Greek science of the Hellenistic era

We all want to understand the world around us, and the ancient Greeks were the first to try and do so in a way we can properly call scientific. Their thought and writings laid the essential foundations for the revivals of science in medieval Baghdad and Renaissance Europe.This volume presents the work of 100 scientific authors active from 320 BCE to 230 CE. It begins with an outline of a new socio-political model for the development and decline of Greek science. Eleven chapters of fully translated source material follow, with the disciplines covered ranging from the science that the Greeks saw as fundamental - mathematics - through astronomy, astrology and geography, mechanics, optics and pneumatics, and then on to the non-mathematical sciences of alchemy, biology, medicine and "psychology". Each chapter contains an introduction on the origins and development of the topic in question, and all the authors are set in context with brief biographies. Contents: Mathematics; astronomy; astrology; geography; mechanics; optics; hydrostatics and pneumatics; alchemy; biology; medicine; psychology.