CHAPTER IIL 



FAILURE OF THE PHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE 

 GREEK SCHOOLS. 



Sect. 1. Result of the Greek School Philosophy. 



THE methods and forms of philosophizing which 

 we have described as employed by the Greek 

 Schools, failed altogether in their application to 

 physics. No discovery of general laws, no explana- 

 tion of special phenomena, rewarded the acuteness 

 and boldness of these early students of nature. As- 

 tronomy, which made considerable progress during 

 the existence of the sects of Greek philosophers, 

 gained perhaps something by the authority with 

 which Plato taught the supremacy and universality 

 of mathematical rule and order ; and the truths of 

 Harmonics, which had probably given rise to the 

 Pythagorean passion for numbers, were cultivated 

 with much care by that school. But after these 

 first impulses, the sciences owed nothing to the phi- 

 losophical sects ; and the vast and complex accumu- 

 lations and apparatus of the Stagirite do not appear 

 to have led to any theoretical physical truths. 



This assertion hardly requires proof, since in the 

 existing body of science there are no doctrines for 



