THE CONTRIBUTION OF ASTRONOMY TO GENERAL 



CULTURE^ 



Edwin B. Frost 



Director Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago 



The word culture may be interpreted in such widely different 

 ways, according to the points of view of different individuals, that 

 its definition might properly be thought to be essential before I 

 proceed with my remarks. I shall forego any such preliminary, 

 however, and hope to use the term in so broad a way that it may 

 include what anyone might mean by its use — learning, knowledge, 

 or the enduring acquaintance with well-thought ideas. 



I shall also refer to some of the influences of the study of this 

 ancient branch of learning upon both the teacher and the taught, 

 and the enlargement of mental horizons which its pursuit brings 

 to those who may give much or little of their time to it. 



It may be well to approach the matter in a somewhat historical 

 manner, although progress here, as elsewhere, has not been steady, 

 but intermittent, as the genius of some man has illumined here 

 and there the pathway of knowledge. Had one the time for 

 the necessary historical investigation, I believe it would not be 

 difficult to trace the development of this or other branches of 

 learning in such a way that the lives of students should overlap, 

 in point of time, back to the earliest beginnings of recorded his- 

 tory. Thus we could picture the accretions of knowledge, and 

 often of error, as handed on from one worker to another, of very 

 different ability, in very different and perhaps distant lands, and 

 with very unequal value in their separate contributions. Thus 

 the astronomical progress of more than four centuries might be 

 represented in the linkage of the lives of eight men, as follows: 



DIED DIED 



Copernicus 1543 Newton 1727 



Apianus 1552 Halley 1742 



Tycho 1601 W. Herschel 1822 



Galileo 1612 F. G. W. Struve 1864 



1 Address delivered at the dedication of the Swasey Observatory, June 15, 1910. 



353 



