(16 Nov 2021) LEAD IN:
A new exhibition focussing on the scientific influence of Ancient Greece in today's world opens in London on 17 November.
The display at the Science Museum uses artefacts and ancient statues to illustrate scientific thinking from Aristotle to Pythagoras.
STORY-LINE:
Meet the latest additions to London's Science Museum.
The exhibition "Ancient Greeks: Science and Wisdom," opens on 17 November.
Through few but impactful artefacts, visitors get to better understand the scientific influence of Ancient Greece in today's world.
One of the highlights is a tall statue of the god Hermes from 100-50 BC.
Dr Jane Desborough, Curator of Scientific Instruments at the Science Museum explains why it has such an unusual appearance.
"So this is a statue of Hermes that was recovered from the famous Antikythera shipwreck. It was recovered in around 1901. He would have been a trade product himself, not only being a statue of Hermes, but also a beautiful product that people were desirous to buy. As you can see, he's undergone some heavy underwater erosion to his body, but his face appears perfect, and it's because it was protected by silt on the seabed for two thousand years before he was recovered," says Desborough.
The scientific aspect of this item might not be straightforward, but labels guide the visitors.
"Here we're looking at the design of ships. So the ships were very efficient, they could travel further and faster, taking products such as him with them. So we know that the ships could travel at half the speed of modern cargo ships, for example. So trade was such an important thing to them," says Desborough.
To the side of the room is a display case full of fishplates.
Dating approximately from 370-300 BC, they evoke the marine diversity of the time.
Through the lens of Aristotle's studies of fish, the plates are categorised in groups, for example "monster-like" for dolphins, and "soft bodies" for cuttlefish, his favourite fish.
"He (Aristotle) sought to provide a systematic study of the animal world. He had a particular interest in marine animals, and he was interested in how they lived, reproduced and died and sought to classify them into groups based on their body parts and their habitats and things like that. With the fishplates, they're a wonderful example because while his drawings have not survived, the fishplates that seem to capture some of the anatomical detail he describes, were made during his lifetime. So it's quite an interesting connection there," says Desborough.
Opposite to the first statue is another, in much better condition.
This smaller statue is striking by its proportions - and there's a reason for that.
"The other statue is known as an oil-pourer example. He's an athlete preparing for competition about to apply oil to his skin. He's in our mathematical body section, and there we're looking at how the ancient Greeks had a perception of the ideal symmetrical body that they believed was personified by victorious athletes who competed at the Pan Hellenic games and sculptures rendered that belief into material form, such as the oil-pourer statue by generating proportions based on a ratio calculated from the smallest joint in the little finger and building upwards," says Desborough.
Another section is dedicated to music.
Philosopher Pythagoras taught that the beauty of art and music could be explained mathematically.
For this exhibition, the curator worked to make mathematical language on the labels as accessible as possible.
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