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Metaphysics, that which goes beyond physics, covered almost all human thinking. People could only speculate about everything around them because they had neither the techniques nor the equipment for physical studies. Great thinkers, such as Aristotle (384-322BC), would contribute to the sum of human knowledge through the arts with poetry, all branches of the sciences, from zoology to physics, and philosophy, from logic to politics.
However this did not stop Thales of Maletus developing physical science and geometry nearly 600 years before Christ. Within 100 years of Thales, Heraclitus was laying the foundations for Greek philosophy. In China the solar calendar would be developed just before 450BC.
Democritus developed an atomic theory in 430BC, which held that the world consists of an infinite number of atoms, the differing characteristics of which account for the make up of everything in it. Within a few decades Socrates had reasoned a way through ethics and world-defining concepts and Plato founded the Academy for philosophical, mathematical and scientific research.
In his Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedo and Republic, Plato lays down the doctrines that were to influence thousands of years of philosophers. Knowledge is seen as recollection and the theory of dualism divides the immortal soul from the mortal body. His Theory of Forms contrasts the world’s ideas, the true objects of knowledge, with transient material things that reflect these ideas.
Aristotle, who studied at the Academy, saw the Earth as the centre of the universe, which is eternal. It was a view of the solar system adhered to by great astronomers through the ages, such as the Greek Ptolemy (90-168AD). Aristotle added that beneath the moon’s orbit was earth, air, fire and water and above the satellite’s orbit was ether.
Around 830 years after the birth of Christ, astronomy, mathematics and optics were taken forward by the Arabs, and much of their learning was later given to the West through translators in Toledo, Spain.
At the same time, religious thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century were attempting to reconcile the Christian doctrines of revelation and faith with the scientific rationalism of Aristotle.