Science in Roman empire ?

[HeroSK]

Hi all

Common belief about science in Roman Empire is usually expressed as "they got from Greek world, and improved it" but is this actually true ? Are there any Roman invention originally discovered by Romans ?(I mean both Eastern and western)

Thanks in advance

[jankren]

Thats how all civilizations started. They adopted and improved on it.

[dogukan]

thats why every scientists knows about the previous works...

[DAVIDE]

it's wrong to generalize about Romans took everything from other civilizations. I make a stupid example: the icecream. Romans were the first one to create the icecreams close to modern era concept ones. Pliny explains Romans were usual to import snow and ice from Terminillo, Etna and Vesuvius. A sort of recipient to hold icecream was created with flour, then they amalgamate chopped ice with honey and some fruit juices to form an iced cream. Then once created, icecreams were given directly to imperial palace or thru thermopolias along the streets, to be distributed then to all population

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Thats how all civilizations started. They adopted and improved on it.

thats why every scientists knows about the previous works...

WRONG. If that was the case, the only thing mankind would know of today would be agriculture, euclidean geometry (not in the sense that it was discovered by Euclid) and astrology. It's important to advance on already established knowledge, but it's much more difficult, rare and important to genuinely innovate, to discover entire new fields of knowledge.
Is the introduction of analytical geometry or Boolean calculus or quantum physics or political studies or the design of internal combustion engines to name a few examples something that evolved from simply building upon the intellectual labours of previous generations? No, they were entirely new concepts;it took talent, imagination, genious, hunch, whatever you want to call it, to come up with them and they opened the door to new areas. It was certainly not a linear process, whose predetermined results would have occured no matter what by anyone who would have happened to have the said concentration of knowledge at his disposal.

On topic: The Romans strike me as not that sort of innovators for the greater part. Their most important discovery was cement I think. In maths and physics they did not contribute anything, it would have been kind of hard to do given their numerical system, but they were great in engineering, constructing huge buildings, large cranes, large aquadects, roads, puting the arch in wide use etc, in short they were very good at practical applications. In philosophy, they sticked to the norms of the classical greek and hellenistic world. On other hand they made very important advancements in the fields of law and architecture. Possibly in some other fields such as medicine or votanology/zoology, but I wouldn't know about them.

[dogukan]

WRONG. If that was the case, the only thing mankind would know of today would be agriculture, euclidean geometry (not in the sense that it was discovered by Euclid) and astrology. It's important to advance on already established knowledge, but it's much more difficult, rare and important to genuinely innovate, to discover entire new fields of knowledge.
Is the introduction of analytical geometry or Boolean calculus or quantum physics or political studies or the design of internal combustion engines to name a few examples something that evolved from simply building upon the intellectual labours of previous generations? No, they were entirely new concepts;it took talent, imagination, genious, hunch, whatever you want to call it, to come up with them and they opened the door to new areas. It was certainly not a linear process, whose predetermined results would have occured no matter what by anyone who would have happened to have the said concentration of knowledge at his disposal.

Still, knowing the previous works would prevent you from repeating. You don't have to "put on it"....people did create totally new concepts. Those concepts are either still developing, or showing the way to not make the same mistake.

Then again, this varies from area to area. In the area of postive sciences they find something new everyday. Whereas "sciences" like philosophy follows different paths.

Do not get me wrong, new things can be completely new totally free from older works. But still knowing the previous works is an advantage.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Do not get me wrong, new things can be completely new totally free from older works. But still knowing the previous works is an advantage.

Of course it's an advantage and perhaps more than that, it's a prerequisite, but what I want to emphasise is that it does no way guarantee advancement/innovation.
And then there a two scenarios when developing something new. One possibility is that you find a way to enhance or expand an already established concept and the other is to introduce something completely new from the scratch. Of course, the later is immensely more difficult to do and therefore more valuable. And it was not the strong point of Roman world. Neither of the Greek/Hellenistic world to be fair, but at least there we can witness genuine innovations more frequently.

Sorry if my previous post came off as rude

[jankren]

You wouldnt be able to create a car if you never learned about the wheel -> the wheelbarrow -> wooden wheel cart -> and so forth.

Romans were the first one to create the icecreams close to modern era concept ones.

Which means they were inspired by a different type of ice cream and made it better.

WRONG.

Every innovation requires inspiration.

You cant be born inside a cave and live by yourself and suddenly be able to create an airplane.

[Numenor]

Every innovation requires inspiration.

You cant be born inside a cave and live by yourself and suddenly be able to create an airplane.

by your logic the cave men is the ultimate scientist? :/

[bushbush]

by your logic the cave men is the ultimate scientist? :/

i think mother nature is the ultimate scientist.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

You wouldnt be able to create a car if you never learned about the wheel -> the wheelbarrow -> wooden wheel cart -> and so forth.

