Prediction Vs Understanding
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - 22:49
in Physics & Chemistry
Babylonian astronomy sounds a lot like some areas of omics/computational biology today: Looking back at Babylonian astronomy from the twentieth century, one is struck by two things: the care with which the records were kept, and the mathematical brilliance of the predictive techniques. Eventually, science was to owe a great debt to the Babylonian astronomers, for speculative theories about the Heavens could, in the long run, be tested only by seeing how far they explained the observed motions of the heavenly bodies. The Babylonian material was to be fundamental read more