SKETCH 



PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



THE cradle of the human race was beyond 

 dispute the southern portion of Asia a delight- 

 ful climate, where the original inhabitants of 

 the earth first lived and multiplied. Chaldea 

 and India had attained a high degree of civiliza- 

 tion long before the Greeks and Romans had 

 begun to emerge from a state of barbarism ; but 

 we know comparatively little of the attainments 

 in science which these nations had reached. The 

 few facts which have been gleaned since the 

 East India Company has established its dominion 

 over Hindostan, will be stated in the course of 

 this sketch. We are equally ignorant of the 

 progress which mathematical and physical in- 

 quiries had made in China not one of the 

 treatises on Mathematics, Arithmetic, and Astro- 

 nomy in the Chinese language having been trans- 

 lated into any of the languages of modern Europe. 

 But the resemblance between the Chinese and 

 the ancient Egyptians is so very striking, and so 

 complete, that it is difficult to avoid suspecting 

 that they had a common origin. If this were so, 

 China, from its contiguity to India and Chaldea, 

 and from the delicious nature of its climate, 

 must have been first furnished with inhabitants. 

 And the Egyptians, if ever they were a colony 

 of Chinese, must have been transplanted into 

 Egypt long before the commencement of history. 

 It was from Egypt that the Greeks drew the 

 first rudiments of their mathematical and physi- 

 cal science ; and the scientific acquisitions of that 

 singular people constitute every thing that we 

 know respecting the progress which the ancients 

 had made in the investigation of nature. 



From the genial climate of the early inhabit- 

 ants of the east, and the nature of the life which 

 they led, it was natural to expect that the magni- 

 ficent spectacle of the heavens would speedily 

 attract their attention. We are certain that the 

 Chaldeans made astronomical observations at 

 least as early as the 27th and 28th years of the 

 era of Nabonasser ; that is to say, 7 1 9 and 720 



years before the commencement of the Christian 

 era : for Ptolemy makes use of three observa- 

 tions of the eclipses of the moon, which took 

 place during these years, and which he found in 

 their records. Diogenea Laertius informs us 

 that the Egyptians had preserved in their annals 

 an account of 373 eclipses of the sun, and 832 of 

 the moon, which had happened before the arrival 

 of Alexander the Great in their country. Now 

 these eclipses required between 1200 and 1300 

 years to happen. Alexander's visit to Egypt 

 took place in the year 331 before the Christian 

 era. If we add this number to the length of 

 time during which the Egyptians continued to 

 observe the eclipses of the sun and moon, we 

 obtain 1631 years before the commencement of 

 the Christian era for the period at which the 

 Egyptians began to record their observations. 

 This period is rather more than a century after 

 the death of Moses, and is about twenty-four 

 years before the institution of the Olympic games ; 

 constituting but a small part of the 48,863 years 

 during which they boasted that they had been 

 engaged in making astronomical observations. 

 But this was obviously a fable, invented for the 

 purpose of raising themselves in the opinion of 

 the Macedonian conqueror. 



What progress the Chaldeans and Egyptians 

 had made in astronomy, it is hard to say. They 

 certainly had become acquainted with the planets, 

 but whether the Egyptians had discovered, as 

 Macrobius assures us, that Mercury and Venus 

 revolve round the sun, is not so clear. Their 

 notions respecting the length of the solar year, 

 and the mean length of a lunation, must have 

 been a near approximation to the truth. This 

 is evident from the famous Chaldean period 

 called Saros~\ It consisted of 223 lunar months, 

 at the end of which the sun and moon were in 

 the same situation with respect to each other, as 

 when the period began. This period includes a 

 certain number of eclipses of each luminary? 



