Early Greek Astrophysics: The Foundations of Modern Science and Technology

Abstract

The foundations of modern science and technology, metrology, experimental physics, theoretical physics, theoretical mathematics, astrophysics, including applied optics and spectroscopy go back to the Prehistoric, Presocratic, Classical and Hellenistic Greece. This tradition is well deep rooted in time, going back mainly to the epoch of the prehistoric Aegean sea, the mainland of Greece and the Islands, Cycladic, Euboea, as well as Crete, at the late Neolithic period, probably starting back at 4400 BC. Humans observe the sky before the prehistoric era and wonder and as even Plato declares, these observations that lead us to try and understand the Cosmos make us humans as well, since the actual meaning and etymology of this term human in Greek, the word ANTHROPOS, is the one that looks up, observes the ordered Universe and tries to understand its nature and its hidden Laws which govern it. Science and Philosophy emerged as a result of the human efforts to live even more successfully within a hostile environment. Humanity eventually manages to understand Nature and especially the Cosmos, using the Pythagorean principle: "Nature can only be understood accurately by the use of Mathematics, which expresses the underlying Laws of Nature and which explain all natural phenomena based on the Principe of Causality.