The principal Greek city- state was Athens, and it was, indeed, considered an Empire, with many colonies throughout the Mediterranean. Additionally, ancient Greek societies, including Athens, relied on a massive system of slavery. About one tenth of the Athenian population was free, the rest were slaves.
I used the term loosely because you seemed to contrast Empire with small human enclaves. I am content to say that Empire in the strict sense is not absolutely necessary.
I said that medicine in the ancient world was "hit or miss". The fact that some remedies were discovered to work is not a contradiction of my point.
Nothing that you post contradicts my points,it merely shows that you do not understand what I have said. Science is not philosophy (or religion), which is the provenance of most of the ideas you mention. It is not even engineering or invention. You can come up with all kinds of ancient achievements, and will still not arrive at science. It is a method of accumulating and verifying facts, of testing hypotheses, and of formulating theories with some rigor and confidence in their predictive power. Science does not become a going enterprise until about the 16th century.
I did not say that there was nothing important in human life or history but science. However, the rise of science and technology has been very beneficial, and it is a boon of the modern world. |
