Breakthrough or Revolution - Significance of Mathematics for Occurrence of Cultural Revolution

• Authors: Wojcik W.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

In this article, the author presents some critical remarks on the Lucio Russo's book 'La rivoluzione dimenticata. Il pensiero scientifico greco e la scienza'. He focuses his attention on a few proposals presented by Russo. The first of them is treating the history of science as a key to understanding and interpretation of the history of European civilisation. Looking on the history of mankind merely from the point of view of politics, military or eventually technical events seems to loose the meanings of many historical events. One of such events was the cultural revolution in the 3rd century B.C., which occurred under influence of Greek mathematics. He argues against the concept of 'revolution in science' and replaces it by the concept of 'breakthrough'. He thinks that revolutions take place in the culture (broadly understood), but not in science. Moreover, he thinks that the breakthrough in ancient science had taken place not in the 3rd century (as Russo considers) but in the 4th century B.C. He tries to justify that recognition of mathematics as the introduction and essence of rational thinking and its inclusion into the system of education was the direct factor of the cultural revolution. The next interesting Russo's proposal is the presentation of a connection between exactness of mathematics and technical applications and use of the degree of exactness as a criterion for technical development in given epoch. The author thinks that the most valuable in the Russo's book is showing by means of several historical examples how European culture has retrieved the lost works of ancient scholars. It is a little depleted and promising research program in the history of science. Moreover, he argues against the main thesis of that book, i.e. that the modern science originated in the 3rd century B.C. Russo justifies that the whole development of the European science, since the Middle Ages throughout the Renaissance and modern times, is mainly an arduous trial of understanding scholar texts from the Hellenistic epoch. The author argues that ancient people really discovered the scientific method and it took place in the 4th century B.C. when mathematics refuted an accusation made against it and all rational thinking.

Keywords

EN

HISTORY OF SCIENCE; RUSSO LUCIO - CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Discipline

• SCIENCE_OF_SCIENCE: SCIENCE OF SCIENCE

• Publisher: Science Studies Committee, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 2(172)
• Pages: 259-272
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Wojcik W.

• W. Wojcik, Instytut Historii Nauki PAN, ul. Nowy Swiat 72, 00-330 Warszawa, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07PLAAAA03196603