Interestingly, the Pythagoreans in the 6th century BC discovered that musical notes can be expressed in mathematical equations. Though the Pythagoreans are generally considered as mathematicians and mystics than scientists in the modern sense, apparently their discovery was the result of experimentation and computation. In that sense, they also practiced the scientific method 200 years before Archimedes.

Science and the scientific method are much older than the 4th century Hypatia and much more than the Renaissance philosophers.

Therefore, the points he seems to be making are 1) there were precedents for the scientific methodology of empiricism you describe as not having any precedents, 2) what many of these ancient scholars thought, did, wrote and produced were so utterly destroyed, like Hypatia, that little can be known now about just how advanced they may have become (“The historical life of Hypatia is shrouded in the mists of the past”), and 3) although it is not unreasonable to assume that philosophers were more metaphysical than scientific in their general outlook, the current alternative to their systems at the time was basically religious-inspired superstition, so even if such scholars were not true scientists, the least we could say is that they carried a torch which was mercilessly extinguished before science could pass from being a curiosity to a practical, world-transforming endeavor.

“But empiricism is the product of a long history of philosophers,” however I must point out that this huge gap is an artificially induced span (“… a pair of discoveries that would have been 1200 years before their time”) , during which knowledge, science, philosophy, experimentation, etc. were deliberately suppressed. Had not religious superstition clamped down a hard seal upon free thought, I doubt that it would have taken quite that long, especially if the loss of such ancient learning had not necessitated their re-discovery. You mention “…she, her colleagues, her father, and their predecessors had no experience in nor knowledge of such logical methods.” Perhaps you should have said empirical methods, but here also I think you should be aware of the amount of time Sagan spends on Eratosthenes. He also mentions Hipparchus, Euclid, Dionysius of Thrace, Herophilus, Heron of Alexandria, Apollonius of Perga, Archimedes, Ptolemy — quite a precedential lot, indeed. Finally, since nothing is known about what she truly thought, taught and regarded of her predecessors, perhaps she was not so rigid in her adherence to neo-Platonism as you would have us conclude. She might just have easily made a leap beyond her mentors and tutors, so for the purposes of cinematic fiction, I’m willing to suspend disbelief.

Does Dr. Killings know the history of science? Scientific reasoning and even the scientific method were practiced in the 3rd century B.C. notably by Archimedes, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes.

Archimedes formulated the law of buoyancy, also known as Archimedes’ principle, and the principle of the lever. To my knowledge, these two are the earliest laws of physics. Archimedes’ scientific laws are still taught today in engineering schools. I know because I graduated from M.I.T.

Aristarchus was the first to formulate the heliocentric hypothesis. Eratosthenes was the first to accurately measure the size of the earth. If any great credit may be given for the birth of the scientific method, it is not to the Renaissance philosophers as Dr. Killings would like us to believe, but to these three Greeks who lived in the 3rd century B.C.

How does Dr. Killings account for the strange fact that the Hellenistic-Roman world view, that, at that time spanned from Scotland to China, was, in short order, dismantled by forces of ignorance and intolerance not unlike those in operation today? What does Dr. Killings have to say about the difference between ancient “syncretism” by which peoples of widely different beliefs could live in harmony, and the absurd totalitarian absolutism that followed?

How does Dr. Killings account for the title of the movie, which could easily have been “Hypatia” or “Alexandria” but is, instead “Agora” — which in our time means “marketplace” but in Hellenistic antiquity was a place of intellectual as well as mercantile exchange.

This article is flawed in too many ways to enumerate here. I can only hint at them. Most significantly, it misses the point of making such a movie at this point in our own troubled times, dismisses the real issues at hand, and damns Hypatia and her world by faint praise. Anyone who takes the time to really read the history of this time, going back to the sources themselves if there is any doubt, will see that an enormous crime was perpetrated and then silenced for centuries. Any honest reviewer of this history will come to realize that we are not yet out of this darkness. For all our scientific advancement, we are still socially at each other’s throats!

What progress was made in the Middle Ages was a return to light, not a discovery of it. The Renaissance was a specific reference to ancient values. The Enlightenment may not have happened had not Gassendi revived Epicurus in his rebuttal of Descartes absurd dualism — and the list of self-avowed Epicureans reads like a Who’s Who of our present world. Even Jefferson called himself an Epicurean.

I would imagine that a skeptic would use the tools of skepticism to spread light, and not to obscure what needs to be known as widely as possible. The movie is a movie, no doubt, a simple fiction, a dramatization, and any intelligent adult can discern the differences between what a film-maker can know about a long-dead character, and what must have been invented. Even if many, or most, of the details about this or that mathematical statement or experiment are flawed or invented, the outline of the film and its depiction of the times and clashes that occur, are largely correct. If anything, a skeptic would note that Amenabar is actually timid in depicting the cruelty of the times (Hypatia was stripped nakes, skinned alive with either shells or tiles “ostraka”, dragged through the streets, dismembered, and had her parts thrown to the fires and to the dogs), and the stupidity that came to overwhelm reason. If you would like to shiver with terror in the face of the truth, read Procopius’s Secret History (the Anekdota), available in full online to anyone who can use Google, and see how, in the course of a single chapter, he describes how Justinian’s actions led 12-13 million people to perish in Libya, Mauretania, and the span between the Ionian see and Constantinople, including all of the Balkans, with ordinances that everything taken could be given to the Church, and a view that it was fine to kill pagans, since they were non-believers and did not count. This only accounts for a small part of what happened between about 290AD and 529AD (even longer in many places).

I cannot do justice to this enormous subject in a blog comment. I can only say that the history of the end of “antiquity” may be the most important history for everyone to learn about — this battle is far from over, and we are all still suffering its consequences. We all owe to ourselves, to each other, and to our childrens’ children to discern what happened and arrive at our own informed views. For centuries, only historians and philologists could find their way to the necessary information. Now, via Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Project Perseus, Google Scholar, and a million other repositories of information, the knowledge is accessible to anyone who wants to learn for themselves what schools and textbooks have not told.

Look into this. See for yourselves.