Greek Science and Religon
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The Greeks were very interested in science as a way of organizing the world and making order out of chaos, and having power over some very powerful things like oceans and weather. From about 600 BC, a lot of Greek men spent time observing the planets and the sun and trying to figure out how astronomy worked. They must have gotten their first lessons from the Babylonians, who were very good at astronomy and also very interested in it.By the 400's BC, Pythagoras was interested in finding the patterns and rules in mathematics and music, and invented the idea of a mathematical proof. Although Greek women usually were not allowed to study science, Pythagoras did have some women among his students. Socrates, a little bit later, developed logical methods for deciding whether something was true or not.In the 300's BC, Aristotle and other philosophers at the Lyceum and the Academy in Athens worked on observing plants
and animals, and organizing the different kinds of plants and animals into types. Again, this is a way of creating order out of chaos.
Religious beliefs of Classical Greece can be interpreted in many different ways. Nobody can be sure how or why people believe a certain story about their gods. And different people probably have different reasons for believing a story. Or the same person may believe a story for several different reasons. Not everyone believes all the stories, either: different people may tell different stories. And people may tell one story in one situation, and a different story in a different situation, whatever seems to fit. Here are some of the stories that people told in Ancient Greece, and some of the reasons why they might have told these stories and not other ones.To help you relate one story to another, here are some of the ways that the Greeks thought their gods were related.(in family trees, = means they are married, or at least they have babies together)