Science Was in Harmony with the Environment Not Against It
There’s no doubt that our ancestors perceived science and philosophy way differently than the modern high-tech world. The ancient Greeks in particular, who are considered the first organized scientists in history, may have thought of themselves as natural philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled profession, such as physicians for example. This is what we notice in the academic works of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hippocrates and Euclid among others. These works and the important commentaries on them were the wellspring of science which reveal their way of thinking about life, while their inventions were in perfect harmony with Mother Nature.
Ancient Greek scientists and physicians didn’t focus on illness and medication like doctors usually do today, but instead they tried to prevent all those things that lead to illness by suggesting a healthy lifestyle that is in harmony with our nature. Furthermore, they didn’t fear death but accepted it as a natural part of life. Interestingly, two Greek philosophers, Leucippus in the 5th Century BC and Democritus of Abdera (circa 410 BC) were the first humans in recorded history to come up with the notion that there were two real entities: atoms, which were small indivisible particles of matter, and the void, which was the empty space in which matter was located. According to Pythagoras and his students, matter was made up of ordered arrangements of atoms, arranged according to geometrical principles into triangles, squares, rectangles, and so on.
Even on a larger scale, the parts of the universe were arranged on the principles of a musical scale and a number. For example, the Pythagoreans held that there were ten heavenly bodies because ten is a perfect number, the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. Thus with the Pythagoreans we find number emerging as the rational basis for an orderly universe — as the first proposal for a scientific ordering principle of the cosmos. Most importantly, the Pythagoreans suggested that science should respect Nature and not destroying it. On the other hand, the majority of modern scientists not only won’t respect the planet but will go as far as inventing atomic energy and other “nice” little things that have ruined the environment as nothing else has in history.