Lessons of History

A British historian has uncovered evidence that English mathematician Thomas Harriott was in fact the first person to draw a map of the surface of the Moon, beating Galileo by a few months. Harriott's lunar maps, it turns out, were also well done, as good as any lunar maps made by humans for the next few decades.

So, thenceforward and forever more, should Thomas Harriot get credit for his lunar mapping? Of course. Should he and Galileo now be seen as co-fathers of telescopic astronomy? No. Harriott seems never to have gone beyond the Moon, and perhaps not beyond the initial drawings we now have. Additionally, he seems not to have published his work, which is why it's been unknown for four centuries. Galileo did publish, and he also went beyond the Moon to help establish the groundwork for modern, observational astronomy, which had a significant role in shaping modern, Western thought-- something Galileo helped establish even at great cost to himself.

History, of course, is about documenting what actually happened. More importantly, however, history is about understanding how we got to where we are. Pointing a telescope at the Moon seems a natural act. Someone forever lost to us may in fact have been the first human to see lunar mountains and craters. That possibility does not take away from Harruitt's achievement; Harriott's maps do not change the history of the development of Western science.