Science, Philosophy, and Technology in the Greco-Roman World II

Extract

In very general terms, the physical scientist is concerned to identify and define certain regularities in the material world, and to embody them in laws or theories which both furnish an explanation of them and enable him to predict and to some extent to control particular kinds of future event. It is noticeable at once that the elements of prediction and control are largely absent from Greek speculation, and this is due partly to certain of its inherent characteristics (to which I return in a moment), and partly to its lack of three further particular features which are an essential part of the natural sciences today. These are briefly that they are experimental, quantitative, and laboratory-based. This generalization is, of course, at once too wide and too narrow. Not all scientific theories rely on experiment in the narrow sense or on laboratory operations; the observations of the astronomer and the activities of the field-biologist can, up to a point, dispense with both. But it remains true that the experimental test and the laboratory and its instruments are essential elements in modern science, and neither the astronomer nor the biologist can in the last resort dispense with them. Similarly, quantitative measurement plays an indispensable role in the physical sciences and is the basis on which they have been built up, even though the theoretical physicist may spend little time measuring or experimenting and be mainly concerned with the mathematical analysis which is so vital an element in modern physical theory.