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• Involved centralization, unified systems of weights and measures, standardized forms of written characters, roads to unify (armies, commerce), defense walls, collections of taxes, government monopoly over industries (mining, salt)

• Classical bureaucratic culture: mastered: war, poetry, agriculture, math…, complex system established gradually, great wall began

• Imperial: Han Dynasty (202 BCE -221 CE)

• Development of massive iron production: prosperous period, PAPER is invented, bureaucratic state exams, navigation/commerce in Southeast Asia

• Traditional Medicine: treaties written 

Logic, Form, and Matter: Ancient Greece and Rome

Ancient Greece (800 BCE -100 CE)

Hellenic Civilization (800-323 BCE): Archaic Period (800-480 BCE)

• Development of independent states: competition in athletics, cultural superiority, intellect, political debates, work done by slaves. 

• FACILITATION OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY WITH CITY STATES: natural philosophy in ancient greek city states did not operate on scientific methods

• Presocrates: 

  • Natural philosophy: why in Greece? Maybe due to cultural diversity and competition between city states (who had the best poets, playwrights, philosophy…) and this lead to debate culture and due to slave work, the elite had time on their hands to do these things

  • The work of the gods wasn’t everything: philosophers asked questions

  • The Ionians (6th century BCE) - first group of early philosophers - no experimentation of scientific method but used observation, they asked: what is the world made of?

    • Thales of Miletus (matter made from water)

    • Anaximander of Miletus - student of Thales (fire as element)

    • Anaximenes (air as element)

• The Atomists (5th century BCE)

• Leucippus of Miletus (small particles, moving randomly in an infinite void)

• The pythagoreans 

  • Pythagoras - Philosopher, mathematician, mythicist…part legend 

  • Conception of the universe based on numbers, universe is composed of terrestrial sphere (Uranos - least perfect), sphere of moving bodies (Cosmos), home of the Gods (Olympos - most perfect)

  • Considered music a science of beauty and harmony, influencing Medieval and Roman

• The Problem of Change (5th BCE) - how can the world be stable (elements) but change? Can our experiences of the world be trusted?

  • Heraclitus (everything is in the state of flux)

  • Parmenides (all change is logically impossible, an illusion)

  • Zeno (proof against the possibility of change)