Λοξίας έγραψε: ↑10 Ιαν 2021, 15:50
Antipnevma έγραψε: ↑10 Ιαν 2021, 15:36
Για να φτιάξεις πραγματική ατμομηχανή χρειάζεσαι επιστημονική γνώση (και επιστημονική γνώση δεν υπήρχε πριν την επιστημονική επανάσταση που έφερε η κοσμοθεωρία του Γαλιλαίου). Για να φτιάξεις αιολόσφαιρα δεν χρειάζεσαι. Για αυτό είναι εντελώς άτοπο να συγκρίνεται αυτό που έφτιαξε ο Ήρωνας με μια ατμομηχανή. Και φυσικά και ανοίγω και σέβομαι τα επιστημονικά εγχειρίδια.
Φυσικά κανείς δεν ισχυρίστηκε πως η αιολόσφαιρα
ήταν ήδη ατμομηχανή με την σημερινή έννοια.
Αλλά αυτά είναι ψιλά γράμματα για εσένα...φαίνεται λοιπόν, πως ο σύγχρονοι επιστήμονες όταν θεωρούν την αιολόσφαιρα:
"ως πρόδρομο του ατμοστροβίλου, που με την προσθήκη μιας τροχαλίας για τη μετάδοση της κίνησης, θα μπορούσε να έχει οδηγήσει την ελληνιστική εποχή (αν δεν ανακοπτόταν από τις οικονομικοκοινωνικοπολιτικές συνθήκες της εποχής) στη Βιομηχανική επανάσταση, με απρόβλεπτες συνέπειες για την ανθρωπότητα"
γράφουν μαλακιες...
Και πως η Μπριτάννικα στο αντίστοιχο λήμα την καταγράφει ως την: "πρώτη καταγεγραμμένη ατμοτουρμπίνα αντίδρασης ή ατμομηχανή", μάλλον γράφει μαλακίες και αυτή.
Βλέπεις δεν συμβουλεύτηκαν εσένα...
The problem with all this is not just that the scholars of the Mouseion were rather more interested in the textual variants of Pindar’s paianes than studying physics, but also a common modern misunderstanding about the nature of Greek “science”. Many modern people, including modern scientists, hear about the Greeks discussing motion or “atoms” or doing geometry to measure the circumference of the Earth or the distance to the Sun and assume that they were doing “science” in the modern sense of the word. Historians also sometimes refer to Greek natural philosophy as “science” and popularisations of the history of science draw simplistic direct lines between things like Greek discussions of “atoms” and modern atomic theory. But this obscures the fact that Greek proto-science was, while a distant linear ancestor of the modern sciences, very unlike them in many important respects. At best, it was a highly rational attempt at understanding fundamental precepts of the physical and natural world. But it used induction and common sense more than measurement and experiment. There were exceptions (mainly in geometry and its related field, astronomy), but the Greeks were usually not interested in empirical measurement and so were usually even less interested in genuine experiments. Most Greek proto-science was a highly abstract and philosophical affair, based on some observations, but without modern ideas of carefully designed and repeatable experiments with calibrated measurement and attendant mathematics. Most of their “science” was done by sitting around, thinking and talking about concepts, not by actually dropping weights from towers – though they did do thought experiments which sometimes led to correct conclusions and sometimes did not. Their “science” was not our science.
This means that a Greek conversation about “atoms” was largely an abstract and metaphysical exercise about the philosophical nature of a thing and how many times it could be divided conceptually and what this may mean; the word comes from the Greek ἄτομος meaning “unhewn, uncut, indivisible”. No Greek philosopher walked away from such a conversation and decided to try to build some equipment to explore the physical nature of atomic structure and would probably have considered such an idea absurd. Nor would they have taken the step of considering that different forms of matter, liquid or gas were made up of different combinations of atoms and so decide to experiment with these substances to understand this better, since this was completely contrary to their (erroneous) conception of the “Four Elements” of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. The nature of Greek thought did allow them to draw useful and often correct conclusions about the physical universe, but it also set up barriers to the true scientific method that they simply did not and could not cross.
This was one of the reasons there was no direct link between their proto-scientific “science” and technology. Natural philosophy was, as the term would suggest, the preserve of philosophers. In a world where most of the population had to be devoted to agricultural production and most of the rest often barely got by, sitting around and talking about abstractions like “atoms” was a rich man’s luxury. Most philosophers either came from the upper class (though maybe its lower echelons in many cases) or had rich patrons or both, which meant most philosophers had little interest in making or inventing things: that was generally the preserve of lowly mechanics and slaves. Again, there were exceptions to this – Archimedes seems to have had some interest in the engineering applications of his ideas, even if most of the inventions attributed to him are probably legends. On the whole, however, lofty Greek philosophers didn’t think to soil their hands with something as lowly as inventing and making things.
So the largely unempirical and abstract nature of Greek natural philosophy and the fact that it was generally socially divorced from the practical arts of engineering and architecture meant that most Greek and Roman scientists did little to advance technology, and the idea that the Great Library would have been filled with men excitedly sketching flying machines or submarines is, once again, a fantasy. When all this is pointed out some New Atheists try to invoke counter-evidence. They often claim, for example, that Hero of Alexandria worked at the Great Library and that he invented the steam engine. Even a scientist who has not studied history past high school (i.e. most of them) will have dim memories of the history of the Industrial Revolution and would therefore know it had something to do with the invention of steam engines, so surely Hero brought the ancient world to the brink of industrial transformation. Well, actually, no.
Hero does seem to have been another exception to the rule when it comes to philosophers tinkering with gadgets and it’s possible (though far from certain) that he worked in the Mouseion. But the practical applications of his study of pneumatics and dynamics were more toys and curiosities than any great leaps forward in technology.
He famously made an aeolipile, though he didn’t actually invent it, given that it had already been described by the Roman engineer and architect Vitruvius, but this can only be called a “steam engine” in the loosest sense of the term. Hero’s little device was not capable of doing anything more than spinning in place and
Roman technology lacked the high tensile metallurgy, the mathematics or the precision tooling that would be required to make a true steam engine. The other technological wonder that is often invoked here is the Antikythera mechanism. Exactly how this intricate mechanical orrery based on a geocentric model is supposed to indicate some nascent Industrial or Scientific Revolution is never made clear, but not only did it have no connection to the Great Library, it was a kind of instrument known since the third century BC. If it is evidence that the Greco-Roman world was on the brink of a technological revolution and was only stymied by the rise of Christianity, one has to wonder what kept them from achieving this wondrous thing for the 600 years between its invention and the conversion of Constantine.
The New Atheist mythic conception of the “Great Library of Alexandria” bears very little resemblance to any historical actuality. It was a shrine with scholars attached to it, not a secular university. Its scholars were far more concerned with poetry, textual analysis, grammar, lexicography and rhetoric than anything we would see as “science”. The proto-science they did do was mainly of a highly abstract and often metaphysical nature rather than anything like modern science. And it was also generally divorced from technical innovation and what little practical application it was given did not much at all to advance technology. The idea that if the Great Library had not been burned down by wicked Christians we’d all be living in gleaming space cities on Europa or Callisto is, therefore, a silly fantasy.
