Th e school known as the Jainists came up with some
startling ideas about the nature of matter. Th ey theorized that
atoms might have a positive and negative charge, a phenom-
enon that has been proved by modern particle physics. Th e
Jainists also believed that atomic particles had a property of
“spin,” or intrinsic motion. Th is is a central idea in quantum
mechanics that was further developed by Western scientists
in the 20th century.INDIAN ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS
Th e ancient Indians were skilled observers of the skies. Texts
known as the Siddhāntas covered mathematics and astron-
omy. Th e authors tackled the problems of planetary motion,
the force of gravity, and the position of the sun relative to
the earth and planets. Indian mathematics was the most ad-
vanced of the ancient world. India developed the set of nu-
merals that now prevail in calculations all over the world,
including the Western world. Th ese numbers date back to the
earliest civilizations of the Indus River valley. Th ey were em-
ployed in a system of weights and measures used by farmers
and builders. Th e Vedic literature of ancient India contains
calculations of the proper placement of sacred fi res and the
sizes and dimensions of sacrifi cial altars. Th e writers of these
texts worked out the nature of square roots and the concept
that became known as the Pythagorean theorem on the area
of a right triangle, long before the Greek mathematician Py-
thagoras existed.
Th e ancient Indians used and understood addition, sub-
traction, multiplication, division, algebra, trigonometry, and
logarithms. Th ey worked out a basic form of calculus—the
science of measuring and representing variable quantities in
the natural world. Th e leading astronomer and mathemati-
cian of ancient India, Āryabhat.a, collected all this knowledge
in the Āryabhat.a, a text explaining how to calculate square
and cube roots as well as volume and area. Attempting to
come up with unifi ed mathematical models of planetary mo-
tion, Āryabhat.a concluded that the apparent motion of the
stars and planets is caused by the rotation of the earth and its
movement around the sun. Āryabhat.a understood that the
other planets orbit the sun, they orbit in elliptical rather than
circular paths, and lunar eclipses are caused by the shadow
of the moon. He came closest of all ancient astronomers to
understanding the true nature of the earth, sun, moon, and
solar system.
Another important fi eld of research in ancient India was
the science of linguistics—the study of languages, vocabu-
lary, and grammar. Th e religious texts of the Vedic Period
advanced the idea of tenses, verbs, and noun cases and the
concept of the two basic meanings of words: that expressed
by the speaker and that perceived by the listener. Th e linguist
Pān.ini, who lived in the early fi ft h century b.c.e., analyzed
the elements of Sanskrit, the language used in religious texts
of the Indian subcontinent, and detailed its working in 3,959
rules, which are still studied in modern times. His theories
were further developed by Bhartrihari, a linguist of the fi ft hcentury c.e. Th ese two experts laid an important foundation
for modern linguistics, which originated with studies in San-
skrit in the 18th century.EUROPE
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
Th e concept of science as a fi eld of formal scholarly inquiry
and organized thought has arisen only in recent centuries, so
to speak of science in ancient Europe is not entirely accurate.
Modern scientists pursue their research using the scientifi c
method. Th ey assume cause-and-eff ect relationships between
natural occurrences. Th ey make hypotheses about problems,
test them by gathering data under controlled conditions, and
then make generalizations about cause and eff ect that might
in time gain the status of scientifi c laws. When the topic of
science in the ancient world is discussed, what is generally
meant is evidence for a system of observation of the physi-
cal world and the evidence for some forms of calculations.
Th e challenge in ancient Europe is that there are no texts, so
scholars have relatively few primary sources they can study to
learn about ancient European science. In large part they have
had to rely on the writings of Greek and Roman historians,
who recorded what they observed about scientifi c practices
in their northern colonies and client regions. Th eir observa-
tions, though, were made in late antiquity, so little is known
about European scientifi c practice in earlier ages, such as the
Bronze Age.
Ancient Europeans lived in a world in which they were
subject to mysterious natural forces: the weather, disease,
earthquakes, fl oods, and the like. Th us, one motivation for
making observations about the physical world was to discover
ways of controlling those forces, control that could be accom-
plished by trying to know the gods’ will and make predic-
tions about the future. Diviners, seers, shamans, and priests
studied the attributes of nature—the movement of heavenly
bodies, or the magical properties of plants—to learn how to
exert some control over the natural world. Th ese people were
believed to have divine, supernatural knowledge, which they
could use for the benefi t of their communities.
Another way of considering ancient European science is
to see it as the sort of science employed in engineering and
medicine, where observations about the physical world are
used to develop skills in various technologies, including, for
example, agriculture, metalworking, and medicine. In the
21st century this is called applied science. Agriculture arrived
in Europe about 9,000 years ago from the Near East, and over
the next 4,000 years agricultural communities were estab-
lished throughout the Continent. Early European farming
communities planted wheat and barley as their main crops
and raised cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.
Clearly, these agriculturalists needed to make observa-
tions about the physical world and to develop innovative ways
of raising crops that had been brought from the Near East into
the European environment. Th ey made observations aboutscience: Europe 9350895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i935 935 10/10/07 2:30:29 PM