The Rise and Fall of Cosmology in the Ancient World

People have been looking to the sky and trying to make sense of it all since the dawn of civilization. Today, armed with telescopes and computers we struggle to define our place in a vast and complex universe. How did peoples thousands of years ago wrestle with these same questions? In this public science talk at James Madison University, Dr. Michael Solontoi traces the development of civilization’s pre-telescope understanding and models of the cosmos from its origins in early mysticism through the golden age of Greek thought and then into the mathematics of the Roman Empire. To learn more about our public science presentations, and to be informed, when our next ones will take place, please visit the John C. Wells Planetarium website at: http://www.jmu.edu/planetarium