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Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

My answer to my girlfriend was that I think about ancient Greece more often. Rome less. Greece was ahead of its time in philosophy and science. So many household names. Rome has a lot of political analogs to today though, which is what I find interesting about it.

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Difference being Rome was an entity with government, military, etc. with which we can draw a lot of parallels to today, whereas Greece was more of a loose interconnection of cities that shape shifted over time. Both extremely interesting, of course.

I've never been asked this question, but I think I'd respond similarly. In fact, when I think of Rome, I think of Greece. They are nearly inseparable for me, but that's probably because my understanding of history is the history of western philosophy. You start with the Socratics, then read about the neo-platonist in Rome.

> Greece was ahead of its time in philosophy and science

And some would say that, philosophically, while we have the potential benefit of hindsight and therefore the opportunity to exceed the Greeks (you just need to crack open the right books), our typical modern, academic philosophy, is in many ways, inferior to it.

This is a strange comment because not only is academic philosophy built from the Greek tradition, but it is formalized. Maybe one can say it stagnated for centuries but I find it difficult to say that the work in the 20th century is inferior.

I wouldn't say that about comparing Hilbert to Pythagoras, and this is not putting down history of knowledge.

Just the awareness of the scientific method makes us far superior to the ancient Greeks. Many still doesn't follow it, but basically no Greek followed it and it really shows in their works.

For problems where the scientific method doesn't help however we probably aren't that much better than the ancient Greeks, maybe we are even inferior there.

For things where the scientific process doesn't help we have no objective way to conclude anything. Thus debates about topics like Abortion or Gun control where different rights and belief system exist in conflict with each other. Typically neither side will acknowledge the others position as having any validity, but if you can find someone in a different tradition that supports (or seems to support) your position you will say they are authoritative despite there being no objective fact in the first place.

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