The Greek Heritage suffered one considerable shortfall – a disregard in studying technology and engineering for the sake of obtaining understanding and wisdom. While Rome exceeded them in this respect, Roman pragmatism had its own shortcomings. They cared little for scientific inquiry for its own sake. In contrast to their Greek predecessors, Rome made little contribution in natural philosophy. Their enthusiasm, or at least the desire, for theoretical study was so little that their efforts toward it are now seen as crude and unadorned. Rome, for the most part, valued only the practical benefits of learning.
While Rome produced the inquiries of Seneca and Plutarch, the pages of Pliny, the works of Varro, and the prose of Lucretius, few reached the heights of discovery. The Greek Heritage brought Aristotle, Theophrastus, Eratosthenes, Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Aristarchus, and others. In essence, their fruits and labours lulled Rome into a complacency. But among the carriers of this heritage, it seems Plato has almost no place. In his quest for truth, he expresses a disdain for nature and what she has to offer, writing in his Phaedrus,
“Forgive me, my friend. I am devoted to learning; landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me—only the people in the city can do that.”
This is unfortunate, because many of the wisest and most brilliant thinkers after Plato understood the difficulty in learning from conversation and books. No matter if it’s these activities or ones like them, to base one’s knowledge on people is to see it through a filter. It was always preferrable for a curious mind to examine the world themselves – Nullius in Verba. This was true no matter what principles were investigated, be they the laws of nature, observations of political communities, metaphysical principles of the universe, or the conclusions reasoned in a mathematical demonstration. On the final two points, however, Plato does receive high acclaim.
Yet favouring his forms, it is a tragedy that Plato indulged more in the beauty and truth of his ideals, having no time for any which one could ascribe to nature as Goethe, Whitman, and Wordsworth would do. And although Plato’s pupil was more grounded, like the imagery in Raphael’s famous painting, Aristotle saw himself stooping to the level of nature. The attitude was that truth seeking from the physical world was beneath philosophic inquiry, when even Aristotle felt the need to excuse himself by saying,
“In all natural objects there lies some marvel, and if any one despises the contemplation of the lower animals, he must despise himself.”
But these are mere slips to the main dilemma. If nature was given such repugnant scoff, technology had it worse. In antiquity, such things only occupied the minds of those in manual crafts or technical trades. For an Academic, a Peripatetic, or even a Pythagorean and Cynic, to deal with matters of machines and production, in domains we now term the arts and applied sciences, was a concern meant only for their labourer and uneducated classes.
Any relevant principles of truth in technology were beneath abstract ideas– the highest form of understanding. Diogenes mentions Aristotle did explore magnetism and mechanics, and had other books concerning physics, but these are lost. And from what can be gleaned from his previous work, the idea to fuse their mathematics, physics, and engineering still would be non-existent.
This leads to one of the very few exceptions – Archimedes. But Archimedes too suffered this shortfall. Though it was in a less capacity, he still exemplified the maxim that all men are products of their time. Whenever he was burdened to solve a practical problem, he likewise saw himself stooping.
It was rare for Archimedes to seek any understanding of technology as an end itself. To him, it was a means to mathematics. Technology served as inventions for discovery or uses for demonstration, extending in the same way applied mathematics does today, or as physics and engineering. Archimedes saw them nothing more than “geometry at play”. However, some concessions can be granted to Archimedes. He was the only case to take technology with such seriousness that even the Romans were embarrassed at their lacking when compared with his genius.
While the applied sciences of medicine and health found a place in Galen and Hippocrates, engineering and technology were overlooked by the Greeks. It was a form of knowledge and way of seeing the world hiding right under their noses. They instead, cherished more the final form and beauty of their art and architecture than the practice of it. They reached more into their imagined worlds and divine realities, being pleased with those than the material world and its constituents.
With an ample supply of philosophy and math, of art and myth, there was little need to inquire into trees and tools. Only few had an intrinsic desire to seek insight from the sources of experience and experiment. That would have to wait for the likes of Pascal and Leonardo da Vinci.