What are the benefits, mechanisms and limitations of explaining, modelling and describing the material cosmos?
Answers
Ancient Greek Astronomy and Cosmology
As the stars move across the sky each night people of the world have looked up and wondered about their place in the universe. Throughout history civilizations have developed unique systems for ordering and understanding the heavens. Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers developed systems that became the basis for Greek astronomy, while societies in the Americas, China and India developed their own.
Astronomical Innovation in the Islamic World
Between the 8th and 15th centuries Islamic astronomers produced a wealth of sophisticated astronomical work. Largely through the Ptolemaic framework, they improved and refined the Ptolemaic system, compiled better tables and devised instruments that improved their ability to make observations. The extensive contributions of Islamic astronomy also exposed some weaknesses in the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian systems.
Whose Revolution?
Copernicus, Brahe & KeplerCopernicus is often described as a lone astronomer who defiantly argued that the sun, not the Earth was at the center of the cosmos. Copernicus' contributions to astronomy are so significant that they warrant their own term: The Copernican Revolution.
Galileo and the Telescope
The invention of the telescope played an important role in advancing our understanding of Earth's place in the cosmos. While there is evidence that the principals of telescopes were known in the late 16th century, the first telescopes were created in the Netherlands in 1608. Spectacle makers Hans Lippershey & Zacharias Janssen and Jacob Metius independently created telescopes. The telescope emerged from a tradition...
Intergalactic gas is so tenuous that it emits no light of its own. ... Instead astronomers study it indirectly by observing how it selectively absorbs the light coming from faraway sources known as quasars.