The period lasting from about 600 B.C. to A.D. 400 is dominated by classical civilization--the culture of the Greeks and Romans. The Greek scientists contributed an invaluable new approach to science: they were the first to study natural objects and phenomena for the sake of these things themselves rather than as problems primarily connected with philosophy and religion. The earliest group of Greek natural philosophers was known as the Ionian school, for its members lived in the cities on the west coast of Asia Minor, which according to tradition had been colonized by the Ionian tribes. These cities were important centers of trade where the worlds of the East and West came in close contact. The older science and technology of the East had more influence on Greek science than was admitted a generation ago. At any rate the Greeks transformed these foreign elements into something peculiarly their own.

The lack of adequate instruments, the tendency to build theories on only a handful of facts, and the severance of the bonds with technology and engineering blocked the path of classical science. The Greeks and Romans were fully convinced that science had arisen from practical needs. Eudemus the mathematician (fourth century B.C.) was the first to tell us that the Egyptians had developed their mathematics because the floods destroyed the boundaries of their farmlands. The great Roman architect Vitruvius (first century B.C.) was convinced that "only those who have mastered theory and practice are fully equipped to achieve their task with honor."

But generally speaking Greek scientists had a horror of manual work and despised those who had to engage in it. They loved theory, but when discussing how to use this knowledge Aristotle and Plato are definite in their rejection of practical applied science as a proper task for the scientist. There is even no such word as "scientist" in any classical writings; the term philosopher is used instead. Applied science was the domain of that large class of anonymous slaves and craftsmen that belonged to the structure of ancient society. Only a few names of real scientists working ha the fields of technology and engineering are known. There was no urge whatever to develop power resources. It looked as if the slaves were a sufficiently plentiful source of energy. There seem to have been no problems to push the Greek intellect toward the development of machines save in the field of warfare.

Alexandrian science produced several men like Heron and Ctesibius who had great capacity for developing machinery. But their genius was doomed to spend its energy on mechanisms for show and amusement only. The Greeks did not have the wisdom to see that only by conquering nature with its own weapons can we wrest its secrets, and that little is to be gained from barren reasoning based on a few unverified observations. The ancient craftsmen always seem to have produced enough to satisfy the limited demands for manufactured products in antiquity, and so there was no strong urge to industrialize society.

The engineers of the classical period played with the forces of steam and wind. They were able to construct machinery that worked by moving weights or by air pressure, sometimes even by heat. But they never harnessed the winds. Even the common sailor would resort to rowing when he encountered the treacherous winds blowing round the many capes of Greece. The windmill was not a Greek invention, but was adopted from Persia. Air pressure was developed in ancient machinery by heat or by forcing a piston down a cylinder mechanically. Nor did the Greeks develop the use of water power; the few Greek and Roman rivers did not have sufficient water all the year round. The water wheels imported from the East were mainly driven by man or animal power.

It is clear that the ancient engineers designed and developed labor-saving machinery, but they never tackled the problem of substituting machinery for human labor. When they used the principle of the lever and hung a pail on a balance arm that carried a counterweight on the other end, they merely eased the manual work without mechanizing it. There was no urge toward mechanization at all. Science in antiquity never conceived of a "picture of the mechanism behind nature," such as we find in Western Europe from the sixteenth century onward, and which can come only from a generation that is familiar with machinery. The ancients never dreamed of a conquest of nature to better the conditions of life. They studied nature to achieve peaceful harmony of thought and greater wisdom. They had little concern for the great mass of slaves who provided them with the necessities of life.

The degrading effect of slavery prevented ancient society from reaping the harvest of the inventions and discoveries that could have been obtained with a little cooperation between science and the arts and crafts. Neither Athens nor Rome were true democracies in our modern sense, whatever theories their leading men may have propounded. Although it is true that, relatively speaking, most of the slaves led a fairly untroubled life, society was composed of a small group of citizens led by a landed and moneyed oligarchy.

The citizen of the classical age had a great sense of beauty and harmony. He expressed this not only in his monuments but also in the products that his workshops turned out, for even objects of daily use combined utility with beauty. But he was not really interested in methods of mass production or in the craftsmen who made things. The slave was simply a form of energy to be bought and sold on the market--not a human being needing help and encouragement to make his labors more productive and less burdensome. The Greeks did not bother to use the new science they had acquired to open up the resources of their country. Science was used as an entry to philosophy and the philosophical tenets of the ideal state could even decree that the pursuit of a certain kind of knowledge was inimical to the general welfare.

Turning to the arts and crafts of the Greeks, we cannot help noting, if only from the examples displayed in our museums, how beautiful the products of the Greek craftsman could be. From the various contemporary accounts, which have not yet been completely studied from our point of view, we know that the crafts of the East were adopted in Greece. However, the products turned out there were not imitations but typical Greek creations.

The Greeks had developed their own forms of economy in which wine and olive oil had a leading role, being the main products to be exported and traded for grain. Incidentally this olive-oil industry shows that the Greeks were capable of developing machinery if the demands were sufficiently strong. The oil was extracted from the olives by first crushing them and then extracting the oil from the crushed mass. The crushing was achieved either in mills like those built for grinding corn or in edge rollers or vertical mills called trapetum, many examples of which have been found. The oil was then separated from the kernel-free crushed fruit by means of an olive press. In this press layers of the mass separated by wooden boards were compressed by a long lever beam loaded with large stones. Gradually a better press was developed, consisting of two fixed uprights and a heavy horizontal top beam below which the crushed fruit and the wooden boards were stacked in alternate layers. Wedges were then driven into the stack to exert pressure on the crushed fruit.

A third and more sophisticated type of press used screws to press down the mass of wooden boards and layers of fruit. This shows that the Greeks and Romans not only understood the principle of the lever and wedge, but could also use the screw to exert pressure. Murals from Pompeii show the use of endless screws in a linen press in which the screws bear down on wooden boards that in turn press the household linen. The same principle was also used in primitive pumps, whereby an endless screw or wormless gear was turned in a tightly fitting cylinder and thus raised water from one level to another. This pump, commonly used in Egypt, is generally known as the Archimedean screw, as Archimedes is said to have been its inventor.

Both olive oil and wine were transported in pottery vessels which excel in design and decoration. Pottery and bronze casting belonged to the important crafts of ancient Greece.  We have information on leather working, spinning, and weaving, and on the very important silver mines of Laurion on which the wealth of Athens depended. But there were no new developments, for Greece was a poor country and had to rely more on commerce than on manufactured products for general consumption. . .