A more recent echo of this is Greg Egan's Incandescence, in which space caterpillars discover general relativity without being able to see the sky: https://en.

A more recent echo of this is Greg Egan's Incandescence, in which space caterpillars discover general relativity without being able to see the sky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel)