No doubt many have already seen the news item:
https://www.livescience.com/hipparchus-star-map-found?utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D
One of the few sources of information about Hipparchus is the _Natural
History_ of Pliny the Elder... and from the article, I saw this quote:
And consequently he did a bold thing, that would be reprehensible even for
God — he dared to schedule the stars for posterity, and tick off the heavenly
bodies by name in a list, devising machinery by means of which to indicate their several positions and magnitudes…
The idea that it would be reprehensible for God, the Creator of all the stars, to catalogue them is, of course, bizarre to our society, the concept of which of God is formed from Judaism and Christianity. That it would be
reprehensible even for Hipparchus is also bizarre, not only because of
our faith in technological progress, but because the stars, being merely
part of Creation, are not to be worshipped or otherwise given the respect
that is God's... again, because of our inheritance from Christianity.
John Savard
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