Texas Tech University

February 6, 2018

Featuring Dr. David Larmour, Horn Professor of Classics at Texas Tech University

"The Birth of Greek Philosophy and Science"

Dr. David Larmour, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Classics at Texas Tech University, discusses how Greek Science emerged from Greek Poetry among the Pre-Socratic philosophers in the city of Miletus in Ionia in the 7th-6th centuries BCE (Thales, Anaximander) and in the mathematically-focused school of Pythagoras of Samos. Dr. Larmour covers a brief survey of Aristotle's natural philosophy and scientific method to look at Greek Science in the Hellenistic Period (following the death of Aristotle's one-time pupil, Alexander the Great in 323 BCE), focusing particularly on geometry, astronomy and medicine. It is these two ancient "scientific revolutions" which laid the groundwork for what we know today as the great disciplines of scientific investigation.