Program 09 - "Darkness and Dawn"

Music Hey, you've got two left handed gloves, and two right handed gloves.How'd that happen?I dunno.Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.I got it.What?Turn one of them inside out.Yeah?Hey, that worked.Hey, of kind like what Copernicus did to Ptolemy's geocentric theory.Where'd you learn that kind of stuff?MusicBefore we're done with this program we will have traveled1600 years down the river of heritage, from the Romans,through the rise of Christianity, to the Dark Ages,where the river is joined by a flow of information from the Middle East.After that, the water becomes turbulent and a little muddyfor a while until the sediment settles out and the water is calm.At the stage of the river known as the Renaissance the waterbegins to get deeper and clearer until finallywe reach a major destination called Copernicus.Be sure to read these objectives in the StudyGuide and refer to them as you study the lesson.

Focussing on the Learning Objectives will help youto study and understand the important concepts.Compare the objectives with the study questions for this lessonto be sure that you have the concepts under control.This is the first program in Section 2.The title of this section is "Revolution."In this part of the course we'll study the scientific revolutionwhich involves not only turning the geocentric paradigm insideout, but also a whole new method of analysis and synthesisusing experimentation, deductive and inductivelogic, mathematical formulation.Really, it's a different sort of way of looking at the world.Today's program focusses on the growth of the Ptolemaic system.Its incorporation into the dogma of the Church and its eventualchallenge by the parsimonious system of Copernicus.Following the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the conceptof learning, logic and speculation changed in the Western worldalong with the spread of Christianity and Islam.

The chaos that followed Rome's tight hold on Europeand the Mediterranean created a 600 year periodduring which learning was discouraged.Learning during this time, what they would call learning,consisted largely of studying the scripturesor studying the nature of man.We could look back and say that during this time learning aswe know it today virtually disappeared in Europe.The works of the ancients were closely guarded as they read,copied and recopied generationafter generation, both in Europeand in the Middle East, the documents of the ancient Greek period.In the Middle East learning was not quite so stifled.Rules of algebra were formulated, the decimal system alongwith Arabic numbers and the zero were introducedinto mathematics, and star catalogs were improvedwith the addition of many new stars.In fact, many of the star names that we know today,weird names like, Beetle Juice and Aldaberon and things likethis come from this period in Arabic Middle East.

The rediscovery in Europe of the works by Aristotleand Ptolemy impressed officials of the Churchin their breadth, depth, and apparent truth.In fact, an effort at that time was made to incorporate thecosmology of Aristotle and the astronomy of Ptolemywith the dogma of the Church, culminating in the publicationof a book called, "Summa Theological," by St. Thomas Aquinas.Successful as St. Thomas was in incorporating Aristotle'scosmology into Church doctrine, and it was a major intellectualachievement, it was difficult to reconcile the geometryof Ptolemy with the cosmology of Aristotle.The predicted motions of the planets, the positionsof the planets were far from agreement with those predictedby the calculations which were performed during Ptolemy'stime, and according to the Ptolemaic prescription.And the Ptolemaic formulae had been modified in unknown ways,intentionally or otherwise having been bounced around in threedifferent languages for a thousand years.You can sort of imagine how this might have changed.

By the time of Copernicus, the calendar was off by someunknown amount and the seasons didn't occur at the right times,thereby religious holidays, seasonal things like Christmasand Easter, were effected, but also it effected the timingof planting and harvesting of crops.Now, contrary to popular belief, the Church did notdisapprove of the Copernican calculations.In fact, this more accurate way of calculating the positions waswelcomed by the Church, especially since Copernicusdedicated his book to the Pope and professed it to be only a model,not intended to represent reality at all.It was simply a more convenient, more consistent way to predictthe locations of the planets and to bring the calendarback in synch with the stars.

At the same time, as we'll see in detail later in the program,the text of the book clearly shows that Copernicus had apreference for cosmology, a heliocentric cosmology,as well as an astronomy and a geometry which were allheliocentric, spherical and parsimonious.Although Copernicus' book was not published with the intentionof starting a revolution, it provoked much thoughtand discussion half a century later all over Europe.Let's turn our attention now to the Romans and pick up someof this in detail as we make our way down the river of time.The Romans picked up the pieces of the shattered Macedonianempire and actually controlled the Mediterranean by 200 B.C.This is 350 years before Ptolemy published hiswork, the "Almagest," in Alexandria.The Romans, unlike the Greeks, for whom philosophyand metaphysics was an important part of the culture, the Romanswere practical empire builders with only acasual interest in philosophy and natural law.Anything that helped them build their empire was good,and anything that didn't progress toward those ends, was a waste of time.Good engineers, the Romans were not good scientists and theirrole in the development of science would be minimal were it notfor the influence exerted on the cultures on which they imposedthemselves for 675 years before their own empire crumbled.Out of Roman exploitation and oppression of thosewho were conquered, Christianity arose.

