Celestial computers of ancient Greece

Aristoteles, who shaped the nature of science, also admired craftsmen and inventors for their useful devices and wisdom. In fact, of all the social classes in a polis, he considered the class of mechanics the most essential. No polis could exist without the mechanics practicing their arts and crafts. Of those arts and crafts, Aristoteles said, some are “absolutely necessary” while others contribute to luxury or enrich life.

Philon of Byzantium, writing in late third century BCE about mechanics, is emphatic that advancements in technology rely on theory and trial and error.

As late as the fourth century of our era, the Greek mathematician Pappos of Alexandria praised mechanics as “a science and an art”, useful “for many important practical undertakings” as much as being prized by philosophers and mathematicians.

Crafts and mechanics among the Greeks, including the technology of the Antikythera Mechanism, were scientific and fundamental to their culture and life.

Francois Charette, professor of the history of natural sciences at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, studied the Antikythera computer and concluded that “mind-boggling technological sophistication” must have been available to those who made it.