DIMITRIS
TSIMPOURAKIS
Stars, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the entire universe very early on began to occupy human thought. At first, they were worshipped as deities by many ancient peoples, including the ancient Greeks. Then, after myth came knowledge. It was the Pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient Greece who first sought the truth behind mythology and attempted to provide answers “through demonstration” to the fundamental questions that concerned them.
Even today, when the mysteries of the universe have been revealed to us, we are still awestruck by the ingenuity of the ancient Greeks—their deductive reasoning, their measurements, and their conclusions—which laid the foundations for the sciences of astronomy, geometry, mathematics, and their various applications in everyday life. Twenty such measurements, among the most interesting, are analysed and discussed here. Their presentation is based exclusively on ancient sources and is being made for the first time in the modern Greek language.
