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Apparently, this article is too short for such a big question, so don't expect too much from it. I as well as many people who are interested in the history of western culture am confused at a question: Greek civilizationis not the earliest one in history but why did and does it exert so much impacton the western culture? To tell the truth, from the first day on when I started reading about it, the puzzle has lingered on my mind. In our textbook, four civilizations are claimed to be the earliest ones: Egypt Civilization, Babylonia Civilization,Chinese Civilization and Hindu Civilization. This is, precisely speaking, not true, though. Sumer civilization, and Mesopotamian Civilization etc are much earlier than the four mentioned above. But in the long run ,only Greek Civilization so perpetually and far-reaching influenced the western culture, and we can find the shadow of it on the western culture even today. If you take a look at the map of Europe, you will see countless indentations of coast and elevations of land; everywhere gulfs and bays and the intrusive sea; and all the earth tumbles and tossed into mountains and hills. Greece was broken into isolated fragments by these natural barriers of sea and soil; travel and communication were so far more difficult and dangerous then than now. it was seemingly impossible to develop so great a civilization to stand out and to begin to leave behind the other civilizations. But Sparta and Athens joined their forces and a new era was initiated: gradually , they were developing science; mathematics grew with the increasing complexity of exchange, astronomy with the increasing audacity of navigation. The growth of wealth brought the leisure and security which are the prerequisite of research and speculation; men now asked the stars not only for guidance on the seas but as well for an answer to the riddles of the universe; the first Greek philosophers were astronomers.”Proud of their achievements,” says Aristotle, “men pushed farther a field after the Persian wars; they took all knowledge for their province, and attempt natural explanations of processes and powers; magic and ritual slowly gave way to science and control; and philosophy began.” Once begun, the Greek philosophy advanced irresistibly. At first, it was physical; it looked out upon the material world and asked what was the final and irreducible constituent of things. “In reality, there is nothing but atoms and space.”Democritus says. Metaphysics implies the true meaning ofphilosophy: they began to make research on not only physics but what is beyond physics,thus the word ”metaphysics” Observing the history of the development of Greek philosophy, you will find that they were open-minded : they sucked the alien culture like sponge sucks water. Never did they reject what was new to them. And they lived in an unfertile piece of land, which brought them more trades with the outside world and consequently more opportunities to exchange thoughts with other peoples. They were isolated from the geographical point of view but connected with the outside world in spirit and thought. Veils cast on the face of nature and humanity were uncovered more and more. In so doing, they began to complement their traditional mythological understanding with more impersonal and conceptual explanations based on their observations of natural phenomena. By means of observation and reasoning, they proposed so many explanations on what they had observed in nature. Their philosophy boomed when Parmenides of the Elea approached the problem of what was genuinely real by means of a purely abstract rational logic. This step was aphilosophical revolution, a step no less consequential than that of Thales acentury earlier. The two advancing trends of naturalism and rationalism impelled the development of a series of increasingly sophisticated theories to explain the natural world. But the most comprehensive system in this development was that of atomism. Being open-minded, being good at receivingnew thoughts and ideas, being good at employing new methodology are the reasons why Greek civilization become the greatest and most influential for the development of western mind. |
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