Why study astronomy?! I hate math! blah blah. Here’s a great quote from 2nd century Church father, Clement of Alexandria:
“The same holds also of astronomy. For treating of the description of the celestial objects, about the form of the universe, and the revolution of the heavens, and the motion of the stars, leading the soul nearer to the creative power, it teaches to quickness in perceiving the seasons of the year, the changes of the air, and the appearance of the stars; since also navigation and husbandry derive from this much benefit, as architecture and building from geometry. This branch of learning, too, makes the soul in the highest degree observant, capable of perceiving the true and detecting the false, of discovering correspondences and proportions, so as to hunt out for similarity in things dissimilar; and conducts us to the discovery of length without breadth, and superficial extent without thickness, and an indivisible point, and transports to intellectual objects from those of sense.”
This is from his “Stromata”, Book VI, Chapter 11. The Mystical Meanings in the Proportions of Numbers, Geometrical Ratios, and Music.
More to the point, Clement writes [Stromata, Book II, Chap. 21],
“Pythagoras taught that the knowledge of the perfection of the numbers was happiness of the soul.”
That all this crusty source from the 2nd century church fathers is available online is just amazing.
