WhatisAstronomy

         How has astronomy changed over the span of human history? This question can be

answered in many ways and can sometimes be very controversial. Astronomy has been a

study in our world for eons and can go as far back as the caveman gazing at the stars in

wonder and carving into the walls what he sees and believes.

          But the farthest back recorded history of astronomy can be related as far back as

to the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramids in the shape of the constellation

Orion, as it was seen in their world at the time. The ancient Egyptians were also the ones

who introduced the 365-day year, which was adopted as a convenient unit by Greek and

medieval astronomers.

          Starting from prevailing mythological ideas, the Greeks advanced to a naturalistic

conception of the cosmos, referring celestial phenomena either to the properties of some

universal element or to a set of regulative principles to which nature was held to conform.

Pythagoras and his school conceived the earth as a sphere, and taught that the paths of the

heavenly bodies could all be resolved into uniform circular motions about the earth.

          As opposed to the results of astronomical experiments being widely accepted in our

modern world, in the past, the Catholic Church considered the study of the stars as

blasphemy and was looked upon with great disfavor, while the astronomers themselves

were often lynched and/or murdered. The Church rejected most theological ideas of the

stars, for the fact that they followed a geocentric philosophy.