Astronomy, more so than any other science for most people, is a science synonymous with the future. And yet, astronomy may well be the oldest of the sciences and even the inspiration for all science. Our pursuit of knowledge about the physical world has been strongly shaped by our fascination with the changing panorama in the heavens. Intellectual thought has been inspired by both the beauty and the immensity of the astronomical world. Astronomy has not only stimulated other sciences, such as physics and mathematics, but has also inspired creative efforts in art, music, and literature. Let us begin our exploration by seeking the origin or origins of science itself.
History shows us that one of man's preoccupations has been whether or not we can ascribe meaning to our existence. Part of the search for meaning is the nature of man's physical existence; what is it made of, how did it come into being, and how will it end, if ever? Since apparently no other experience, outside of human physiological functions, is any more universal to the peoples of the Earth than that of the heavens, we can trace the roots of this concern about our physical existence back thousands or even tens of thousands of years when our ancestors first began contemplating the heavens. Cave paintings, cliff carvings, stone and wood monuments, and pottery fragments found worldwide all testify to the importance that the heavens played in early thought. For example, we have evidence that stone-age man in Europe was apparently keeping track of cycles of lunar phases on pieces of bone some 30,000 years ago.
To many ancient peoples the heavens were more than a source of wonder; they held power over earthly existence, in that celestial gods were believed to be able to control human destiny. Astrology became the key that revealed divine plans for the course of human events. Although possessing no scientific basis and having clearly diverged from astronomy by the seventeenth century, early astrology did make one contribution to astronomy: it spurred the persistent and orderly recording of regularities in the movement of the Sun, Moon, and planets relative to the background stars. And because of this, well before the dawn of recorded history some 6000 years ago, these regularities were highly developed knowledge. Some of the earliest astronomical texts, which record the movement of the planets, are found on Babylonian cuneiform tablets dating from almost 2000 B.C. (Planet comes from the Greek language, and it means wanderer, in contrast with the fixed stars.)
Concern for astronomical knowledge was not been confined to the peoples of the Mediterranean. For sometime in the third millennium B.C., before the building of the pyramids in Egypt, early Britons began the construction of Stonehenge. It has long been known that the orientation and structure of Stonehenge has astronomical significance; its principle axis marks the direction of sunrise at the time of the summer solstice. Hundreds of stone monuments in Scotland, England, and France have been shown to display a sophistication in astronomy far beyond that expected of the early inhabitants of these areas. Many of these same comments can be made about the astronomical significance of many New World structures, such as Carocol in Mexico.
Most ancient peoples devised an explanation for what we can loosely call the origin, structure, and evolution of the Universe, the subject matter of modern cosmology. Out of a great dark void or chaos the world was created by divine intervention. This is the story of the beginning in many ancient cosmologies. In these cosmologies we find a common thread: an inclination for people to envision their known world as the center of the Universe. This egocentric perspective later blossomed into a geocentric one; that is, the whole Earth was at the center. Ancient cosmologies were only idealized sketches against which the activities of nature took place, but few, if any, aspects of natural phenomena were actually incorporated into them. Not until many centuries later were explanations of the details of nature considered to be a necessary part of science and in particular cosmology.
In this discussion, the important question is whether or not these concerns of various early peoples are primitive beginnings on the road that ultimately leads to modern science. In spite of the apparent existence of this rudimentary scientific thinking by various peoples worldwide, scholars are unable to see how all of their diverse activities eventually merged to produce the science we recognize and practice today. For we know that much of the purpose behind the acquisition of astronomical knowledge was to produce calendars for agricultural purposes. Such purposes are really an outgrowth of the survival instinct. What we must do is to differentiate between survival activities which are on the road leading to modern technology and those activities that are an inquiry into the nature of the world. Over simplifying, we can say that, since the earliest of times, there has existed in human beings a theological-philosophical strain concerned more with the nature of our existence than simply survival as a species. And, it is possibly not unreasonable to say that science is an outgrowth of such theological-philosophical motivations. However, historical evidence still does not provide a link between such concerns and modern science. Lacking evidence to the contrary, current scholarship suggests that Greek philosophy alone is the predecessor of modern science. To most scholars it seems an inescapable conclusion that the Greeks were the originators of that method of thinking known as science.
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