and Perspectives -- The Theory of Scientific Revolutions -- Interactions Between Politics and Scientific Progress -- The Continuous Progress of Astronomical Techniques -- The Three Streams from Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle -- 1. Before the Classical Greek Period -- 1.1 A General Overview of a Rapid Evolution -- 1.2 Elementary Naked-Eye Astronomy -- 1.3 Pre-Socratic Greek Astronomy and Cosmology -- 2. Classical Greek Astronomy -- 2.1 Plato's World -- 2.2 Plato's Contemporaries: Eudoxus, Callippus -- 2.3 Aristotle's World -- 2.4 The Legacy of Plato and Aristotle -- 2.5 The Heliocentric Systems -- 2.6 Hipparchus and his Successors up to Ptolemy -- 2.7 Eccentric and Epicycle Circles: The Ptolemaic Mechanisms -- 2.8 The Earth, Sun, Moon, and Planets: Distances and Sizes -- 2.9 The Precession of Equinoxes -- 3. Ptolemy's Astronomy Questioned -- 3.1 The Scientific Genealogy of Ptolemy -- 3.2 The Church Fathers -- 3.3 The Contribution of the Arabic World to Astronomical Knowledge -- 3.4 The Western World up to Copernicus -- 4. The Period of the Renaissance -- 4.1 From 1450 to 1600: An Overview -- 4.2 Copernicus and the Determination of Planetary Distances -- 4.3 The Progress of the Observations; Tycho Brahe and the Nature of the Universe -- 4.4 Kepler and the Death of Circularity -- 4.5 Galileo, Physicist and Observer -- 5. Dynamics Enters Astronomy: From Galileo to Newton -- 5.1 Galilean Dynamics -- 5.2 Francis Bacon in England -- 5.3 The French School: Descartes and his Contemporaries -- 5.4 Newton and Universal Gravitation -- 5.5 The Triumph of Newton -- 5.6 Appendix Written in Collaboration with Prof. Daniel Pecker -- 6. From Pre-Galilean Astronomy to the Hubble Space Telescope and Beyond... Written in Collaboration with Dr. Simone Dumont -- 6.1 Improvements in Techniques and Instruments -- 6.2 Important Astronomical Discoveries After Galileo -- 6.3 Conceptual Consequences of the Broadening of Horizons from Galileo to Einstein -- 6.4 Conclusion -- 7. Towards Modern Cosmology -- 7.1 Failures and Difficulties of the Newtonian Description -- 7.2 Criticisms of Newton's Theory: The Mach Discussion -- 7.3 The Ether -- 7.4. Action at a Distance -- 7.5. Olbers' Paradox -- 7.6 The "Significant" Facts of Cosmology and the Subjectivity of their Choice -- 7.7 Appendix: Modern Cosmology The Velocity of Light, Composition and Measurement -- 8. Cosmologies of Today and Tomorrow -- 8.1 General Relativity -- 8.2 The Cosmological Solutions of General Relativity -- 8.3 New Cosmological Facts -- 8.4 The Standard "Big Bang" Cosmology -- 8.5 The "New Big Bang" -- 8.6 Big Bang or Not Big Bang? Alternative Cosmologies -- 8.7 Conclusions: What Is the Current State of Cosmology? What Experiments Could Be Performed to Improve the Situation? -- 8.8 Appendix I: Tensors, Line Elements -- 8.9 Appendix II: The Particles of Modern Physics -- 9. General Conclusion -- Further Reading -- Figure Acknowledgements -- Name Index.