945 



this the data were available — in later cenliiries they certainly 

 were — it would first be necessarj' that someone should conceive 

 the idea of compiling a continuous list of this sort and moreover 

 of looking for a period in it, only then would he staTid before a 

 problem of the same nature, although more difficult, as the one 

 we proposed above. "It is quite another thing, however, even to 

 arrive at the idea that the eclipses would return periodically, and 

 yet another to deduce the suspected law from a series of obsei-- 

 vations. The inadequate appreciation of these things amongst us is due 

 to the fact that to-day we are so much accustomed to the discovery 

 of new natural laws that it is difficult for us, to place ourselves in 

 the position of those who did the first pioneer work in the field of 

 natural science." (Kugler p. 67). Indeed, it may be said that a snper- 

 human genius was necessary for this, capable of conceiving, as it 

 were from nothing, scientific aims and scientific methods in a world 

 which did not yet know the meaning of science, and of applying them. 



Looked at from this point of view it is not surprising that in 

 the Assyrian period nothing should be known of a saros pei-iod. 

 Indeed we should wonder that the saros could ever be discovered. 

 But this is only true if it had to be found in the way indicated 

 here. This cannot, however, be the way in which science arose. 

 Practical rules and regularities were first discovered, which 

 obtruded itself to the mind through experience, found without 

 intention or consciousness of scientific aim ; much later from this 

 the theoretical idea of regularity and periodicity in nature was formed, 

 and the intentional search for them. If, therefore, we do not want to 

 regard the origin of science as a miraculous creation, such a 

 discovery as that of finding the saros may be conceived only as a 

 gradual process, as the outcome of many steps each of which 

 followed naturally and spontaneously from the former and in which 

 several succeeding generations took part. 



Whenever the prediction of eclipses is under consideration, the 

 saros is always thought of, as if it were the only means available 

 for this purpose. But there are other simpler and less perfect rules, 

 which could be more easily discovered, and which were therefore 

 certainly detected and made use of before the saros was known. 

 They may be regarded as the precursors from which in the course 

 of time the saros was developed. This development would thus fall 

 in the centuries during which the astrological practice of the Ass}'- 

 rian period gradually grew to the height of astronomical science 

 which it reached under the Seleucides and Arsacides — that is in 

 the Babylonian-Persian period (6''' and 5^'' centuries B.C.). 



