The birth of new science

Abstract

In the Greek world, during the Hellenistic period (336 – 200 a.C.), a great scientific production was developed in the city of Alexandria, which had direct contact with the science and technique of ancient Eastern civilizations such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and India. The Alexandria Museum, founded around 290 a.m. C. by Tolomeo, was the first scientific research institution paid for by the State and unprecedented contributions until then. It was a large building that had a dining room, reading room, cloister, botanical garden, zoo, astronomical observatory and library (the famous Library of Alexandria, which contained about 500,000 volumes or rolls). Objects such as surgical and astronomical instruments, animal skins, elephant tusks and busts were also housed and used for teaching. Its directors and associate members were maintained by the state and formed an elite isolated from the rest of the population. It can be said that the Museum was a continuation of the Lyceum of Aristotle, albeit with a new emphasis on astronomy and mathematics, and a greater willingness to conduct experiments. Moreover, exact astronomical descriptions such as those of Eudox, Heráclides and Hiparco, the pneumatic and ingenious compressed air inventions of Ctesibio and Herón, or the descriptive mineralogy of Theophrastus, were not appreciated as inferior knowledge – as Plato would have done. Democrit's atomic theory as an explanation of nature is revitalized, when it had previously been censored by Plato and Aristotle.