The scientific study of sundials, their design, construction, and the mathematical principles of how shadows cast by gnomons indicate time.
From Greek gnomon (interpreter, the vertical piece of a sundial) + -logy (study of). The term emerged in the Renaissance as scholars systematically documented sundial science.
Gnomonology was once considered such an important skill that famous mathematicians like Ptolemy and Vitruvius wrote detailed treatises on it, and designing accurate sundials required understanding spherical geometry.
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