Greek Influence on Society
Greek Influence on Today’s Society In this day in age, people are obsessed with the most advanced technology, the most modern style, and fair government. Little does most of the population know, that the influence and knowledge of the ancient Greeks has greatly shaped science and technology, architecture, and government. The knowledge and the findings of the ancient Greeks are the building blocks of the science we have today. It is understood that science is just math with a purpose, so the Greeks have made a massive impact on science due to their advancements in math. They were the mathematicians that devised formulas and practices that are still used to solve problems. This includes such things as the Pythagorean Theorem, Pi, and other advancements in the realm of measurements (Bellos). These advancements are some of the most common forms of math used today. I asked Douglas Cutler, math teacher at Pella High School, what he thought of the influence of the Greeks on math today, and he said, “The greeks can be credited with just about all the geometry you learn at the high school level. Another significant contribution that the ancient Greeks made was greater understanding of irrational numbers.There were many scholars that contributed to this movement, Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Euclid (Bellos). These gentlemen were very important to the future knowledge and advancement to math and science. “It isn 't that the mathematics the ancient Greeks discovered has changed, only that we continue to discover more and more of what lays beneath what they discovered before us,” Cutler says. Math is just a very small part of sciences, and there were many more scholars and advancements made in this field of discovery. A significant part of ancient Greek society was astronomy. This is one of the most major gains in knowledge from the Greeks. Astronomy was used to calculate distances, directions, and even used in some of ancient Greek mythology. Hipparchus was one gentleman
Cited: "Athenian Democracy." Athenian Democracy. Princeton University, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2013. Camp, John McKesson, and Craig A.. Mauzy. “The Athenian Agora.” 5th ed. Princeton (N.J.): American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2010 Cartledge, Paul. “Ancient Greece.” Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Cartledge, Paul. "The Democratic Experience." Bbc.co.uk. BBC, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. 3 Oct.