People believed the rest of the world was savage, waiting for the west to educate them
Needham question
Needham looked into the past developments of Chinese science and realised their developments were different to those in the west, having different knowledge
Francis Bacon
Used books to study and begin modern science
"Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilisation or Indian civilisation?"
Astronomy
Older than most of modern science
Has roots back to ancient cultures where as modern science developed in the last few centuries
Wider general interest than the rest of the sciences
Constellations/Starlore
Orion
One of the most prominent and visible constellations
Same constellation has similar stories of interpretation in different cultures
Monomyth as a possible explanation
Mythos and Logos
Mythos is older
Mythos
Spoken word as narrative
Logos
Argument and computation
Narrative is used to make sense of existence
Not necessarily religious
Myths can be powerful even if proven wrong
Cosmogonic myths
Birth of the universe
Try to explain the origin of everything
Necessarily a myth although not always opposed to reason