The Greek Philosophers and the Early Greek Astronomers

Abstract

Because the ancient Greeks drew no distinction between philosophers and astronomers, we cannot discuss one without the other. Indeed, the Greek philosophers based their philosophies on their interpretations of celestial events so that Greek philosophy and astronomy advanced together until the beginning of the Christian era, when Christianity, particularly Catholicism, began to replace Greek philosophy as the correspondent of astronomy and continued to do so for the first 1550 years of the Christian era.

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

—Cyril Connolly