In the midst of this Roman dominion the ideals expressedby the prophet brought home hope and dignity to the oppressed,who for understandable reasons had even less interestin science and learning than their Roman oppressors did.The early Church organizers, fought to save manfrom the corruption and excesses of the so-called civilizationof Rome, and in doing so, they directed attention awayfrom the physical world toward God and the afterlife.This is the whole Christian idea, right?That even if life is bad here, the afterlife is OK.With the disintegration of order that marked the demiseof Rome, the Church, understandably, becameconcerned with the preservation of existingknowledge rather than new discoveries.As a growing institution, the Church required schoolsfor the training of priests, where the emphasis wason the Scriptures and where liberal and scientificstudies were frowned upon.

One of the creators of the early Christian doctrine was St. Augustine.He lived from 354 to 430 A.D.He was a Christian theologian and philosopher.Augustine's confessions is an intimate, psychological selfportrait of a spirit in search of the ultimate purpose of life.Augustine believed he had found this, largely through hisconversion to Christianity in 386 A.D.According to the doctrine of his "Enchiridion" which ispublished in 421 A.D., he emphasized the corruptionof the human will and the freedom of the divine gift of grace.The "City of God" in 426 was similar, stressed similar ideas,and probably was his most enduring work.See, the reason we're interestedin St. Augustine is because he set a paradigm.His doctrine combined elements of Pythagorean mysticismand Platonism with the emerging Christine doctrine.And he did this in a way that forged the paradigmwhich preserved for 700 years.The paradigm of St. Augustine discouraged the acquisitionof external knowledge, encouraging one to knowthyself as Socrates had proclaimed.According to Augustine, there were only two kindsof knowledge that were relevant.One of those was the knowledge given to us by God and the Scriptures.The other was the internal knowledge of logic attained by philosophical musings.

So, here you see the Christian ideal of the Scripturesand the Platonic ideal or the Socratean ideal of internal musings.In fact, Augustine tells us, "Go not out of doors, returninto thyself for in the inner man dwells truth."So, I think you can see from there how this turns the attentionaway from the physical world and brings it back into the spiritual world.Much as Socrates had done, actually before Platoand Aristotle brought back the physical world into it.And you can see this sort of going in and out of the physical world,having importance in these various ideas as we travel along.Well, the need to educate and train monks in the Scripturesand the sacred rights of the Church led to the growthof the monastery as a refugefor the preservation and schooling of the ancient traditions.

Here, reading and writing were kept alive in Europe as monkscopied, preserved catalogs and analyzed what little of the oldmanuscripts had made their way into Europe at that time.The old volumes were transcribed as the paperdecayed and the ink faded on the old documents.We know that embellishments and flourishes abounded aselaborate art work was added to the new copies.There can be no doubt that embellishments were addedto the texts as well, although in principle, they were copied verbatim.But we know it's human nature to sort of add something,you know, if you don't like a sentence and it doesn't soundright to add a little something to it.There's an excellent book, in fact, an excellent fictional treatmentof what the life was like in a monastery.It's a book by an author called Umberto Eco.The name of the book is called "The Name of the Rose."Which is actually a murder mystery that evolvesaround Aristotle and Aristotle's works.I don't want to give away the plot to you, but it'salso available on video as a movie.It stars Sean Connery so it's a pretty good movie.I highly recommend it if you have a chance to see themovie or read the book to take a look at it.The book's a little hard to stumble through, but the movie's very good.Well, we've all heard of the Dark Ages.The Dark Ages were not dark for the absence of light,but rather for the absence of enlightenment.

Following the decline of Rome, order decayedrapidly in the satellite territories.In fact, anarchy reigned.And like so often happens, the same thing happenedwith the demise of the Soviet Empire, ancient ethnic conflictsand continued raids by marauding armies from the East,in this case, kept the chaos from settling.As a result, learning disappeared in Europeuntil about the 12th century or so.The Fall of Rome's officially listedsomewhere around 450 or something like that.So from 450 until 1100, about 650 years,there was virtually no learning going on.Meanwhile, the center of western civilization shiftedto the Middle East with the rise of Islam and Christianity ascontrasting religious and political forces in the area.In fact, in the Middle East conflicts is till a resultof these tensions that were happening a thousand years ago in this area.During the Dark Ages in Europe, civilization thrived in the Mid-East.Here some of the works of Aristotle were preservedand used as background for further research.

In the meantime, the Christians in Europe launched the Crusadeswhich were holy wars in attempts to invade the Holy Land and takecontrol of it from the infidels, so called infidels, of the region.In a series of assaults over a period of several hundred years,the Christians invaded this region and the two religious groupsbattled many of these very bloody battles.So, during this time, then, the Muslim world maintainedrecords and documents with a different perspective than was common in Europe.Whereas in Europe the attention was focussedon the spiritual world and preserving old knowledge,in the Mid-East, the works of Aristotle and Ptolemywere translated into Arabic and widely read.

In addition to this role of preserving and catalogingdocuments, important progress was made in other areas.For example, advances were made in mathematics, such as the useof the Arabic numbers which was actually borrowed from India.These are the numbers that we still use today.The digits one through zero, or zero through nine,depending on how you look at it.Also, the incorporation of the concept of zero as opposed to nothing.And the rules and operations of algebra.Things like "X" and "Y" representing generic numbers.It's important for a little aside here to note thedifference between zero and nothing.

