What is The Story of the Earth
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| What is The Story of the Earth |
To get any right ideas about the earth we live on, we had to find out what this earth really is. We learned that this firm, motionless ground on which we walk is the cool outside of a great globe; and that this globe spins daily on itself, making night and day, and moves yearly round the sun, making the seasons.
We had to trace the way in which men learned how to correct the evidence of their senses, which seem to say very plainly that the earth does not move, and that the sun does, and then, when we knew what the earth really is, we could go on to study the stuff of which it is made, and the way in which it changes and does things from moment to moment.
Now, it is always true that if we are really to understand anything we must study not only the thing itself, but also what is around it. We cannot understand a part of any great whole until we understand something, at least, of that whole. We cannot even understand ourselves unless we study the conditions of our lives, our parents and schools, what we read, the air we breathe, the things we hear people say, and so on. And in the case of the earth we can never hope to understand it unless we study the great world of which it is really a very tiny part.
This study is known as astronomy — the word means the law of the stars — and it is in many ways, though not in all, the most marvelous of all the sciences.
I think it is right in this case, as it is in every case, that we should begin by a very short history of men's knowledge of astronomy.
It is probably the oldest of the sciences. Men were always interested in the weather, in changes of climate, and in the sun, which plainly has so much to do with what happens in the sky around us. The sun and moon were closely watched by men, probably, before anything else at all. Also the stars are far more brilliant when they are seen through the clear air of warmer countries than ours, such as Arabia and Egypt; and as they seem to be fixed they can guide men on the sea and on land. Thus, astronomy was useful from the first, as it is useful to-day, though most of us have no idea how useful it is. So it comes about that we find proof of astronomical knowledge long ages ago, even thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
This is specially true of the East, more especially of Western Asia and Egypt; but it is also true of Great Britain, for Stonehenge proves at this day that definite facts had been learned about the movements of the sun sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. This we learn by noting the way in which this ancient temple was built; and we find that it was not only a temple for worship, but also an observatory for the observation of the sun, moon, and stars.
The names of most of the sciences, we know, end in ology, and we might expect the name of the science of the stars — using the word stars to include all the bright objects in the heavens — to be astrology. We use the word astronomy, however, to distinguish this real science from an unreal science which came before it, and which was called astrology.
THE ALCHEMISTS AND ASTROLOGERS WHO BEGAN THE STUDY OF THE EARTH
If we turn to the great science of chemistry we find exactly the same thing. Before what we now call chemistry came into existence there was an unreal science called alchemy — which is really the same word. The alchemists were searching for the philosopher's stone that was to turn everything into gold, and for the elixir of life that was to turn or keep everybody young. The alchemists were foolish in looking for these things, and they were almost always wrong in the way in which they interpreted the results of their experiments. But we could not have modern chemistry if there had been no alchemists. They were patient men who made numberless experiments and noted numberless facts. They laid the foundation of chemistry, and though they were wrong in their objects, and wrong in their ideas of the meaning of what they noticed, yet we profit in a thousand ways by their discoveries to-day.
And, just as every modern chemist is indebted to the alchemists, so every modern astronomer is indebted to the astrologers. We could not have had our modern astronomy but for them. They, too, like the alchemists, were eager and patient men, and they observed thousands of facts about the heavenly bodies.
THE STRANGE THINGS MEN THOUGHT LONG AGO ABOUT THE STARS
They were wrong in the way in which they interpreted those facts, but a fact is a fact for ever, and since it is part of truth, is a part of true science; nor does it matter, in the long run, that the man who observed it misunderstood it — whether sincerely or dishonestly.
We find in the early history of every race and nation that we can trace a kind of astrology — that is to say, a study of the stars in the belief that they controlled the fates of men. Egypt and Persia, Arabia and Greece, the Chinese and the Hindoos all contributed to astrology, and so when civilization began in Europe it took over these ideas from the first. They flourished for thousands of years, and even to-day we can buy for a nickel foolish almanacs which pretend to predict what will happen on the earth by studying the stars.
The astrologers took those of the planets that they knew, and connected human characters with them. Venus had something to do with love, they thought; Mars with war, and so on. They divided up the sky into various parts, and supposed that when a certain planet entered a certain part of the sky corresponding results would occur for human happenings, especially for anyone who was born just at the moment when that particular part of the sky happened to be going to rise above the horizon.
ERRORS OF THE PAST WERE THE PARENTS OF THE TRUTH WE KNOW TO-DAY
We know now that all this was nonsense; but it would be very foolish and vain for us to imagine that we would have thought so if we had lived in those days. One of the most difficult things in the world is for any of us to imagine how he would feel and what he would think if he lived in a world of knowledge and ideas very different from our own. We must not despise those who believed in astrology, nor fancy that they were very foolish compared with ourselves, or we shall find that we are despising some of the greatest men who ever lived. Kepler, for instance, who discovered the laws that govern the movements of the planets, and the great English philosopher, Francis Bacon, believed in astrology to no small degree. What those men were capable of believing we should certainly have been capable of believing if we had lived in their time.
Great men though they were, they knew nothing at all of many facts that we know well — facts many of which they discovered themselves. We are standing on their shoulders, so to say, and so, though we are small and they were great, we can see further.
📌 Summary
This passage introduces astronomy as the oldest science and explains how humanity came to understand our planet:
- 🌍 We first learned that the Earth is a spinning globe orbiting the Sun, not a motionless center of the universe — and that correcting our senses was a major intellectual step.
- 🔭 To understand the Earth, we must study its place in the wider universe — this is astronomy, meaning "the law of the stars."
- ⏳ Astronomy dates back thousands of years — tracked by ancient civilizations like Egypt, Arabia, and Babylon; Stonehenge itself served as an early solar observatory.
- ⚗️ Just as alchemy laid the groundwork for modern chemistry, astrology — though mistaken — produced centuries of careful observations that made modern astronomy possible.
- ⭐ Early peoples believed stars influenced human fate, yet their recorded observations remained valuable. Great minds like Kepler and Bacon still held astrological beliefs in their time.
- 💡 Key insight: We must not judge the past too harshly — "We are standing on their shoulders, so to say, and so, though we are small and they were great, we can see further."
📌 Source:
Excerpt from: The Book of Knowledge, Volume 7 — "The Story of the Earth"
Status: ✅ Public domain — shared here for educational purposes