Page 57 - Handbook of Gold Exploration and Evaluation

38 Handbook of gold exploration and evaluation

Anaximander also proposed an evolutionary theory 23 centuries before
Darwin, arguing that the earliest forms of life arose from the interaction of
primordial heat and water and that all land animals including humans evolved
from fish-like ancestors. The first creatures lived in the sea, protected by shells
and on the appearance of dry land gradually adapted to the new conditions. This
was an idea that most people found disturbing; 150 years later Plato, in referring
to the idea, said, `The fourth kind of animal, whose habitat is water, came from
the most utterly mindless men'. Anaximander had, nevertheless understood that
the same sequence of events that led to the formation of the Earth must also
occur throughout the universe. Anaximenes (570±500 BC), who could have been
a pupil of Anaximander, furthered his conception of the universe and what the
world is made of. He believed that air is the basic principle of the universe and
that the rainbow is a natural not divine phenomenon.
Pythagoras (570±490 BC) is credited with formulation of the `Pythagoras
Theorem' but is now believed to have copied the idea from Babylonian texts
written a millenium earlier. Nevertheless, he or one of his followers discovered
the relationship between the length of a plucked string and the musical note it
produces. The substance of the string did not matter, only its length. Lengths in
the ratio 2:1 produced an octave, 3:2 a fifth, 4:3 a fourth and so on. The
undoubted numerical relationship suggested that the same pattern he had
discovered in music would exist in the structure of the cosmos. Little else is
known of Pythagoras except that he founded a politically influential religious
brotherhood in Croton, South Italy, which became more controversial as its
influence grew. Its tenets included immortality of the soul and transmigration.
An ordered universe was created in which the Earth, Moon, and planets circled
the central fire (Sun). This was rejected and eventually the Pythagorean
Brotherhood fell apart and was disbanded at the end of his life.
Herodotus (484±425 BC) was amongst the first of the great philosophers to
recognise the effects of climatic and tectonic change. He understood that land at
the mouth of the Nile River had formed from sand and mud deposited by the
river and proclaimed Egypt as `the gift of the Nile'. From observations of shells
in Egyptian hills he concluded that at some time the sea must have covered the
hills.
Socrates (469±399 BC) taught that true knowledge emerges through dialogue
and systematic questioning, and an abandonment of uncritical claims to
knowledge. Hippocrates of Cos (460±370 BC) to whom is attributed the
`Hippocratic Oath', and Alcmaeon, who discovered the optical nerve, and other
physicians of the time, propounded ideas such as cleanliness between doctors
and patients, moderation in eating and drinking and the requirements of a clean
atmosphere.
Empedocles, in the 400s BC, thought that the Earth's interior was composed
of a very hot liquid and that all things come from earth, fire, air and water.
Theophrastus, a pupil of Empedocles wrote a small paper Concerning Stones,