Kiyoshi Yabuuchi, a Japanese historian of astronomy, has written that although pre-modern Chinese astronomers compiled a wealth of data, they took scant advantage of it to develop scientific theory. Instead, they stuck to the popular belief in the interdependence of human and celestial events.
日本天文史學者藪內清曾經指出，中國不缺天文觀測，但很少歸納、解釋天文現象，發展成科學理論，卻總是將之歸類到順天應人。