Listen, I get it. Astronomy is seen as one of the most useless of the sciences. I get it a lot. I'm an astrophysicist and people still ask me like, what is the point of astronomy? Why are we spending money on astronomy? Why are we doing it? Why are we launching space satellites and probes to the solar system? And how are you getting your paycheck? Anyway, I get my paycheck through patreon.com slash pmsutters. But that's irrelevant. Feel free to go to support me, please. But I get it. There are lots of areas of science that lead to direct benefits, technological benefits for humanity. Like biology, like epidemiology, chemistry, many branches of physics. But make the world a better place. So why do we need astronomy? I want to point out something broader when it comes to astronomy. Something bigger than technology. Because the point of science is not technology. The point of science is not to make the world a better material place. Yes, technology and advancements and medicine and all that are wonderful, wonderful consequences of science and many scientists dedicate their careers to making the world a better place. The point of science, the very, very core of science, the philosophy of science is to understand how nature works. And we have a very specific way of doing that. That's what makes scientists different than other people who are trying to figure out how nature works. The point of science is to figure it out. The point of science is to understand the point of science is to know. And that itself, one in a very abstract sense, makes the world a better place. We're enriched by it. We're enriched by science. We are there's more variety in the world. There is more knowledge in the world. These are not bad things. We don't sit around saying like, why does art exist? I don't know exactly who would say it like that exactly. But like, why does art exist because it's an expression of our own humanity? Art exists because it enriches and livens the world and makes the world a better place, not in an attainable materialistic technological sense. But it makes us better. Because we get to explore more. Science is a natural outgrowth of our human curiosity. And astronomy is the most, like, the most beautiful expression of that. I'm saying that because astrophysicist, other scientists might say the exact same thing about their own field, which is fine. Check this out. Check this out. Universities, the oldest universities have been around for a thousand years. Universities have lifetimes longer than countries and entire cultures. Universities last a long time in it. And way back in the olden days. We're talking like hundreds of years ago, not like straight up a thousand years ago. The first universities had a certain set curriculum. It wasn't like, choose your majors, a very, very set, like you went to university to do this. And the first thing you studied was called the Trivium, which is Latin for three ways. And you studied grammar, rhetoric, and logic. And you, so this is like how we speak the language, the mechanics of thought, and then how to express that and argued positions and try to convince and influence other people. Once you completed this course of study, you earned a bachelor's of the equivalent of a bachelor's bachelor's. But if you wanted to continue, you would enter a program called the Quadrivium, which means four ways. And the Quadrivium, check this out, check this out. You studied arithmetic and geometry and you studied music and you studied astronomy. Once you complete that, you would then go on to study like theology or law or philosophy. Like you would, you would go on to earn like a doctorate. You didn't quite have those degrees back then, but it's the equivalent. Those traditions have continued on today. The seven things, the combination of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, those seven subjects combined are what are ancestors. And this line of thing goes all the way back to Plato. And if you're going to like claim any sort of like intellectual grounding in history, like Plato is a great start. The seven subjects, the seven subjects were called the liberating arts or the liberal arts. We continue that word today in liberal arts like colleges. But back then, back then it meant the liberal arts, man, these were the seven skills you needed to have in order to be a liberated person. In order to be a fully expressive mature independent thinking liberated free human being, you needed to know these seven subjects. And one of those was astronomy. Astronomy, the subject of astronomy, the study of astronomy was the subject of motions and harmonies in space. Harmonies in space and time, that's why I aligned very closely with music. You're looking at patterns, you're studying motions, you're studying regularity. These are the things that like govern the seasons. And you're seeing it in motion every night on the night sky. The study of astronomy is the study of motions and harmony and patterns in nature. And it is one of the most fundamental of the sciences. Whether you're regional sciences, before there was even a science, we were studying astronomy and we cared about astronomy. And we saw the importance of astronomy because being able to identify patterns and harmonies and rhythms in nature, in a world that is chaotic and random and hard to predict and hard to understand, astronomy gives you the tools to navigate that. Our ancestors a thousand years ago thought astronomy was important. Plato thought astronomy was important. Cultures around the world, every culture in human history has some sort of astronomical tradition. It's just as important today as it was a thousand years ago or a ten thousand years ago. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I wasn't joking about the patreon.com slash pmsutter. And like share, subscribe to all that stuff and I'll see you next week.