Science: Pleasure and Culture

Abstract

The professional lives of astronomers may well have been dominated for centuries by the problem of making precise, repetitive, and routine observations for the measurement of space and time, but they were always lived out under the night sky. Whatever the problems of their telescopes and instruments, the cold, tiredness, and other complications of working by night, none can completely escape from the fascination of this silent and solitary nighttime vigil beside a telescope. It is only very recently that astronomers have been able to operate their equipment while comfortably seated in a well lit and well heated control room. Despite the often biting cold in the dead of night in some high altitude observatory, eyes and thoughts turn easily toward the sky. Many questions come to mind, from philosophical introspection to simply trying to understand what it is we are looking at. Never far away is the pleasure of finding a certain harmony in the world. From the questioning inspired by a beautiful night sky, there may come an accrual of human knowledge, and from there an addition to human culture.