Astronomy in the Ancient World: Early and Modern Views on Celestial Events

235 Pages·2016·4.7 MB·English

by  Alexus McLeod

Historical & Cultural Astronomy
Series Editor: Butler Burton
Alexus McLeod
Astronomy in
the Ancient World
Early and Modern Views
on Celestial Events
Historical & Cultural Astronomy
Historical & Cultural Astronomy
EDITORIAL BOARD
Chairman
W. BUTLER BURTON, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville,
Virginia, USA ([email protected]); University of Leiden, The Netherlands,
([email protected])
JAMES EVANS, University of Puget Sound, USA
MILLER GOSS, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA
JAMES LEQUEUX, Observatoire de Paris, France
SIMON MITTON, St. Edmund’s College Cambridge University, UK
WAYNE ORCHISTON, National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand,
Thailand
MARC ROTHENBERG, AAS Historical Astronomy Division Chair, USA
VIRGINIA TRIMBLE, University of California Irvine, USA
XIAOCHUN SUN, Institute of History of Natural Science, China
GUDRUN WOLFSCHMIDT, Institute for History of Science and Technology,
Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15156
Alexus McLeod
Astronomy in the Ancient
World
Early and Modern Views on Celestial Events
123
AlexusMcLeod
University of Connecticut
Storrs,CT
USA
ISSN 2509-310X ISSN 2509-3118 (electronic)
Historical & Cultural Astronomy
ISBN978-3-319-23599-8 ISBN978-3-319-23600-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-23600-1
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Acknowledgements
I owe thanks to many people, all of whom have helped me learn and attain some
small amount of understanding in a field in which I received no formal training.
I first and foremost thank those astronomers, historians, and other scholars who I
have relied on to help me through the thickets of the material. I am a scholar who
has wandered out of my own academic backyard and into theirs, and they have
displayedadmirablepatiencewithmyfumbling,misunderstandings,andignorance.
While there have been many people who have guided and assisted me in this
project, I want to point out a few in particular. I would like to thank Cheri Adams
andthestaffoftheAstronomyDepartmentattheBoonshoftMuseumofDiscovery
inDayton,Ohio,fortheirwonderfulpublicoutreachandforhelpingtorekindlean
interest in astronomy that had been dormant for years. Thanks also to the Miami
Valley Astronomical Society, Mound Science and Energy Museum, and the
Northern Colorado Astronomical Society, whose members offered me valuable
feedback on various parts of what became this book. This book would have been
impossible without the hard work and dedication of the people who preserve the
amazing historical sites and artifacts of our shared human history, including the
Cahokia Mounds Museum Society and the SunWatch Indian Village staff—espe-
cially site manager Andrew Sawyer and Curator of Anthropology Bill Kennedy,
whosavedmefromafewboneheadedmistakes,themembersoftheArchaeological
Survey of India tasked with maintaining such a difficult site in a difficult city as
Delhi’sJantarMantar,andthestaffoftheAdlerPlanetariuminChicago,oneofmy
favorite places on the Earth. Thanks also to my friend Leanne Martin, whose
conversations about cultural astronomy through the years have helped me to think
through much of this, and her husband Christopher Martin of Caltech, whose
conversations about the GALEX discoveries and enthusiasm for astronomical
discoveryinspiredmetoconcludethesection oncontemporaryastronomywithan
account of his work. I would also like to thank a reviewer for Springer, whose
insightfulcomments and suggestionsbothsaved mefrom a numberof (sometimes
egregious) mistakes and helped me to further think through a number of issues.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Finally,thankstomytwosons,SiddhuandFrancis,whosecuriosityaboutthestars
motivatedme tolearn more in order toteach them andencourage them nottolose
thatfascination.Thisbookisdedicatedtomyparents, GustavusAriusMcLeodand
Mary Alice McLeod, who instilled my love of learning, and who never gave up,
even though they had every right to.
Contents
1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Part I Watchers of the Sun
2 The Americas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Cahokia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Mesoamerica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Maya Cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1054 for the Maya: Some Speculations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Mississippian Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3 Supernova–Cataclysm in the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
SN 1054 Elsewhere in the World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The Philosophy of Time—On Time, the Nature of Time,
and Its Changing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Part II The Celestial Empire
4 The Chinese World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The Celestial Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Astronomy and the Fall of the “New” Dynasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Early Chinese Cosmology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chinese Astronomical Systems and Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5 Comet—A Sea of Dust and Ice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Historical Comets and Their Effects on Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
The Philosophy of Unification in Early China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
vii
viii Contents
Part III Calculation of Astronomical Wonders
6 India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Eating the Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Early Indian Astronomy—Vedic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Siddhantic Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Indian Cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Islamic Thought and Astronomy, and Its Influence on India . . . . . . . . 149
Return to Jai Singh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7 Eclipse—Shadows and Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Eclipses in History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Part IV The Perfection of the Spheres
8 Europe and the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Pre Greco-Roman Astronomy in Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Stonehenge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Goseck Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Newgrange. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Astronomy in Ancient Greece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Ptolemy and the Spheres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
The Problems of Ptolemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Visions of Change—Brahe and Kepler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
9 Contemporary Astronomical Thought. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Ultraviolet Astronomy-Mira’s Tail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Cosmic Background Radiation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
The Philosophy of Two-World Naturalism and the Future
of Astronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Chapter 1
Introduction
I am an eager student of the history of astronomy in general. I’ve devoured books
onthegreatsoftheWest—PtolemyandCopernicus,visionariessuchasBraheand
Kepler, geniuses such as Newton and Herschel, and the revolutionaries of modern
astronomy such as Einstein, Hoyle, and others. But through most of my years of
studyIhadhardlyeverencounteredanyinformationaboutastronomydoneoutside
of the European and American West. In the histories of astronomy I encountered,
Non-Westernastronomywasgenerallyrelegatedtoafewparagraphsatbest,about
how “pre-scientific” cultures viewed and understood the sky. It would be easy to
concludefromsuchreadingthatthescientificstudyofastronomybeganinandwas
limitedtotheWest.Strangelyenough,itwasmyreadinginphilosophythatopened
up to me the world of Non-Western astronomy and showed me its true extent and
its purpose.
Years ago, I read a book by Zhou Guidian, Professor of Philosophy at Beijing
NormalUniversity,onQinandHanPhilosophy.Oneofmyareasofspecialization
withinphilosophyisHandynastyChinesephilosophy.OnthebasisofsomeworkI
have done in this area, I was been approached by a colleague in China to write a
reviewforaprofessionaljournalonProfessorZhou’sbook.Itookonthetask,and
during my reading, I came across the following line:
In order to fully understand traditional Chinese philosophy, it is necessary to understand
traditionalChineseastronomy.1
Atthetime,eventhoughIhadbeenanenthusiastofthehistoryofphilosophyas
well as an amateur astronomer for a long time, I thought this was completely
wrongheaded. We can, I thought, understand and engage with different modes of
thought and different areas independently. Indeed, in my review of Professor
Zhou’s book I wrote something along these lines. I soon began to think more
criticallyaboutthisview,however.ForsomereasonZhou’squoteaboutastronomy
stayed with me well after I finished the review and had moved on to other issues
and other works. I occasionally reflected on it, and thought about the divisions in
our own academic world. We often see areas of thought as discrete and separate
1Zhou2006,190.Translationismyown.
©SpringerInternationalPublishingSwitzerland2016 1
A.McLeod,AstronomyintheAncientWorld,
Historical&CulturalAstronomy,DOI10.1007/978-3-319-23600-1_1