A Concise History of Science in India c6.1

c6.1

Man’s interest in the heavens is perhaps as old as the beginning of his career as *homo sapiens* on this planet. This is doubtless a consequence of his erect posture which enables him to look and wonder at the sky and the various striking phenomena occurring there day by day and night by night. The sun, the moon, the vault of the sky with numerous sparkling stars, bright and dim, must have appealed to him at the dawn of his capacity to wonder at, and indulge in certain amount of speculation about them. Moreover, he was impressed by the regularity of appearance and disappearance of these objects. The sequence of day and night, the obvious connection of the sun with such alteration of light and darkness, the regular revelation of the splendour of the nightly sky, the periodic waxing and waning of the moon and the unchanging character of the stellar vault must have fired the imagination of the primitive man.