We're all familiar with the relatively recent view that the Sages could not have been mistaken in scientific matters. Minimally, this could justified by saying that they had Divine assistance to ensure that anything recorded in the Talmud would be correct. But many supporters of this view based it on a much more far-reaching approach. It's not that the Sages were correct on the particular statements recorded in the Talmud; it's that the Sages, with their Divinely-based insights into Creation, knew
One can assert that King Solomon or Moshe Rabbeinu knew all natural sciences which ever existed, even though the rest of humanity didn’t know. One can also argue that there was some Jewish science in the time of the 1st Beit HaMikdash, but it was lost or forgotten (it seems that Rambam says exactly that there was some *science* such as computation of the date of Rosh Chodesh, which was lost and Rabbeim had to use Greek science to recover the computation). If someone extrapolates this principle and says that all of science might have been known to Prophets, there doesn’t seem to be any way to prove or disprove it from evidence. However, we can ask the following question: are there good philosophical reasons within the Torah framework to believe that the humanity’s knowledge of science has always been progressing and that all the great people in previous generations, including Moshe Rabbeinu, Prophets, King Solomon, and Chazal had must have had less knowledge of science than our generation possesses?
King Solomon's Unbuilt Spaceship
One can assert that King Solomon or Moshe Rabbeinu knew all natural sciences which ever existed, even though the rest of humanity didn’t know. One can also argue that there was some Jewish science in the time of the 1st Beit HaMikdash, but it was lost or forgotten (it seems that Rambam says exactly that there was some *science* such as computation of the date of Rosh Chodesh, which was lost and Rabbeim had to use Greek science to recover the computation). If someone extrapolates this principle and says that all of science might have been known to Prophets, there doesn’t seem to be any way to prove or disprove it from evidence. However, we can ask the following question: are there good philosophical reasons within the Torah framework to believe that the humanity’s knowledge of science has always been progressing and that all the great people in previous generations, including Moshe Rabbeinu, Prophets, King Solomon, and Chazal had must have had less knowledge of science than our generation possesses?