

"I know that I know nothing." (Plato, quoting Socrates)
^Plato/Socrates quoted accurately.

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Socrates, about his questioning of the reputedly wise man:

"I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know." (Plato's <I>Apology</I>, 21d, the Cooper revision of the Grube translation)

Socrates, to Thrasymachus, end of Book I:

"Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy." (Plato's <I>Republic</I>, 354b-c, the Reeve revision of the Grube translation)

goodeknight said:

^
Plato quoted poorly.

"I know that I know nothing." (Plato, quoting Socrates)
^Plato/Socrates quoted accurately.

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Is this irony? I ask because I don't know...

Cobbler, stick to thy last.