How Ancient Mechanics Thought About Machines

friedo writes "The NYTimes has an interesting piece about Prof. Mark Schiefsky, a Harvard classicist with an interest in the history of science. Schiefsky pores over ancient texts in Greek, Latin, and Arabic to decipher the origin of knowledge that's been taken for granted for millennia. For example, a Greek treatise published a generation before Archimedes' proofs of the lever laws explains why, if you were a galley slave, you'd want to work the oars near the center of the ship instead of closer to the hull."

Comments

Re:Library of Alexandria

[grahamd0]

Grasping at straws much? I know we all love the freedom of information here on Slashdot, but suggesting net neutrality is on par with the burning of the Library of Alexandria a pretty dramatic stretch.

Re:Other great knowlege repositories

[jd]

Getting snarky. Hmmm. Well, I won't argue. The Greeks copied anything and everything they could, and it's really not as if it was significantly harder for them to make two copies rather than one. Which, of course, they probably did in many cases, which is why the Palimset contains so many "lost" ancient Greek works. They copied things down and kept the copies elsewhere. (Which, as the parent likely refers to, was my chief slam against the Seahenge archivists and archaeologsts.) Very likely, when the damaged, rotten parchments are (finally) scanned, we will recover much of the Library's lost works.

This, incidently, is why throwing my comments back at me is so patently stupid and a waste of time. You can find out all of this stuff from the palimpset's website, numerous science journals, press releases, etc. None of this is hidden knowledge, it's insanely easy to find and verify. I may not know everything in the world, but we have this thing called the Internet. Sorry, but ignorance and naivety are neither amusing nor cute, they are the relics of, well, not the stone age, they appear to have used their brains. You could know anything and everything I can ever know within seconds with just a suitable search string from the right site. That just leaves the variable of intelligence, and I'm ranked top 1%. Your mental capacity is your own problem.