Regarding your additional text, David. I am convinced that our ancestors would never have acquired such a reflected self-image if they had not started to observe the stars. No matter where in the world, the stars have always moved and intellectually stimulated people...even if they did not yet know that stars are suns. But think of all the calendars, constellations, the observation that some objects "wander" (planets) and all others do not. In a "dark" age we as mankind would not have been so busy. Thank God our ancestors were not so distracted by electric light, etc. They had the time for observations which they passed on over generations. To close the circle, we would never have the motivation and curiosity and thirst for knowledge to build a James Webb telescope today if our ancestors had not observed the stars.
Absolutely- that's a good insight, Heinz. I think you are right and human curiosity and the search for knowledge and understanding started when our distant ancestors looked at the night sky and wondered what all those beautiful twinkling points of light were. And the Sun - the giver of life, light and warmth. What was that? No wonder they made them into gods and heroes. Would a future intelligent species have the same stimuli if they lived in a dark Universe? I wonder. I can recommend a really brilliant short science fiction story by Isaac Asimov about this. Its called Nightfall and its widely regarded as one of the greatest Sci-Fi short stories. The ending is superb and a bit of a shocker - I won't give it away (unless you really want me to).
