Early races believed that the earth was flat and stationary, with the sky rotating round it once a day. The early races also believed things that sound weird to us today like the Vedic priests of India believed that the earth was supported upon 12 massive pillars and during the hours of darkness the sun travelled between these pillars without hitting them. The Hindu theory sounds even more peculiar as they believed that earth stood on the back of four elephants, which in turn the elephants stood on the shell of a gigantic tortoise, the tortoise however was supported upon a serpent floating in a limitless sea. All these beliefs had mistakes in the beginning, but as more people tried to explore astronomy, their observations and records became of more value.
Most likely, the first astronomers were Chinese as they adopted a year of 365 days, which enabled them to work out a calendar, and from this they were able to predict eclipses. The Chinese did not just record eclipses, they also recorded comets as so did the Egyptians, but both civilisations were puzzled to what the phenomena meant, and they probably regarded the phenomena as being part of astrology.
The early Egyptians were extremely skilful at measuring the positions of the stars as they built the Great Pyramid that lined up with the north pole of the sky. This is important as it gave a clue to how old the Pyramid was.
About 600 years before Christ, came the great Greek astronomers. Thales was the first of the great Greek astronomers, he was born in about the year 624 B.C and died around about 546 B.C, as well as being a philosopher, he too studied the stars but he went further and tried to explain what he saw. Next was Aristotle who was a famous philosopher who lived from about 384 to 322 B.C. He proclaimed that the earth was not flat but a sphere, he also argued about earth being at the centre of the universe. Aristarchus who lived from 310 to 230 B.C, he concluded that the sun was bigger than the earth, and the moon smaller than the earth, he also suggested that the earth revolved around the sun. Another great astronomer was Eratosthenes he lived from 276 to 194 B.C, Eratosthenes worked out the size of the earth he also was in charge of the great library in Alexandria, where most of the observations and records were kept, but the library was later destroyed.
In his book, Repcheck recounts how a Catholic Church cleric invented a highly complicated theory of the heavens’ architecture. Copernicus made a breakthrough by solving a significant astronomical problem. Everybody except the astronomers had earlier accepted Aristotle’s concept that heavenly objects revolved around the earth in perfectly circular orbits. The astronomers were opposed to this notion since their calculations could not work according to it. Repcheck introduces Ptolemy who described a cosmos in which the earth positioned itself somewhat off-center and other heavenly bodies revolved in one circular orbit inside a second ideal circle at changeable speeds. Even though Ptolemy’s model was rather complicated, astronomers found it to be reasonable in their calculations. Astronomers were still using this new concept even 1500 years later. In this regard, the author starts to bring Copernicus into the picture.
The surest foundation for the origin of science in its practical form is to be found in the ìco–rdination and standardization of the knowledge of common sense and of industry.î[1] One of the first occurrences of this co–rdination can be traced back to 2500 BCE in the form of edicts from the ancient Babylonian rulers, who issued royal standards of length, weight and capacity. Non-Semitic Sumerians also laid down the elements of mathematics and geometry at that time, making use of fractions, decimals, circles and radial angles. But knowledge as we know it today was tightly woven with magical notions, and as both spread westward they instilled in European thought a reverence for ìspecial numbers, their connections to the gods and the application of geometrical diagrams to the prediction of the future.î[2] As well, the ancient Babylonians were fascinated by the heavens. They were the first to make a map of the stars and associate them with animals like the Ram, Crab and Scorpion, names that we still use to this day. They also realized the periodicity and reliability of astronomical movement and phenomena, and were soon able to predict many of them. Tablets have been found dating to the sixth century BCE that predicted the relative positions of the sun and moon, as well as forecasted the occurrences of eclipses.[3] Out of all this knowledge the Babylonians built up a fantastic system of astrology, through which the starsówhich were thought to fix and foretell the course of human affairsówould give up their secrets.
Copernicus was a Polish astronomer born in 1473, in Thorn, Poland and died in 1543. He entered the University of Krakow in 1491 and studied there for four years. In 1496 he joined the University of Bologna in Italy to study church law and studied astronomy on his own time. He was asked to make a new calendar using the geocentric theory, the theory that the sun and moon orbit the earth. He found several flaws with this system and was bothered by it and went on to discover that the planets actually orbit the sun. Galileo supported Copernicus’ theory when he made discoveries with the telescope. We consider Copernicus to be the founder of modern Astronomy.
...eir records by building structures that would observe the sun. the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming dates to AD 1400 to 1700. Lines drawn between major markings on the wheel point to the location of solstice sunrises and sunsets and also toward the rising point of the three brightest stars that rise before the sun in the summer. About fifty medicine wheels have been discovered, several are thousands of years. Many of them have the same alignment as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico two spirals carved into the rock by the prehistoric Anasazi can be used as a calendar. A dagger of light penetrates the shadow of adjacent rocks. The dagger moves with the sun to different locations on the spiral.the full pattern also reflects the 18.6 year cycle of the moon as well as the yearly cycle of the sun. The ancient Native Americans were not sophisticated astronomers in the sense of coherent theory behind the movements of heavenly objects, their level of understanding of the time cycles of the sun, moon and planets was great. The methods for recording and keeping track of the seasonal movements was clever and displays a cultural richness that varies from tribe to tribe.
