the Chaldeans, among the Babylonians, made many observations 

 of the varying aspects of the sky, and records, dating from the reign 

 of Sardon of Akkad, 3800 B.C., show, thus early, star groups had 

 been formed, and that the zodiac, a word which, etymologically, 

 suggestively enough means live things, had been determined. 



When one turns from these investigations to those with a similar 

 content, which were carried on in Greece, he does not find, as some 

 would claim, an entirely new attitude among the investigators. 

 In the earlier nations, observation was most careful and painstaking, 

 facts were collected and classified, while conclusions, in the form of 

 different theories, were in many cases very well drawn, and the 

 Greeks followed this same method. The development was quite 

 normal. There was no great intellectual revolution. The time 

 has gone by when men look back upon the Greeks as the pioneers 

 of all art, literature and science. Recent excavations and re- 

 searches have enabled men to see that the Greeks, in the main, 

 continued and developed what, had already been commenced by 

 older nations; to have done so, and to have accomplished that task 

 so successfully was a great achievement, but it is a mistake to 

 attribute to the Greeks the origination of all art and science. In 

 astronomy, perhaps more than in other sciences, they borrowed 

 much from other peoples. The information, which we have about 

 the earliest Greek astronomer, is derived from Herodotus, b. 480 

 B.C. Thales had, according to the tradition registered by Hero- 

 dotus, visited Egypt, and in the opinion of Gomperz, had probably 

 familiarized himself in Sardis with the elements of Babylonian 

 wisdom, from which he learned something, no doubt, of the period- 

 icity of eclipses. The tradition, which ascribes to him the fore- 

 telling of an eclipse of the sun in May 585 B.C. is at any rate 

 fairly well-accredited. Other reports say that he learned from the 

 Egyptians the length of the year, the signs of the Zodiac, and the 

 position of the solstices. Passing over Anaximander, who made 

 some attempts to estimate the size of the sun and moon relatively 

 to the earth, one comes next to the school of Pythagoras. The 

 founder of the school had himself visited Egypt, but how much 

 of the speculations of Pythagoras and his followers is due to Egyp- 

 tian influence, it is impossible to tell. The earlier astronomical 

 speculations of the school, important among which was that of the 



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