ancient

Early Greek Philosophies of Nature

May 10, 2022

Over the past year I’ve been dedicating a substantial portion of my reading hours to the biological works of Aristotle, as well as the Timaeus of Plato in order to improve my understanding the history of the early development of natural philosophy – what would eventually become natural history. However in most every one of these works, reference is made to the ideas of those who came before. In some cases these are little more than names to us today. Even those who are well-read in ancient philosophy might be unfamiliar with what is known of the ideas of many pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaxaminder, Anaxamines, and Leucippas.

Ancient Bones

September 28, 2020

Centering on the discovery Danuvius guggenmosi in the Allgäu region of Bavaria, and the paradigm-shifting implications this 11.6 million year old hominoid has to the development of upright walking in later hominins, “Ancient Bones” is a compelling read for all those who like their paleoanthropology mixed with a bit of good old-fashioned detective mystery.

Going Deep into the Past

July 7, 2019

Recently I’ve been finding my attention more and more strongly drawn to the history of science. And like many sequential thinkers, each book I read about a particular topic in the past makes me curious to go farther back to learn what came before it. Thus I have recently taken up George Sarton’s “A History of Science; Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece.”

Creatures Born of Mud and Slime

November 13, 2017

One need not read too far back into the history of natural history to encounter the idea of spontaneous generation – the idea that life could be created directly out of rotting material. It was a widely held, even thoroughly tested, theory that stood the test of a far longer period of time than many of our present scientific ideas have existed.