Lasting Effect

Greek astronomers made some very important discoveries and introduced some very influential ideas that we either still employ today or have built off of over the years. The ancient Greeks taught us of a spherical Earth, introduced us to a heliocentric model of the solar system, and tracked the motion of the planets, to just name a few accomplishments. While the ancient Greeks taught us much about the physical world around us, their biggest influence was marrying the fields of philosophy and astronomy together. Although the Greeks applied their philosophical knowledge like laws of physics to their observations, they introduced scientists to a complex way of thinking. The Pythagoreans, for example, give us a philosophy that all complex phenomena must reduce to something simpler. This notion has been well employed by scientists such as Newton and Einstein in their works. Ideas like this are reflected in notions like Occam’s Razor, which claims the simplest solution or explanation to a problem often contains the most truth.