Geller Markham J
Topoi Excellence Cluster, Freie Universität Berlin, Topoi Haus, Hittorfstrasse 18, 14195 Berlin.
Sudhoffs Arch. 2011;95(2):158-69.
The Persian period in the Near East (from c. 500 BCE) represented the first example of globalisation, during which advanced cultural centres from Egypt to Afghanistan were united under a single rule and common language. Paul Unschuld has drawn attention to a scientific revolution in the late first millennium BC, extending from Greece to China, from Thales to Confucius, which saw natural law replace the divine law in scientific thinking. This paper argues for new advances in astronomy as the specific motor which motivated changes in scientific thinking and influenced other branches of science, including medicine, just as the new science of astrology, which replaced divination, fundamentally changed the nature of medical prognoses. The secularisation of science was not universally accepted among ancient scholars, and the irony is that somewhat similar reservations accompanied the reception of modern quantum physics.
近东地区的波斯时期（约公元前500年起）代表了全球化的首个范例，在此期间，从埃及到阿富汗的先进文化中心在单一统治和通用语言之下实现了统一。保罗·温舒德提请人们注意公元前一千年后期发生在从希腊到中国、从泰勒斯到孔子这一范围内的一场科学革命，这场革命见证了自然法则在科学思维中取代了神法。本文主张天文学方面的新进展是推动科学思维变革并影响包括医学在内的其他科学分支的具体动力，正如取代占卜的新占星学从根本上改变了医学预后的性质一样。科学的世俗化在古代学者中并非被普遍接受，具有讽刺意味的是，现代量子物理学被接受时也伴随着类似的保留意见。
