Why are Greek accomplishments in arts and science still admired today?

Answer 1

So few scientific facts had been discovered, that almost any fact of science identified was discovered at that same moment. This does presume that none of these facts were discovered by people who lacked the ability to pass this knowledge through time. The thought that the Greeks discovered these facts is a very Euro-centric concept.

My cats seem to understand the concept that objects in motion tend to remain in motion. This extends to corollaries, such as things that do not move will not likely start moving without some force acting against them.

Early man released that a rock that has an edge on it cuts better than one without an edge will always cut better, a longer club can increase energy transferred using the same rotational speed, a rock dropped from a greater height can do more damage than one dropped from a lower height.

The distance from a heat source has a direct, but not linear connection. It is logical that early man learned all of these scientific facts. Should this learning be seen as less than discoveries, their methods to predict the answers with great accuracy were far less than the Greeks, but how is it less a discovery. Our tools are much better than the Greeks, so can we say that we discovered these facts, simply because our tools to measure are more accurate.

Also, at what point do we consider something discovered, or identified as a fact. At some point, almost all science classes reach a point where you ignore the 'real world', or worse you ignore the inconvenient parts. Use 'gravity' but ignore 'air resistance'. In physics you often 'use' frictionless surfaces, 0 air resistance, that a lever meets the fulcrum at a tangent, materials have no flex, dynamic and static loading are equal, all masses are uniformly dense, no corners are rounded, all reactions complete, the temperature at all points in a system is equal, all containers are chemically clean, zero gravity and vacuums exist, ropes have no thickness, animals will respond as expected, the derivative of 2X really is 2, the distance between the sun, the moon, and earth never changes, the orbit of earth is circular about the sun, all surfaces are flat, hoses, pipes, and containers do not leak or absorb, rounding errors always cancel, absolute statements exist can be true , lab partners can be trusted, and other things that are almost never quite reflect the real world.

Answer 2

There are many. Architecture, for one. Go to almost any Court or Senate House or stately mansion in the USA to see how their entrances still copy the Greek temples (much more so than in Greece itself, by the way). Greek sculpture is still today our model for 'natural' rendition in sculpture. The 'screw of Pythagoras" is used to this day in bulk good factories to transport stuff like grain to a higher level. It's the Greeks who first saw that the Earth was a globe and then not only exactly calculated its circumference, but also the exact tilt of the Earth's axis. They were the first to find that the Earth revolved around the sun - some 1,500 years before Copernicus - and to calculate the exact trajectories of planets and other heavely bodies. And they were the first to see that animal species were not a random bunch, but that animals belonged to 'families' that could be classified. Finally, Greek philosophy is still considered to be at the root of Western thinking.