354 Edwin B. Frost 



It remains to me a singular fact that astronomy should have 

 been one of the oldest of the sciences, even in superstitious 

 ages. We should naturally think in the first place of agriculture 

 meteorology, anatomj^ and medicine, for instance, as subjects 

 much nearer at hand than star-lore. I am inclined to think that 

 the Chaldean shepherds have been overworked, that their con- 

 templation of the nocturnal skies may have been a secondary 

 rather than a primary concern with them. Is it not possible that 

 we owe as much to the hardy venturers upon uncharted seas, 

 whose course could be set only by the sun and stars, when familiar 

 landmarks of the coast had disappeared from view? 



But, whatever the cause, the fact remains that the early philos- 

 ophy concerned itself with astronomy to a degree which, even 

 an astronomer may admit, was disproportionate to the benefits 

 it was conferring upon humanity. Thales, among the earliest of 

 the Greek philosophers, was seeking for fundamentals and specu- 

 lating on causes. Both the unchangeable character of the starry 

 skies, and, contrariwise, the variations in them, caused by time and 

 seasons, stimulated speculation. Pythagoras perhaps anticipated 

 by centuries the later knowledge of the rotation and revolution of 

 the earth. With a singular detachment of mind from the immedi- 

 ately practical problems, the ultimate origins and causes were 

 sought. Thus the culture of those ages was deeply impressed by 

 astronomy, as interpreted by the philosophers of each period. 

 With the advent of Hipparchus, the greatest astronomer of antiq- 

 uity, in the second century before Christ, there was introduced 

 the sound principle of basing the science upon observations, 

 rather than upon general ideas of a speculative nature. How 

 hard his successors have found it to follow in that simple but 

 severe test of theory by fact! 



The dignity thus given to our subject by its occupying the 

 attention of some of the strongest intellects of the successive ages 

 was further maintained by the favor with which it was regarded 

 by temporal rulers, by princes of secular and ecclesiastical rank. 

 It is obvious that a clear thinker like Julius Caesar did not have 

 an astronomer near him for reasons of superstition, for astrological 

 interpretations, but because he needed his services in reforming the 

 calendar. In the ninth centurj^, A.D., we find the Caliph of 

 Bagdad, Al-Mamon, son of Haroun el Raschid, preserving to the 

 world the works of Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy by causing their 



