Plato not only came up with the whole logos concept which was to influence Christianity hundreds of years later(i've said plenty about that); but, he argued against mixing experiment with theory. In mankinds long period of trying to figure out what to figure out and how, this was a major disaster. The Greeks were establishing themselve quickly along the road to a sane rational society in Athens with the Delian league(and Plato's influence is not the only irrational misstep); but, Countries that relied on fear like the Spartans, the Persians and soon the Romans were all going through their mental and emotional inertia; and, they weren't liking this Athenian Democracy stuff at all! It wasn't just the constant siding between the Spartans and the Persians, but people from within! But, here's the major point! The Athenians if they had thought clearly(and if Plato had thought clearly!) could have created much science and technology if they had just chosen to do down that road; some did, but the one or two individuals could hardly fight off all the fear groups(spartans and persians) by themselves. The whole Athenian democracy thing was a mere flicker within a generation or two. Then Came Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great was perhaps partly motivated by the murdering of his father by some greeks that sided with some of these outside fear groups that wanted to establish their own power. Alexander the Great went and conquered the Mediterraenean and created Hellenistic culture. But, even his cultural influence was to mix the rational with the irrational. In the end, the Hellenistic culture had to deal with the Jews who wanted everybody to be converted to their Moses law and circumcision and all. I mean the Hellenistic Alexandrians were creating steam power engines; but, they weren't being used to to make industrialsim happen(industrialism is just a steam engine . . . at first . . . powered version of agriculturalism); no, the peoples all through the now growing Roman empire(after Alexander's death, the Romans went around conquering the three provinces of Alexanders empire as split up by his three sons) were socially bound up with all this sungod religion; and, that was always their solutions to all problems. I mean humanity is the science and technologically dependent species; but, because we come from these vague ignorant beginnings, we started out explaining things in these vague poetic ways; and people grow up being given the keys to their social power based on these past ignorant traditions. The result was that christianity was to be the Romans and Hellenistic societies solutions to . . . everything. The roman emperors grew up learning all the mystery schools religions. The result is the creation of Christianity and an escape to turning our backs on the universe and praying for everything to turn out o.k. This takes me to the start of James Burke's video above.
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