User:Purkaple/sandbox

WP:COPYARTICLE, old revision of Benjamin Farrington which this user subsequently edited, plus the following section:

History of Science
Benjamin Farrington's scholarship in the history of science focused both on the history of Greek science and the significance of Francis Bacon. His most significant works on the history of Greek science include: Science in Antiquity, Science & Politics in the Ancient World, Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us (From Thales to Aristotle), and Greek Science: Its Meaning for Us (From Theophrastus to Galen). The last two were combined together in a one volume edition in 1953. Throughout all of these books Farrington highlights a few points of distinction. One of the more significant for his time period was the fact that Greece was not a "miracle;" rather scientific and intellectual activity existed prior to them. Thus he credits the Egyptians and Mesopotamians with having established mathematical, astronomical, and chemical advances, as well as the alphabet system and writing techniques. Nonetheless, he does credit the Milesians with having a significant contribution, as they replaced a mythological interpretation of the physical world with a cosmological, thereby turning toward a truly rational interpretation and successfully making one of the greatest leaps in the history of science. Such advances would receive their fullest expression with Democritus and the other atomists who successfully established science in early Greece by removing extraneous, unnatural principles, and relying solely on the natural, material world for an explanation.

According to Farrington, though, such scientific development would soon experience a demise with the rise of Greek philosophy. Beginning with Socrates, and continuing on through Plato, the Greeks subverted the natural world with abstract, humanly constructed principles. For Farrington, then, Plato's Ideal Forms essentially become a mythical philosophy which empower the philosopher at the expense of the artisan and laborer.