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[Guest_Myran_*]

The Antikythera Mechanism have been one enigma since it was discovered 100 years ago.
It have no counterpart and sports a mechanical clockwork so cunningly fashioned that archaeologists
have speculated for a century, especially since no other examples of a similar kind have been found.

With mechanical gears it could compute and display the movement of the Sun, the Moon, Venus and possibly also the other known planets, it could also predict the dates of future eclipses. Also the planets?

The Roman Cicero once wrote that the greek astronomer and philosopher Posidonius had made an instrument "which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets that take place in the heavens every day and night".

So its possible but not proven that the Antikythera mechanism originated at the ancient school for astronomy on Rhodos.

"In search of lost time" Antikythera Mechanism article, free access at Nature mag online.

[lyford]

Very good points, but I would add that the tremendous success of science can also get in the way, since we are at a point in our knowledge where whole careers are spent investigating ever smaller domains of speciality, and cross fertilization of ideas becomes more and more challenging. How many epidemiologists are there at a physics conference? The great descriptive power of analysis must be married with creative synthesis if we are to move forward - and even though we value that freedom of expression, the lifetime of study required to advance research by its nature builds walls between the disciplines!

From what I know of MER, it's hard enough to get engineers and scientists on the SAME MISSION on the same page consistently - though to that team's credit I think they have created the standard to which other missions will aspire.

For more philosophy and history of science, try The Ascent of Man. I recommend Episode 11 highly, but if you have a spare 12 hours and high speed internet, its worth seeing it all, and in order. The series explores the history of science more thematically than chronologically, and is starting to show it's age now 30 plus years later, but still speaks powerfully and beautifully across the decades.

PS - Personally, I have always enjoyed musing alternate technology history, the application of current trends to retro tech style, like SteamPunk or The ElectriClerk. And who hasn't imagined a squadron of DaVinci tanks on the medieval battle field?