"Was there truly such a thing as Science in those times? (p1)"
"We would not be responding to the past as it existed, but examining it throught a modern grid. If we wish to do justice to the historical enterprise, we must take the past for what it was (p2)"
"We must respect the way earlier generations approached nature, acknowledging that althourgh it may differ from the modern way, it is nonetheless of interst because it is part of our intellectual ancestry. The is the only suitable way of understanding how we become what we are. (p3) I will distinguis"
"The word "know", seemingly so clear and simple, is almost as tricky as the term "science"; indeed, it brings us back to the distinction between technology and theoretical science. it is one thing to know how to do things, another to know why they behave as they do. (p4)"
"It shold be clear, then, that in pratical or technological terms, the knowledge of prehisotrical humans was great and growing. But what about theoretical knowledge? What did prehistoric people "know" or believe about the origins of the world in which they lived, its nature, and the causes of its num"
"It is clear that preliterate people, no less than those of us who live in modern scientific culture, need explanatory principles capable of bringing order, unity, and especially meaning to the apparently random and chaotic flow of events. (p5)"
"Our view of causality ... would not satisfy primitive man because of the impersonal character of its explanations. It would not satisfy him, moreover, because of its generality. We understand phenomena, not by what makes them peculiar, but by what makes them manifestations of general laws. But a gen"
"Knowledge of mathematics of Greece benifited from Egyptian and Babylonian mathematical knowledges.(p10) There is no doubt that the Greeks were aware of the work of their Egyptian and Mesopotamian predecessors, and benefited from it.(p20)"