Concept

Astronomy

Overview

Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is the branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole.

Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the past, astronomy included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy, and the making of calendars.

Astronomy is one of the few sciences in which amateurs play an active role. This is especially true for the discovery and observation of transient events. Amateur astronomers have helped with many important discoveries, such as finding new comets.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Astronomy is discussed.

We might indeed speak to them of navigation, of which no one can underestimate the importance, and which has need of astronomy. But this would be to take the question by its smaller side. Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand; that is what we should say. It shows us how small is man's body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
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For they had no other means of connecting the appearances together than by supposing the motions which produced them, to be, in reality, perfectly regular and equable. The history of Astronomy, therefore, gives an account of a greater number of theories invented for connecting together the motions of the Moon, than for connecting together those of all the other heavenly bodies taken together. The theory of gravity…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
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But the modern science of planetary Astronomy consists of deductions from the law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies _necessarily_ occupy certain places at certain times. Now, the kind of relation which thus exists between ancient and modern Astronomy is analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the Expediency-Morality and Moral Science, properly so called. And the…
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics
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The source of the first fundamental truths of astronomy is, however, properly induction, that is, the comprehension of what is given in many perceptions in one true and directly founded judgment. From this, hypotheses are afterwards constructed, and their confirmation by experience, as induction approaching to completeness, affords the proof of the first judgment.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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This is already known to be the case with the first of the sciences we have mentioned, astronomy; that it is not generally recognized as true of the others, is probably one of the reasons why they are not in a more advanced state. § 4. If what is called pure observation is at so great a disadvantage, compared with artificial experimentation, in one department of the direct exploration of phenomena, there is another…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
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Astronomy

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Astronomy

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition