42 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



weak on the analytical side, and seemed in a few centuries to 

 reach the limit of its possible development. 



GREEK GEOMETRY. It was in geometry that Greek mathe- 

 matics chiefly developed, and for several fundamental reasons. 

 The Greek mind had a strong predilection for formal logic, a keen 

 aesthetic appreciation of beauty of form, and, on the other hand, 

 with no adequate symbolism for arithmetic or algebra, a distinct 

 disdain, at any rate among the educated, for the commercialized 

 mathematics of computation. The history of Greek mathematics 

 is therefore to a great extent the history of geometry. Formal 

 geometry as distinguished from the solving of particular geo- 

 metrical problems, had, indeed, no previous existence, and we 

 have to do with the beginnings of elementary geometry as we now 

 know it. 



THE IONIAN PHILOSOPHERS. The sense of curiosity, the feel- 

 ing of wonder, the spirit of inquiry, these are the common ele- 

 ments of philosophy and science. It is thus not strange that the 

 earliest names in science are likewise the earliest in philosophy. 



In the childhood and youth of the race specialization has not 

 begun, all knowledge lies invitingly open to the expanding mind. 

 We have seen how much had been accumulated in Egypt and 

 Babylonia of knowledge and skill in observing and recording the 

 phenomena of the heavens, in irrigation and in measurement of 

 land. Much of the same general character was doubtless true of 

 the Phoenicians, the Trojans, the Cretans, and other precursors of 

 the Greeks. But nothing deserving the name of science has come 

 down to us from the JEgeau or Greek civilization before the time 

 of Thales of Miletus, chief of the Ionian philosophers, and one 

 of the "seven wise men of Greece." 



THALES. --The ancient and fragmentary register of Greek 

 mathematicians, or history of Greek geometry before Euclid, 

 attributed to Eudemus, begins : 



As it is now necessary to consider also the beginnings of the arts 

 and sciences in the present period, we report that, according to the 

 evidence of most, geometry was invented by the Egyptians, taking 

 its origin from the measurement of land. This last was necessary 



