Anaximander's Greek Contributions

Anaximander, active between 611-547 BC, apprenticed under Thales. Despite the absence of his writings, he is acknowledged for introducing numerous revolutionary ideas. Anaximander took a pioneering role in formulating a cosmological system, crafting a map, and constructing a globe—accomplishments that distinguished him among the Greeks.

He presented a more intricate representation of the world, suggesting that the Earth was centrally positioned, hanging freely without support—a departure from Thales' idea of it resting on water. With minimal error, he accurately determined the Sun's size and its distance from the Earth. In contrast to the belief in Zeus's thunderbolts, he contended that thunder and lightning were caused by blasts of wind.

Anaximander theorized that the world operates under the influence of opposing forces such as hot and cold, wet and dry, signifying that these opposites govern the world's processes.

Furthermore, Anaximander is acknowledged as the first Greek to employ a sundial. Through its application, he ascertained the dates of the two solstices (shortest and longest days) and the equinoxes (the two annual events when day and night have equal duration).
Anaximander's Greek Contributions

Pythagorean philosopher Hippon

Hippon, was born c. 480–470. The author of at least two works of natural philosophy, he was popular enough to be mocked by the comic poet Cratinus in his All-Seeing Ones.

Continuing the “physiological” trend of Pythagorean natural philosophy, Hippo mostly studied problems of physiology, embryology, botany and medicine.

Hippon’s traditional connection with the Pythagorean school is based on his birthplace, which, though controversial, was most probably in Magna Graecia, where he must have lived at least for a period.

Hippon held water and fire to be the primary elements, with fire originating from water, and then developing itself by generating the universe. Hippon thought that water was the principle of all things. Most of the accounts of his philosophy suggest that he was interested in biological matters.

Hippon supposed that the bodies of all living things contain moisture that is characteristic of them, and thanks to which they live and feel.

He considered the *soul (seated in the brain) to be derived from the semen and to be itself moist, and devoted special attention to the development of the human body from the embryonic state to maturity.

Hippon was very well known in Athens around 430 BC, because according to a scholion to Aristophanes’ Clouds, he was satirized both in this play and previously by Cratinus in his play Panoptai. Like other philosophers, he was apparently labelled an ‘atheist’ in Athens for his doctrines, probably just because of the treatment he was subjected to by the comic poets.
Pythagorean philosopher Hippon

Gorgias of Leontini (483–375 BC): Pre-Socratic philosopher

Gorgias of Leontini was born in Sicily, where rhetoric has its roots. He was the son of Charmantides of whom nothing is known; his brother was the physician Herodikos. Gorgias' s sister was married to Deicrates, and she gave birth to a certain Hippokrates, whose son Eumolpos dedicated a statue of Gorgias at Olympia.

The tradition makes him a pupil of Empedocles, and receives some independent support from the reports of Plato and of Theophrastus on Gorgias’s holding Empedoclean a theories of the illumination of the sun and of optics and color.

Philostratus, a second- (or third-) rate writer of later antiquity, reports that Gorgias is the man ‘to whom we believe the craft of the sophists is to be traced back as it were to its father’.

It is possible that Gorgias had firsthand knowledge of events that took place during the Persian wars, and he was an old man at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; he contributed to and witnessed the evolution of Greek science.

In his extant texts Gorgias claims that language does not represent external objects or communicate internal states, but merely generates behavioural responses in people. It has been argued that this perspective erodes the possibility of rationally assessing speeches by making persuasiveness the only norm, and persuasive power the only virtue, of speech.
Gorgias of Leontini (483–375 BC): Pre-Socratic philosopher

Ctesibius of Alexandria

Ctesibius of Alexandria or Ktesibios or Tesibius (285–222 BC) was a Greek inventor and mathematician in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt. He was the son of a barber in Alexandria, and employed by Ptolemy II.

He was probably the first head of the Museum of Alexandria. He wrote the first survived to the present treatises on the science of compressed air and its uses in pumps. This, in combination with his work on the elasticity of air—Pneumatica, earned him the title of father of pneumatics.

Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the pipe organ in the 3rd century B.C. In a pipe organ air is compressed in a chamber to which multiple pipes are attached. The water pipe organ, or hydraulis, reentered Europe in AD 757 as a gift to Pepin the Short (Charlemagne’s father) by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus.

While most of his work was based on using compressed air as a control substance and he is known as the Father of Pneumatics, his most famous control system was the feedback he added to the already existing water clocks of the day.

Unlike the version of the clocks that was reliant upon two pots and the flow of water aided only by gravity, Ctesibius’s water clock used a system of gears and a water wheel to track the passage of time and report the time using an arrow on a scale that signaled to the user the current time.

Ctesibius together with Philon Byzantius, and Hero were the three most famous engineers of Hellenistic Alexandria, whose studies mark a significant progress in hydraulics. This progress allowed installation of advanced water supply systems like that of the citadel at Pergamon, in which pressure pipes (probably made of metal) were implemented.
Ctesibius of Alexandria

Empedocles (490 BC–430 BC): Greek pre-Socratic philosopher

He was younger than Heraclitus and older than Socrates, born in 490 BC in the city of Acragas (Agragentum or Agrigento) in Sicily, one of the most prosperous and beautiful cities of the “GreciaMagna”, which was unfortunately destroyed by the Carthaginians in 406 BC.

