10 days later

It cannot be done and this is why. Over 4000 years ago, the idea people had of Astronomy was directly tied into what we call today Astrology. That was initially to , among other things to provide good crops for pre industrial societies which were close to starvation if anything went wrong. This fix of astronomy and Astrology, for the purpose of good crops and the like continued to the time of the Greeks before Christ
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Ancient Greek Astronomy and Cosmology
As the stars move across the sky each night people of the world have looked up and wondered about their place in the universe. Throughout history civilizations have developed unique systems for ordering and understanding the heavens. Babylonian and Egyptian astronomers developed systems that became the basis for Greek astronomy, while societies in the Americas, China and India developed their own.

Ancient Greek astronomers' work is richly documented in the collections of the Library of Congress largely because of the way the Greek tradition of inquiry was continued by the work of Islamic astronomers and then into early modern European astronomy. This section offers a tour of some of the astronomical ideas and models from ancient Greece as illustrated in items from the Library of Congress collections.

The Sphere of the World
By the 5th century B.C., it was widely accepted that the Earth is a sphere. This is a critical point, as there is a widespread misconception that ancient peoples thought the Earth was flat. This was simply not the case.

In the 5th century B.C., Empedocles and Anaxagoras offered arguments for the spherical nature of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, they identified the shadow of the Earth on the moon. As the shadow moves across the moon it is clearly round. This would suggest that the Earth is a sphere.

Experiencing the Sphere of the Earth
Given that opportunities for observations of a lunar eclipse do not come along that often, there was also evidence of the roundness of the earth in the experiences of sailors.

When a ship appears on the horizon it's the top of the ship that is visible first. A wide range of astronomy texts over time use this as a way to illustrate the roundness of the Earth. As the image suggests this is exactly what one would expect on a spherical Earth. If the Earth were flat, it would be expected that you would be able to see the entire ship as soon as it became visible.

Measuring the Size of the Earth
Lunar eclipses also allowed for another key understanding about our home here on Earth. In 3rd Century B.C., Aristarchus of Samos reasoned he could figure out the size of the Earth based on information available during a lunar eclipse. The diagram at the right illustrates a translation of his work. The large circle is the sun, the medium circle is the Earth and the smallest circle is the moon. When the Earth is in-between the sun and the moon it causes a lunar eclipse and measuring the size of the Earth's shadow on the moon provided part of the information he needed to calculate its size.
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It took the Greeks to be entranced by the idea of the sphere of the world, and of inquiry as indicated, which broke the chain of crop enhancement and of similar frippery

Needless to state, the Greeks gave us the idea of spherical GEOMETRY to investigate, and did a brilliant job of it too when considering their technology.

What was called Astronomy and science, thousands of years ago shifted from crop predictions, and the like to the reasoning apparent in these examples. over 4000 years ago, there simply was not an imperative which existed as to consider geometry the way the Greeks did

It was a major cultural shift and paradigm evolution

Then the Indians came up with the idea of ZERO, i.e. absolutely essential to the idea of development of a infinitesmals and derivatives

Up through the time of the Roman empire, military engineers did actually quite sophisticated formulas for use of ballistics for hurling stones and darts from catapaults and slingers to hit enemy formation. But there was in doing it, since ZERO was not know, no real application of derivatives for the use of ballistic trajectories. What the Romans did was use engineering finesse in order to obtain scaling ";laws" in order to kill opponents on the battlefield but there was no astronomy behind it

Fast forward to the Library of Alexandra and then this
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Ptolemy placed the Earth at the centre of his geocentric model. Using the data he had, Ptolemy thought that the universe was a set of nested spheres surrounding the Earth. He believed that the Moon was orbiting on a sphere closest to the Earth, followed by Mercury, then Venus and then the Sun.
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Why was this so entrenched for 1500 years ?
A. The imperative to use astronomy for crops was no longer NECESSARY. Like it or not Rome had solved the problem of agricultural abundance. Eg this is when Egypt and the Nile was for a time the bread basket of the empire
B. Contrary to what people though, the ideas of spheres and alleged "sacred geometry" and a round Earth was widely appreciated.
C. The paradigm shift from crops and astrology as a focus gave way to refining the Ptolemy model

In a word Aside from the revolution which hit when horse collars broke the basis of Ancient world slavery used for farming , as necessary, eventually leading to the Industrial revolution, there was really no need for refinements of Astronomy

Again and again, science or what passed as science has been in response to societal crisis and of imperatives. It will be the same in the future

My big prediction. What will hit the fan in order to change the character of Science AGAIN. The devastation of our world due to global warming , climate change and the like.

I love physics. I am a physics PhD and proud of it. But do you really think that accelerator physics will be the king of the battle field in say 2060 AD if we have say deserts galloping and halving available crop lands for feeding 8 billion people ?

Um, NO. I.e. the focus of science will due to societal crisis force a whopping shift . And it has done that before. In fact one can argue that in the 1600s that much of what we call the Newtonian revolution was due to the tail of devastation caused by the 'black death" which 3 hundred years later killed over 40% of Europe city populations

Our focus today is due to relative prosperity.

The scientific method should be lionized for what it is. A bulkwark against societal idiotsy , but having said that, there is NO chance what we call science say a century from now will be what we know NOW. Societal crisis and of changing observations will force major changes

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