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Video lecture for this chapter
This chapter covers the development of western astronomy and modern science. I focus on the rise of modern science in Europe, from the ancient Greeks to Isaac Newton. Other cultures were also quite interested and skilled in astronomy (the Mayans, Egyptians, peoples of India and China come immediately to mind), but the Greeks were the first ones to try to explain how the universe worked in a logical, systematic manner using models and observations. Modern astronomy (and all of science) has its roots in the Greek tradition. If you would like a more thorough discussion of the history of astronomy than what I will present here, please take a look at Science and the Human Prospect by Ronald Pine. I will give dates of when certain persons lived and worked to give you some reference points in the long history of astronomy. Don't worry about memorizing the dates. What is more important is to see the development of ideas and methods of modern science.
In this chapter and the next, I include atlases of the world from the time periods discussed in the text. You can see from these pictures that as people explored places beyond their home, their view and knowledge of the world and universe expanded and improved. Very often, revolutionary leaps in the understanding of how the universe works happened at the same time that explorers were sparking people's imaginations with their stories of the fascinating new places they had been to. Links to the sites from which the photographs came are embedded in the images. Select the picture to go to the site. The vocabulary terms are in boldface.
last updated: February 12, 2026