Empedocles was the son of a man named Meton. The philosopher’s grandfather and son were also named Empedocles; it was common practice for the ancient Greeks to name sons and daughters for grandparents.

Empedocles was a student of Parmenides of Elea, and later became an adherent of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras. This intellectual apprenticeship, while hardly possible on chronological grounds, does accurately reflect the verses’ engagement with Parmenides’ theories of coming to be and passing away, and Empedocles’ familiarity with the Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras is not unlikely.

He has been described as “one of the most complex and colourful figures of antiquity”. Empedocles was physician and priest, philosopher, mystic and prophet, poet of a high poetic talent, a brilliant orator who has endeavored to associate religion with science, and has been involved in politics for the social benefit.

Empedocles not only considered the existence of the four' classical' elements as the cause of the beginning of the world, but he also supported the view of their unification, which results in the creation of the imaginary world of the Sphere. According to Empedocles, the Universe existed in the state of the Sphere before the explicit presence of the four elements and was the cause for the creation of everything.

According to the legend, Empedocles died by throwing himself into active volcano Etna in Sicily, trying to prove his immortality and his god-like nature.

Empedocles (490 BC–430 BC): Greek pre-Socratic philosopher

Diocles: Greek mathematician

Diocles was a philosopher, priest, an emperor, mathematician and geometer. He was a contemporary of Apollonius of Perga.

This famous mathematician was most popularly known for his work in the sub classification of geometry. Diocles studied the shape of a concave mirror, such as the spherical and parabolic mirror.

His name is associated with the geometric curve called the Cissoid of Diocles. This method was used in solving the problem of doubling the cube.

A cubic curve invented by Diocles in about 180 BC in connection with his attempt to duplicate the cube by geometrical methods. The name "cissoid" was first mentioned by Geminus in the first century B.C.

He studied the cissoid in his attempt to solve the doubling the cube problem of finding the length of the side of a cube having volume twice that of a given cube. Fermat and Roberval constructed the tangent in 1634.

He also studied the problem of Archimedes to cut a sphere by a plane in such a way that the volumes of the segments shall have a given ratio. After Archimedes' death, Diocles wrote a treatise On Burning Mirrors, devices which reflect the sun's rays to a point so as to cause burning.

In his Burning Mirrors, Diocles discusses a number of geometrical problems, including that concern the reflection of solar rays.
Diocles: Greek mathematician

Plistonicus: Student of Praxagoras

Plistonicus was one of the 'classics' of Greek medicine in the so-called Dogmatic tradition. He was a pupil of Praxagoras but his home town is not recorded.

He appears to have written a work on Anatomy, which is several times mentioned by Galen. Galen generally refers to him in conjunction with Praxagoras and others of the Dogmatic persuasion.

Few fragments of Plistonicus, another pupil of Praxagoras, have survived. One of them indicates the persistence of the belief that the digestion of food was related to putrefaction.

Other views associated with him are that air enters the arteries not only from the heart but also from the whole body and that water is preferable to wine as an aid to digestion.
Plistonicus: Student of Praxagoras

Herophilus: Ancient Greek anatomist

Herophilus was considered among the great physicians of Antiquity and acknowledged by many as the Father of Anatomy.

Born in 335 B.C. in the town of Chalcedon, a small town on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus (now Kadıköy, I˙stanbul, Turkey), Herophilus is believed to have lived till 255 B.C.

Hippocrates, the ancient master of medicine, had already been dead for 65 years when Herophilus was studying medicine in Cos, but his medical philosophy and knowledge remained powerful influences. Herophilus was thought to have been under the tutelage and guidance of Praxagoras of Cos, who had made significant contributions to Aristotelian anatomy by differentiating arteries from veins. Herophilus’ education by Praxagoras was greatly influenced by this strong Hippocratic philosophy.

Having learnt from Praxagoras, Herophilus began practicing medicine in the city of Alexandria during the reign of the first two Ptolemaio Pharoahs. Through his fervent interest in the subject, his discoveries led him to become an acclaimed medical practitioner.

He took a deep interest in general anatomy, which formed the basis of his scientific application of gymnastic exercises to remedial purposes, and also of his dietetics. His chief work was in connexion with the brain and the reproductive organs-the latter being of great practical importance owing to the interest taken by Greeks of this period in gynecology-while he also wrote minor works on the eye and on the liver.

The social, cultural, political and intellectual climate of Hellenistic Alexandria in the third century BC provided Herophilus with opportunities to dissect – and possibly vivisect – human bodies. He was thus able to make an unprecedented number of anatomical discoveries and accompanying accurate descriptions.

Herophilus is recognized as the first person to perform systematic dissection of the human body predating even Andreas Vesalius, (often regarded as the founder of modern human anatomy) despite the taboos that prevailed regarding desecration of the human body at that time.

Herophilus’ contribution to the anatomy of the brain, cerebellum, and ventricles was described by Galen in De usu particum. Herophilus is believed to be one of the first to differentiate nerves from blood vessels and tendons and to realize that nerves convey neural impulses.
Herophilus: Ancient Greek anatomist