Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Century of Science in America: With Special Reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
Of the importance to science of the Greek school at Alexandria in the second and third centuries B. C., there can be no question. The geometry of Euclid (about 300 B. C.) was marvelous in its completeness as in clearness of logical method. Hipparchus (about 160-125 B. C.) gave the world the elements of trigonometry and devel oped astronomy so that Ptolemy 260 years later was able to construct a system that was well-developed, though in error in the fundamental idea as to the relative position of the earth. It is interesting to note that the Almagest of Ptolemy was thought worthy of republication by the Carnegie Institution only a year or two since. This great astronomical work, by the way, had no successor till that of the Arab Ulugh Bey in the fifteenth century which within a few months has also been made available by the same Institution.
To the Alexandrian school also belongs Archimedes (287 212 B. C. Who, as every school boy knows, was the founder of mechanics and In fact almost a modern physi cal experimenter. He invented the water screw for rais ing water; he discovered the principle of the lever, which appealed so keenly to his imagination that he called for a wot ans, or fulcrum, on which to place it so as to move the earth itself. He was still nearer to modern physics in his reputed plan of burning up a hostile ?eet by converging the sun's rays by a system of great mirrors.
To the Romans, science owes little beyond what is implied in their vast architectural monuments, buildings and aqueducts which were erected at home and in the countries of their conquests. The elder Pliny 23 - 7 9 A. D.) most nearly deserved to be called a man of science.
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