10 Rochberg
gesting that while their heavens, too, were “irreducibly different from
ours,” their investigations were nonetheless related to what we would
recognize as scientifi c astronomy. Thus, although the ancients’ interest in
the stars and planets began with and was sustained within a context of ce-
lestial divination, it is still possible to discern a fully theorized astronomy
that was produced in conjunction with this work.
Babylonian astronomical texts have special signifi cance for the history
of science because the foundation of Western astronomy is traceable in
those sources. Just as Babylonian theoretical astronomy has a privileged
place in the history of science, so does the observation of celestial (and
other) physical phenomena for the purpose of determining portents be-
long to the long history of scientifi c observation itself. Accordingly, cunei-
form evidence for the observation of physical phenomena in heaven and
on Earth is a legitimate site for the study of the earliest selective attention
to physical phenomena, meaningful within a certain body of knowledge
and practice, and constitutive of an attitude about knowing the world
through observation that falls within the bounds of what we understand
to be science.
Mesopotamia, which corresponds geographically to modern Iraq, takes
its name from the fact that it lies between two rivers, the Tigris and Eu-Figure 1.1. Ancient Mesopotamia