Yeah, and I wouldn't have been able to create a car if my ancestors hadn't got off the trees, so let's give some credit to the Neatherdahls for the discovery of the car.
Let me put it this way: For millenia the best mankind had been able to do is get horses and oxes and mules to pull wheel-based carts. Why? Most people knew about the wheel. Everyone knew about fire and producing heat and gas. But only after hundreds and hundreds of years had passed with nothing really changing, then came some fantastic guys like Otto and Diesel and Daimler, who developed the concept of internal combustion engines we still use today (with tremendous progress since then of course). So in this case civilisation progressed not because of the elementary knowledge of thermodynamics and fuels, which had been there for aeons, but because this generation of great German engineers. If they hadn't appeared we wouldn't be having cars and airplanes today.

You cant be born inside a cave and live by yourself and suddenly be able to create an airplane.

No, but you can live in the 4rth century BC and have absolutely no idea about modern calculus, let alone integrating and differential calculus (discovered in the 17th century I think), but still manage to come up with a way of finding the center of gravity of any given object based purely on geometrical methods. That was Archimedes and that's why the guy is acclaimed as a genius. He was a pioneer in a path completely different from the one we walk today. But this particular part of his work was lost and recovered only recently, so that's why science eventually took a different course in the meantime (if this terms applies to a period of 2000 years)

Every innovation requires inspiration.

Yes, and as with every other quality in life, there different degrees of it.
To stick to the cars. Finding a better timing for opening and closing the valves or applying some traits of Diesel engines to Otto engines like direct fuel injection is a minor innovation. Desigining an entirely diffrent concept from the cylinder-gas-piston system would be a major innovation. (The Wankel engines did by the way, but never managed to become successful in the market/industry) Introducing an entirely different concept to car engines from the established norm of internal combustion would be a ground-breaking innovation, a revolutionary discovery.

As I said before, mastering the existing knoweldge is almost a prerequisite in order to create something new, but it no way guarantees this discovery/advancement/enhancement. And in the few cases something new is dicovered parallely to the existing knoweldge and experience then we are talking about monumental feats. Leibnitz developing vector calculus out of scratch would be an example of that.

So let's not make the gross, ignorant over-simplification that civilisations progress, because they adopt things from others and then develop them. Because neither is it self-evident that this process will take place nor does this view take into consideration the part of civilisations introducing completely new things of their own, which is an equally important factor, if not more.

[Babur]

wait didn't they kill Archimedes?

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

It depends what you call "Science". Culturally the Romans were almost subject to the Greeks, the widespread reverence and adoption of an essentially unchanged Hellenism proving this; architectural styles changed little until the 2nd Century, though the Romans liked to build it massive. Sculpture changed nil (most Roman statues being copies of Hellenistic ones), ditto for philosophy and mathematics. In Natural Sciences, the Romans are true slaves.

The best advancements by the Romans are thus practical: they were about the first to put into practice massive Slavery as an economical tool. They also - like I said - built big and built numerous... And they also carried on with strictly technical advancements to an essentially Hellenistic system. We know of Hellenic towns and cities with large underground sewers either as an original plan or a latter addition, so even aqueducts are hardly new, though the Romans were perhaps the first to build them above the ground. Roman Law is also a great achievement, but perhaps misunderstood in its scope and application.

The only real innovations come in the later period, say late 2nd century on. Prior to that, even Roman technology was essentially a refinement of Hellenistic methods.

[SigniferOne]

Common belief about science in Roman Empire is usually expressed as "they got from Greek world, and improved it" but is this actually true ?

Yes. Romans had the height of science in antiquity, although the Greeks invented the idea of modern science as such, before them. The Romans then built along those lines (much as we're still doing now), before the advent of the Dark Ages.

I started a thread about some of those scientific advances here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=283813

It depends what you call "Science". Culturally the Romans were almost subject to the Greeks, the widespread reverence and adoption of an essentially unchanged Hellenism proving this; architectural styles changed little until the 2nd Century, though the Romans liked to build it massive. Sculpture changed nil (most Roman statues being copies of Hellenistic ones), ditto for philosophy and mathematics. In Natural Sciences, the Romans are true slaves.

Again, this is pretty much false on every level. Romans kept some outward forms of Greek architectural styles, but completely revolutionized the structural principles of architecture. It's the same story with sculpture, 99% of the surviving remains of which is from the Roman period. Some scholars speculated that some specimens could bear resemblance to earlier Greek statues, but since practically none of the latter survive they are very divided as to how much that line can be drawn. Many of the survivals of Roman architecture (such as the Centaur or the Polyphemus of Sperlonga, or Antinous Mandragone) cannot be traced to any pre-Augustan precedents. I discuss a fraction of the sculpture untraceable prior to the Augustan period here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=194972

And we could continue this line of discussion on each of the other issues. The prevalence and depth of the natural sciences exploded during the Roman period like never before. It witnessed the height of the science of biology and medicine during the antique period, as well as astronomy, and any other science you would care to mention. I really do explain it in the thread suggested to the OP, so feel free to go over it again.

