Astronomy

Since the dawn of humanity, the motion of the sun, moon, and stars has both intrigued humans and been instrumental in helping impose order on time through the creation of lunar, solar, and luni-solar calendars. Numerous ancient cultures in diverse geographic locations devised sophisticated calendars based on astronomical observations to regulate events within their societies such as crop planting, tides, religious rites, and ceremonies. The nomenclature used to name the days of the week and the months in numerous ancient calendars such as the Hindu, Hebrew, and Old Norse calendars indicates that the ancients were well aware of the motions of numerous planets in addition to the lunar and solar cycles, which in turn were intricately linked to their mythologies and cosmologies. It can safely be said that nearly every culture in the history of humanity has used astronomical observations to regulate life. Archeological artifacts of ancient societies, such as the Mayans, Incas, Celts, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Islamic, Indians, and Chinese, among others, which are part of our shared heritage and found to date in numerous locations around the world, bear a testament to the intricate connection of astronomy and the advancement of human life.

The study of astronomy can be viewed as a truly interdisciplinary area of inquiry at the intersection of the humanities, science, and mathematics, because it relies on systematic observation, documentation, and charting of the skies as a consequence of the economic, sociopolitical, theological, or cosmological needs of a particular society. The voyages of the ancient and modern mariners across the oceans were as much driven by the curiosity to explore what lay beyond the horizon, as by the human penchant for trade and conquest. Polynesian and Phoenician sailors were able to go back and forth across oceans nearly 2,500 years before the advent of current global positioning technology as a result of their sophisticated navigation abilities that relied on astronomical calculations while observing known constellations and the North Star to calculate positions on the open oceans in such voyages. The history of science bears copious evidence that astronomy as a field of inquiry attracted the most gifted of human minds from all societies, from the ancient Greeks to Hindu astronomers and Islamic geometers who created the branch of mathematics known as spherical geometry. The vernacular of astronomy is replete with words of Arabic, Sanskrit, and Greek origin as historic evidence of the contributions of the geometers from these societies. In the next section, the development of astronomy beginning with the work of Ptolemy (c. 87–150 CE) is outlined.