My first book on ancient science is now available! And very affordable (I see Amazon is currently selling it for about ten bucks). For details on this book, check out my last article on Science Education in the Early Roman Empire. Kindle and audio should be out by Spring.
For those who want more on the subject, I’ll round up what else I’ve done so far that relates:
I’ve written about ancient science before, in “Christianity Was Not Responsible for Modern Science,” a closing chapter proving its title thesis, in The Christian Delusion (2010, pp. 396-420); on which topic see also The Lame That Would Not Die. That chapter in TCD is still my best thing to read on this subject for a start on the whole field (my book next year, The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, will somewhat supplant it; and this year’s Science Education crucially supplements both). I also maintain a brief resource page on ancient science. I’ve discussed the best books on it, too—to which now we should add the amazing Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists and The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, and the others I reviewed in From Catapults to Cosmology. And I’ve blogged more extensively on ancient science in Science Then: The Bible vs. The Greeks Edition, an amusing debunking of a Christian meme circulated by the creationist astronomer Hugh Ross; Flynn’s Pile of Boners, a thorough setting-of-the-record-straight on a lot of false claims Christians make about ancient vs. medieval science and technology; and my discussion in Killings Hypatia of the plausibility of the fictionalized discovery of heliocentrism by the late scientist Hypatia in the movie Agora.
As far as video, the most tolerable recordings online of my speaking on the subject include my Darwin on the Palouse speech Ancient Roman Creationism: Scientific Pagans vs. Armchair Christians and my talk for the Chabot Space Center on The Sciences in Ancient Greece & Rome: How Far Did They Get?
But you may like my little new book on ancient education. You’ll learn such diverse things in it like that the science of fetal development could come up in abortion trials, that rambunctious teens sometimes tried to show off to their professors in science class, that there were the ancient equivalent of medical examiners to determine cause of death, that pretty much the full equivalent of universities existed (including dedicated buildings, attached libraries, and multiple state-endowed professorships in philosophy and rhetoric), that the most talented elite got a full run of basic science education in several fields, and more and beyond. You’ll also learn everything you’d want to know about the ancient education system in general (who had access to it, what it taught, and when any significant science content came into it—which was not much but for the wealthiest and most interested students). I cover significantly the position of women in respect to education access. And I show the contrasting values of Judeo-Christian and Pagan cultures when it came to what should be taught and what its value was.
Check it out!