[Tiberius Tosi]

Cement, but even that I think was "borrowed" from nearby southern Italians? (the resources were not from Rome, I am sure of that much)

[conon394]

architectural styles changed little until the 2nd Century,

Umm that' rather a misleading argument. Outward style affectation my not have changed but the nature of the structure did change very much indeed.

Sculpture changed nil (most Roman statues being copies of Hellenistic ones)

Again you create something of a non issue out of style. First certainly Roman realism in sculpture was decidedly different than the various Greek and Hellenistic idealized sculpture. That very fact of mass market in knock of copies of famous Greek sculpture is an advance and change in and of itself, and really in the age of identical big box stores and golden arches it seems a bit 'pot calling the kettle black' to scoff.

[HeroSK]

It seems Romans had more practical improvements rather than theoritical ones. If I remember correctly the first use of arch on bridges are another Roman improvement. Also, the famous greek fire may be counted as another invention however there are about some information that Greek fire originally invented in Syria by Arabs and later on again improved by Byzantine Empire.

Roman numbering system is another invention I think. Further, the most important development invented by Romans were maybe the legionary system which is unique to them but another claim is saying that Romans got this system from Iberia.

Further, Roman there are some water puping mekanisms that are developed by Romans yet again first found in Greek world.

So, is there no original Roman invention or inventor ?

Thanks for good replys and please keep on topic.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Yes, sorry for getting carried away.

Roman numbering system is another invention I think.

Not much of an invention. Their system was very inflexible, probably not as much as the contemporary Greek one, but still very hard to handle even basic calculus with. That's why the Renaissance scholars, who were familiar with all three, Greek, Roman and Arabic numerals prefered the Arabic ones hands down.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Umm that' rather a misleading argument. Outward style affectation my not have changed but the nature of the structure did change very much indeed.

Architectural style is what...? Everything?

Again you create something of a non issue out of style. First certainly Roman realism in sculpture was decidedly different than the various Greek and Hellenistic idealized sculpture. That very fact of mass market in knock of copies of famous Greek sculpture is an advance and change in and of itself, and really in the age of identical big box stores and golden arches it seems a bit 'pot calling the kettle black' to scoff.

Roman "realism"? That previous Hellenic sculpture had a fondness for more idealized figures does not mean a lack of aptitude for portraying a man when needed. The vaunted "Roman realism" was merely the copy of the Hellenistic torso with the head done by someone with knack and skill, and that's it; Augustus statue perhaps exemplifies this best.

[MathiasOfAthens]

The Roman military system was certainly unique, as far as I know it was one of the first Empires to utilize standing armies. They also uniformed their soldiers. They recruited soldiers, mainly volunteers in their provinces. There are many roman inventions, they may have been improvements of previous methods but they are still unique. The gladius was originally from Iberia. Same with the Scrutum shield I believe, it was obviously improved on by the Romans. Roman armour was unique, the seqmented armour. I think it was called a crow, the romans developed it during the first Punic war it allowed them to seize Punic ships and board them. It was abandoned after a Roman navy, more than a thousand men, perished during a storm. The crow was to blame for the disaster.

The persians had the royal road, but the Romans had an advanced road network. The persians put stables along the road for messengers to recoup and continue with a fresh mount. Roman soldiers built the roads to last. Some are still used today.

Caesarian Sea section.
Medical and Surgical tools improved on from Greek designs.
Bronze Valves and Water Pumps.
Fast curing cement that could also harden underwater, leading to vast ports. Also invented rebars and reinforced concrete.
Military camps, bridges, structures were all pre frabicated and were built and taken down in very short time spans.
Barcelona and Paris were originally military forts, and then military settlements. Grid structure.
Law was certainly improved on from previous empires.
Romans frequently took holidays.
Shorthand and abbreviations like "&" and "ect" were invented by the Romans. Among other types.
Huge number of words in our vocabulary were invented in Rome.
Our calender. Originally by Caesar thanks to foreign astronomers, based on a lunar design before switching to a solar. September was originally the 7th month of the year, Septem=7. Oct=8, Novem and December being the 9th and 10th months. After switching to the solar calender and adding two more months the names were not changed.
First Census, for use by tax officials of course.
Ambient heating underneath floors and bathhouse that kept the baths hot thanks to pipes.
Apartment Blocks.
First Public NewsPaper, published in rome every day and posted on walls.
Public toilets. A tax was placed on that.
Socks were widely used in Rome, standard issue to soldiers.
Trumpets for the army.
Understood what inflation was and meant and what to do about it. Modern economics.
Umbrellas.
Romans did invent a huge selection of creams, lipsticks, and perfumes.
Candles invented from animal fat.
Scissors, magnifying glass, different shoe shapes for left and right feet.
Bikinis for holidays.
Street lighting during the later end of the empire, not exactly sure how that worked.
Showers and a postal system as well. The Persians had the post road but it was used by the nobility not by commoners.