WHAT would have happened to the development of science if Earth had been permanently shrouded in clouds and we’d never seen any stars? There wouldn’t have been any astronomy, but would that have mattered?
That’s the thought that struck mathematician Brian Davies after spending a holiday on the Atlantic island of Madeira under thick cloud.
“Some people have claimed astronomy was an important first step on the road to science,” he says. “I simply wondered whether being deprived of a view of the heavens would really have set science back.”
Davies, of King’s College London, scrutinised original journals dating back…
