ל Charles Murray on the Discovery of Scientific Method; Herodotus and Phrygian Being the First Language; Gideon's Fleece Experiment. On the road to Mammoth Cave, I read bits of the excellent 2003 book by Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. The book is full of fascinating lists, one of which is meta-discoveries--the biggest of the big ideas. One of them is "scientific method"; another is "logic", another is "artistic perspective", another is "the mathematical proof" and so forth, with discussion of when they were discovered. Some of them, like Perspective, do seem to have clear eras of discovery (even if the exact date is hard to pin down to the day or year). But I wonder about many of them. Here, I'll just give two examples of why I wonder if The Scientific Method is a new idea, one from Herodotus and the other from the Book of Judges. Herodotus says in Book 2 of his history, in his long description of Egypt,

Now Psammetichos, when he was not able by inquiry to find out any means of knowing who had come into being first of all men, contrived a device of the following kind: --Taking two new- born children belonging to persons of the common sort he gave them to a shepherd to bring up at the place where his flocks were, with a manner of bringing up such as I shall say, charging him namely that no man should utter any word in their presence, and that they should be placed by themselves in a room where none might come, and at the proper time he should bring to them she-goats, and when he had satisfied them with milk he should do for them whatever else was needed. These things Psammetichos did and gave him this charge wishing to hear what word the children would let break forth first, after they had ceased from wailings without sense.

And accordingly so it came to pass; for after a space of two years had gone by, during which the shepherd went on acting so, at length, when he opened the door and entered, both the children fell before him in entreaty and uttered the word /bekos/, stretching forth their hands. At first when he heard this the shepherd kept silence; but since this word was often repeated, as he visited them constantly and attended to them, at last he declared the matter to his master, and at his command he brought the children before his face. Then Psammetichos having himself also heard it, began to inquire about what nation of men named anything /bekos/, and inquiring he found that the Phrygians had this name for bread. In this manner and guided by an indication such as this, the Egyptians were brought to allow that the Phrygians were a more ancient people than themselves.

The second example is from Judges 6:36-40.

And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water.

And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.01.20a.htm . erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

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