ASTR 100Lxg Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Pope Clement Iv, Universal History, Michael Faraday
Document Summary
> why study astronomy: historical/cultural reasons - that"s how it started, now reasons pretty irrelevant. 1267: roger bacon (franciscan monk) (1214-1294) - wrote a grant proposal ( a big letter asking for money) to pope. Clement iv saying that the calendar was really messed up and they needed to fix it so he wanted to train monks in math and astronomy to fix the calendar. He also said that they had to date the coming of the. Navigation - now we have gps. : some more relevant reasons. Application driven science - how to make things, etc. Astronomy is the quintessential basic science - you"re not going to make money from it, the only reason you really study it today is curiosity - in the literal sense, it has no use. It is the universal history of every civilization. Common element of most culture (food, migration patterns, agriculture, etc. )
