theconsequencesofcloudcover-philsci-archive.docVIP

THE ROLE OF ASTRONOMY IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE E B Davies June 2002 Abstract We discuss the extent to which the visibility of the heavens was a necessary condition for the development of science, with particular reference to the measurement of time. Our conclusion is that while astronomy had significant importance, the growth of most areas of science was more heavily influenced by the accuracy of scientific instruments, and hence by current technology. 1. Introduction It is undoubtedly the case that observations of the heavens were of great significance to early societies. Signs of the zodiac may be found in tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs, and many ancient monuments, from Stonehenge to the Egyptian pyramids, are thought to have been aligned with solar or other astronomical events. Astronomy occupies such a central place in the history of science that it might be thought that science would have developed much more slowly without it. In this paper we subject this intuition to a detailed examination, and come to the conclusion that the changes in the development of the physical sciences would have been surprisingly limited. We see no reason why the development of the biological sciences should have be affected one way or the other. Our main thesis is that, although the order of particular discoveries may depend upon external factors such as cloud cover, eventually the same scientific laws will be discovered. Social factors determine whether science will develop, but important scientific laws are supported by such a variety of evidence that the removal of any one form of support is, ultimately, irrelevant. Astronomical observations have had such complex interactions with the other sciences that it seemed simplest to adopt a fictional device for this study. Following an idea of Poincar(, [Poincar(, 1902], we discuss the development of science on a world called Gaia, exactly like our own except for the fact that it is permanently covered by a thin layer of