The Place of Theory in Babylonian Astral Science

Ancient Babylonian scholars interacted with the night sky in several ways: they regularly observed a range of lunar and planetary phenomena and kept systematic records of these observations; they developed methods of calculating future astronomical phenomena; they created mathematical schemes to describe astronomical phenomena; they interpreted astronomical phenomena through systems of astrology; and they applied their astronomical knowledge to address various societal needs, including the regulation of the calendar and fixing the time of cultic rituals and festivals. Babylonian approaches to describing and calculating astronomical phenomena were primarily – though, as I will show, not exclusively – through numerical modelling rather than by means of geometrical or physical models. Therein lies the rub: some historians claim that geometrical models and physical theories are a requirement of science, and therefore, they judge Babylonian astronomy as falling short of being true science. In this talk, I will discuss whether this is an appropriate way to understand whether an early astronomy is scientific and, more to the point, show that Babylonian scholars did indeed construct theories of the behaviour of the sun, moon, and planets but that historians have usually been looking in the wrong place to find those theories.

John Steele is the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University. He received his BSc (1995) and PhD (1998) from Durham University and has previously taught at Durham University and the University of Toronto. Prior to taking up his current position at Brown in 2008, he held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at Durham. Steele is a historian of astronomy who specializes in the history of the Babylonian astral sciences, the circulation of astral knowledge, and the early modern reception and use of ancient astronomy. He is the author or editor of several books twenty books, including recently The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium MUL.APIN (Routledge, 2019; co-authored with Hermann Hunger) and The Allure of the Ancient: Receptions of the Ancient Middle East, ca. 1600-1800 (Brill, 2022; co-edited with Margaret Geoga).