ames:
Here are some starting material.
Medrash Tehillim (19) quotes Shmuel as saying he is an expert in the streets of Nehardea as much as he is an expert in the ‘streets’ of the heavens. The Medrash asks how Shmuel knew all of that, and it answers he knew it all through the Torah. It then quotes a R’ Hoshea as saying there is “space” between the upper waters and the firmament, and the Medrash asks how R, Hoshea could know this unless he traveled to space. It answers, he knew it from the Torah.
Aruch Hashulchan (EH 13): “I will tell you a great principle: Chazal, besides their holiness and wisdom in the Torah, were also greater scholars in the natural sciences those savants (“mischakmim”) who would argue against their pure words. And someone who disagrees with them testifies about himself that he does not believe in Torah she bal peh, even though he would be embarrassed to admit it outright.”
Chasam Sofer (Beshalach) writes that this is the meaning of the posuk “Ki hi chachmascha ubinascha l’einei ha’amim” – Chazal were great experts in the secular sciences and disciplines. In fact, you need to know much secular knowledge in many areas in order to properly understand the Torah – and he gives several simple examples. However, since we are supposed to be busy learning Torah – not secular science – all day and night, and Hashem has no “nachas ruach” from us learning secular studies at all, how would Chazal have known all the secualr wisdom that they clearly knew, as we see they did from all of Shas?
Answer: They know it from the Torah, since the entire body of secular wisdom is included in the Torah, for the Torah is the bluepeint of the world. And so, when the Goyim see that we do not study the secular science books at all – and we even disagree with them! – yet we derive all the secular knowledge, in the most precisely accurate form – from only the Sefer Torah, they will exclaim, “Am chacham v’navon hagoy hagadol hazeh!” (A similar explanation is given by the Raavad-ibn Daud. He says that the posuk refers to the philosophical truths that it took the nations centuries to develop, we knew all the time via tradition from Har Sinai.)
The Abarbanel (Shmos 12) quotes Ptolmey as being so impressed with the Jews’ astronomical calculations, that he said it proves the Jews had prophecy. In the Sefer Eretz Zvi (by Rav Aryeh Zvi Fromer ZT’L, Rosh Yeshiva in Chachmei Lublin), quotes more such sources about Ptolmey.