74 -4 Short History of Astronomy [CH. 11. 



54. It remains to attempt to estimate briefly the value of 

 the contributions to astronomy made by the Greeks and of 

 their method of investigation. It is obviously unreasonable 

 to expect to find a brief formula which will characterise the 

 scientific attitude of a series of astronomers whose lives 

 extend over a period of eight centuries ; and it is futile 

 to explain the inferiority of Greek astronomy to our own on 

 some such ground as that they had not discovered the method 

 of induction, that they were not careful enough to obtain 

 facts, or even that their ideas were not clear. In habits 

 of thought and scientific aims the contrast between Pytha- 

 goras and Hipparchus is probably greater than that between 

 Hipparchus on the one hand and Coppernicus or even 

 Newton on the other, while it is not unfair to say that the 

 fanciful ideas which pervade the work of even so great a 

 discoverer as Kepler (chapter VIL, 144, 151) place his 

 scientific method in some respects behind that of his great 

 Greek predecessor. 



The Greeks inherited from their predecessors a number 

 of observations, many of them executed with considerable 

 accuracy, which were nearly sufficient for the requirements 

 of practical life, but in the matter of astronomical theory 

 and speculation, in which their best thinkers were very 

 much more interested than in the detailed facts, they 

 received virtually a blank sheet. on which they had to write 

 (at first with indifferent success) their speculative ideas. 

 A considerable interval of time was obviously necessary to 

 bridge over the gulf separating such data as the eclipse 

 observations of the Chaldaeans from such ideas as the 

 harmonical spheres of Pythagoras ; and the necessary 

 theoretical structure could not be erected without the use 

 of mathematical methods which had gradually to be in- 

 vented. That the Greeks, particularly in early times, paid 

 little attention to making observations, is true enough, but 

 it may fairly be doubted whether the collection of fresh 

 material for observations would really have carried 

 astronomy much beyond the point reached by the 

 Chaldaean observers. When once speculative ideas, made 



fuel for the furnaces of the public baths is rejected by Gibbon and 

 others. One good reason for not accepting it is that by this time 

 there were probably very few books left to burn. 