In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish Canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs”. The popular view is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. The notion is as old as the ancient Greeks however. This work was entrusted by Copernicus to Osiander, a staunch Protestant who though the book would most likely be condemned and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander therefore wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory which would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did, one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens--something Copernicus did not intend. The preface was unsigned, and everyone took it to be the author’s. That Copernicus believed the helioocentric theory to be a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. In addition to the preface, this was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of motion.
Astronomic theories are known as Pre-copernican. Before Copernicus, the widely accepted astronomical theory was known as the geocentric model and was the theory that the earth is the center of the unive...
Before the time of Copernicus, people had extremely different views of the universe. A Greek astronomer named Ptolemy had his own theory of the earth and its relationship with the sun and other planets. Around 140 AD, he came up with a system that showed the earth at the center of the universe with the sun and planets revolving around it in a spherical shape (Reichenbach 15-17). Ptolemy also believed that the earth remained still and that the outermost sphere contained the stars, which were fixed in space (Westman).
Ancient Pueblo Indians had a great understanding of astronomy. All of the pueblos in the canyon were aligned to match the movements of the sun and moon. Also, they marked their complexes with daggers and spirals to keep up with the moon cycles and sun movements. The film explains that the moon moves north for nearly ten years and then south for about ten years. To fully understand this cycle of the moon, Pueblo people had to study it for years in order to build their Pueblos in relations to it. The sun however, was different because it set and rose in the same position. The concept of building structures in an astronomical pattern this complex cannot be found anywhere else.
Mathematics and astronomy are very closely related. It is the mathematical procedures which help define time and space. However, Greek culture plays a role too. With a Greek mindset one would be restricted to believing that the universe is composed of perfect circles. This idea is rooted in Plato and Aristotle’s work. Plato believed that the celestial bodies were godly because their motion was consistent, whereas the Earth is always changing. Plato believed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe and all the celestial bodies orbited around it on perfect uniform circular paths. He chose a circular path because circles have no corners or edges. They are continuous like the motion of the planets (Cassidy, 9).
Thousands of years ago, ancient people looked up at the night sky and spotted unfamiliar objects in the sky, known as stars. Some people saw the stars as a tool to navigate at night and to keep up with the seasons. Others were completely clueless about what the stars were and why there were up in the sky. This eventually led to curiosity and the beginning of astronomy. The very first astronomers grouped stars into constellations, which basically is connecting the stars to make an imaginary outline of people, object, or animals. This allowed the astronomers to keep track of the movement of the planets and the sun, which allowed them to create the very first accurate calendar to know when it was the right time to harvest and plant.
Hipparchus is thought to be the greatest astronomer of ancient times, but he rejected the heliocentric system of Aristarchus, he did not reject it on a religious opinion, but on a scientific one.
Astronomy is a very important field in science. Ancient Greece, China, and India all contributed to our everyday ideas and uses of astronomy. Ancient Greece was the most influential because the Indian’s based most of their astronomy off of Greece. The Greeks created calendars that were based off of the eclipse cycle, which they called by two different names, Hellenic Calendars and Lunisolar Calendars. Because of Ancient Greece, we now have calendars to keep us on track every day. The Greeks observed a celestial object passing through the eastern and western morning sky. After a long time of observations, they came to a realization that it was a planet and now that is the planet is well known as Venus. (Sarton, 75) Plato and Aristotle’s theories were incredible contributions on us today. Both of their theories were all about the behavior and life of the planets, such as their theory that the earth is spherical. (Sarton, 421). Ancient Greece als...
One thing us as humans have never been able to fully understand is astronomy. Always having an unexplained mystery, astronomy also has served as a way to keep time and predict the future. The word “astronomy” is defined as the study of heavenly bodies, meaning anything in the sky such as stars, galaxies, comets, planets, nebulae, and so on. Many people, if not everyone, is amazed by the night sky on a clear, moonless night.
Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were the center of everything, ultimately causing people to question theology’s role in science and sparking the idea that people were capable of reasoning for themselves.
Physics began when man first started to study his surroundings. Early applications of physics include the invention of the wheel and of primitive weapons. The people who built Stone Henge had knowledge of physical mechanics in order to move the rocks and place them on top of each other. It was not until during the period of Greek culture that the first systematic treatment of physics started with the use of mechanics. Thales is often said to have been the first scientist, and the first Greek philosopher. He was an astronomer, merchant and mathematician, and after visiting Egypt he is said to have originated the science of deductive geometry. He also discovered theorems of elementary geometry and is said to have correctly predicted an eclipse of the sun. Many of his studies were in astronomy but he also observed static electricity. Phythogoras was a Greek philosopher. He discovered simple numerical ratios relating the musical tones of major consonances, to the length of the strings used in sounding them. The Pythagorean theorem was named after him, although this fundamental statements of deductive geometry was most likely first an idea from Egyptian methods of measurements. With the help of his followers he discovered that the earth was a sphere, but he did not believe it revolved around the sun.