Chapter 



6 



ATLANTIS— BIRTH AND 

 DEATH OF SCIENCE 



Th 



-HE peoples of western and northern Europe were the first 

 to sail freely in the open Atlantic but it was in the Mediterranean that 

 a scientific knowledge grew and flourished and died. The classic au- 

 thors present us with the first recorded picture of a real world that 

 is in recognizable agreement with modern knowledge. Their knowl- 

 edge reached reality but it began in myth and ended in dogma. Even 

 the name of our Atlantic has its origin in a land of fable. 



The women of this land were beautiful and the men were brave; 

 the soil was fertile and the climate was kindly to man. Strong kings 

 ruled over the country and it was wonderful to see how satisfactory 

 life could be in a well-ordered society. This, said Plato, was the island 

 of Atlantis which rose out of the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercu- 

 les and this was the way life had been lived about 9,000 years ago. 



Then this island paradise had been engulfed in a great catastrophe. 

 Suddenly the island had sunk in an earthquake and the waters had 

 risen in a great storm that swept over the land and destroyed all the 

 people. No one would ever find Atlantis again or even be able to sail 

 there because there were sandbanks near where Atlantis had once 

 been. All this is supposed to have been told to Solon, the lawgiver, 

 by an old Egyptian priest 150 years before Plato's telling of the story, 



Plato's Atlantis is an early and attractive Utopia. It is one of the 

 stories that makes a great appeal to many people. It has been widely 



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