Comparative Intellectual History: A Case of Astronomy and Mathematics in the 19th Century

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the critical status of Siam in the 19th century as the country encountered the transformative force from the Western world.  In so doing, it focuses on the sciences of astronomy and mathematics as they were highly relevant to the eclipse in 1868, commonly known as the Waghor eclipse.3  This event has since been recognized in Siam (later Thailand) as the landmark of modern scientific achievement, as some Thai historical sources claimed that King Rama IV provided a precise detail prediction on the eclipse’s celestial position and time.  Such prediction has been further endorsed by the state as a great triumph over the West.  This research on intellectual history examines those claims by bringing the contemporary factors into account.  These factors include diffusion pattern of western inventions, mathematics of astronomy in the 19th century Europe, the roles of missionary in comparative views, and the consequences of such influences in Thai historiography.  The result uncovers that the 19th century Western astronomy achieved some significant discoveries that related to mathematical theories and had advanced to the point that it contributed to the making of a technique called least squares method which is the way to obtain a desired value by an estimation, although the set of data provided may contain errors from observation and measurement.  It played a significant role in the development of statistics in the next century.  There were also records that Western astronomers had regularly studied the solar activities on the sun’s surface in order to analyze the chemical components of the sun.  However, the mainstream Thai historical accounts have been preoccupied with precision by showing how Siamese calculation led to the prediction of the accurate time in which the event occurred.  Such accounts have not seriously caught up with the contemporary Western scientific movement during that period.  By measuring its advancement with the West, Thai scientific historiography relied on limited experiences and tended to focus only on practical aspects.