Thus, astronomy appeared to be an excellent type of a positive science, because it is at once natural and abstract, and in it these two characteristics are equally apparent, which was not the case in mathematics. In this science the share of observation is so limited, so transient, that it becomes inappreciable. In astronomy, on the contrary, determination of certain facts evidently plays a part in the science. But, at the same time, nowhere do we see more clearly that science does not consist in the mere apprehension of facts. Here they are so simple, and moreover so uninteresting, that their connexion and the knowledge of their laws alone deserves the name of science. In general, what is an astronomical fact? None other than this: such a star has been seen at such a precise instant, and under such an angle duly measured. The more or less profound elaboration of these observations is indispensable to science, even in its most imperfect state. Astronomy, says Comte, did not really come into being when the priests of Egypt or Chaldea made a series of more or less exact empirical observations in the heavens; but only when the first Greek philosophers began to reduce the general phenomenon of diurnal motion to a few geometrical laws.[119] Of all the natural sciences, after mathematics, astronomy is also the most perfectly free from all theological and metaphysical considerations. From every point of view it is positive. Astronomers no longer have recourse to a Providence, which as the intelligent cause of the order of the celestial world, would in its turn, witness to the existence of this cause. They do not inquire any more into the intimate nature of forces (gravitation, attraction, etc.). Astronomy is content to determine the invariable relations of phenomena with the greatest possible precision. It is here that philosophical minds can study the essential characteristics of a positive science. In it they will also see how disinterested it must be in order to become useful. “Without the highest speculations of geometers upon celestial mechanics, which have so greatly increased the precision of astronomical tables, it would be impossible to determine the longitude of a ship with the degree of accuracy which is now attainable.”[120]