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Science and the Investigation of Origins

Science And The Study Of Man

The commonly accepted view of human progress is that prior to recorded history and written records, about 3,000 B.C., the human race was ignorant of scientific knowledge and essentially without technology. One of the most ancient records, the Book of Genesis in the Bible, reports that rather advanced ancient civilizations existed, with manufacturing technology, culture, and government. The Jewish historian Josephus states that Cain invented a system of weights and measures thousands of years before the founding of Greece, and that the descendents of Seth studied the movements of the heavenly bodies. The sudden or seemingly rootless appearance of highly developed civilizations in the archaeological record of some 3,000 years B.C. is highly suggestive of a long preceding period of civilization extending into antiquity.

There is considerable evidence that the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians possessed the knowledge of mathematics and astronomy and put this knowledge to practical use in the construction of the pyrimids and other great civil engineering projects, as well as in a program of accurate mapping of the earth's surface.² Nevertheless, the pagan religions introduced false ideas into the early cultures, with the probable result that man's understanding of the natural world was corrupted by mythology.

It was the Greek natural philosophers of the sixth century B.C. who imparted to western civilization the foundations of a rational way of understanding the natural world. It is true that they believed in a beginning of nature that was separate from the Infinite and Eternal, but they very sensibly did not try to make the order of nature explain how it came into existence.

To these early Greeks something in nature like a storm was not to be understood as the anger of a god, but as an impersonal force that could be seen. The observer must be objective. That is, he must keep himself and his desires from influencing what he sees. Today this way of viewing our world is an important element of what is called the scientific method.

References

2. Hapgood, Charles H., Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings--Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, Revised Edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979).