Early Astronomy (Springer Study Edition) - Softcover

Thurston, Hugh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0387948228 ISBN 13: 9780387948225

Publisher: Springer, 1996

Synopsis

People must have watched the skies from time immemorial. Human beings have always shown intellectual curiosity in abundance, and before the invention of modern distractions people had more time-and more mental energy-to devote to stargazing than we have. Megaliths, Chinese oracle bones, Babylonian clay tablets, and Mayan glyphs all yield evi­ dence of early peoples' interest in the skies. To understand early astronomy we need to be familiar with various phenomena that could-and still can-be seen in the sky. For instance, it seems that some early people were interested in the points on the horizon where the moon rises or sets and marked the directions of these points with megaliths. These directions go through a complicated cycle-much more complicated than the cycle of the phases of the moon from new to full and back to new, and more complicated than the cycle of the rising and setting directions of the sun. Other peoples were interested in the irregular motions of the planets and in the way in which the times of rising of the various stars varied through the year, so we need to know about these phenomena, i. e. , about retrogression and about heliacal rising, to usc the technical terms. The book opens with an explanation of these matters. Early astronomers did more than just gaze in awe at the heavenly bodies; they tried to understand the complex details of their movements. By 300 H. C.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The earliest investigations that can be called scientific are concerned with the sky; they are the beginnings of astronomy. Many early civilizations produced astronomical texts, and several cultures that left no written records left monuments and artifacts - ranging from rock paintings to Stonehenge - that show a clear interest in astronomy. Civilizations in China, Mesopotamia, India, and Greece had highly developed astronomies, and the astronomy of the Mayas was by no means negligible. Greek astronomy, as developed by medieval Arab philosophers, evolved into the astronomy of Copernicus. This displaced the Earth from the stationary central position that almost all earlier astronomies had assumed. Soon thereafter, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, Kepler found the true shape of the planetary orbits and Galileo introduced the telescope for astronomical observations. This book covers the history of astronomy from its earliest beginnings to this point, which marks the beginning of modern instrumental and mathematical astronomy. The work of earlier astronomers, of all civilizations, remains as a triumph of the human intellect.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0387948228
• ISBN 13: 9780387948225
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 278