Zero does not meaning nothing, you know that, right?Zero is a place holder.The idea of being able to save a place when you're counting,and you get to nine and you have to have a next number, you movethe zero over and you save the place.The best analogy I can think of is that it's like havingno mailbox versus having an empty mailbox.Right, the space is still there, there's just nothing in it, if it's a zero.Astronomical advances during this time included identifyingand naming new stars, collecting data on planetary movements,making new star catalogs and also tables of planetary movements.All the while, of course, the knowledge of alchemy wasgrowing, and this will play a role in our discussionof the development of chemistry in later lessons.

So, all of the stuff based on Ptolemy was being used and also based on Aristotle.The Arabs didn't seem to care too much about the differencesbetween Aristotle's cosmology and Ptolemy's astronomy.So, the wars and battles of the Crusades, as bloody as theywere, had some other effects besides just producing war.They allowed for much contact between theChristian and Muslim worlds.Although information exchange was slow, contacts wereestablished along a front which extended inlandfrom the northern Mediterranean all the way from Italy through Spain.Gradually the old documents made their way westwardand into Europe for the first time.Some of these were repeats of other documents,but many of them were originals never seen before in Europe.

Slowly, very slowly, in fact, the Church scholarsin Europe became aware of this great body of ancient knowledgewhich, although was pagan, was vastly superior to their own.This sort of caused them to think.You know, these old, ancients, even though they weren'tChristians, had all this vast storehouse of knowledgeand all this great philosophy.So, many of these documents were in ancient Greek.Some of them were in Arabic, but many of them were stillin ancient Greek, and needed to be translated into Latin which,of course, is the official language of the Church.So, as a result of this, Ptolemy's works were fairly commonin Europe by 1100 and Aristotle's works were fairly common by 1300.Critical scholarship, that is, the process of seeking newknowledge, really began in Europe with the necessity to translateancient Greek texts into Latin required the understandingof languages that required the understanding of grammar and syntax.In fact, the understanding of these languages had never undertaken before.

No one really knew how to translate the old languages.So, as a result of this, beginning in the latter partof the 11th century,a brand new attitude toward learningemerged in Europe as Church scholars carefully examined these ancient writings.Much work was required to remove the inconsistencies which hadappeared over the centuries of translations and transcriptions.Think about this.All these different places in Europe, all these differentmonasteries had been keeping different documents, and eachone of them was sort of isolated from the other, although therewas some contact, they didn't have e-mail and stuff like that to communicate.So, all of a sudden now, all this stuff starts coming in from the Mid-East.It's translated from Greek into Latin and they find out that itdoesn't say the same things that the same documentssaid that were transcribed in Europe.Different versions of a given work used different wordingand sometimes contradicted one another.Eventually the Aristotelian cosmology became integratedwith the Ptolemaic astronomy and the Christian theology.

The fusion of philosophies of these three things had bothdirect and indirect effects on the development of science.For one thing it was a reformation whichprepared the way for radical ideas and changes.At the same time it created stable communities of scholarscentered around the university with the goal of acquiring new knowledge.Yeah, did you know that our modern conceptof the university is really a medieval concept?Some of you may, if you've been to a university, may have that feeling.But certainly, the idea of universities as a centerof scholars and scholarly research and so forth,comes from this period of time.Probably the most important of these Christian theologianphilosophers was St. Thomas Aquinas.He lived from 1225 to 1274 A.D.Fairly young fellow when he died.The new views and learning and the new cosmology wereexpressed in an incredible work that St. Thomas wrote.It's a book called "Summa Theologica," published in 1267.As a result of this book science became a field of study as partof what's been called the Thomistic Natural Theology,which is also called Scholastic Philosophy.

Later we'll study the views of motion which reported thisphysics of the Scholastics, basically based upon Aristotle's motion.Summa Theological incorporated Aristotle's cosmologyand Ptolemy's astronomy into Christian doctrine whileat the same time establishing a standardmethod for acquiring new information.In other words, it set a standard for scholarly research.It established Aristotle as the authorityin all philosophical and scientific matters.It also provided a detailed account of the structure of heaven andhell, and created many of our common Western images,that of heaven, hell, angels, and a flat earth supportedupon pillars at its four corners.In fact, much of what we learned about the world through ourChristian indoctrination comes directly from Thomas Aquinas.In fact, the architecture of this system was describedin "The Divine Comedy," by Dante Alighieri.He's an Italian poet.It was written in exile after his downfall as the ruler of Florence.

So, in this cosmology, the architecture of the universeis an expression of the divine plan for salvation, accordingto Aquinas, who was able to fit all this into a complete model.Earth, in this system, is composed of gross, corruptible matterwhich is subject to perpetual change.You can see where this comes from Aristotle, right?The imperfect sublunar regions.These changes in Aquinas' view seek the lowest level dueto the low nature and evil tendencies of man which causedhis expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the first place,and have been a problem ever since.The heavens, according to Aquinas, on the other hand,are changeless, incorruptible, made of quintessence,and subject to a different set of rules.You can also see Aristotle in this.There is a sharp distinction in Aquinas between the sublunarand celestial spheres, and like Aristotle's world, everything has its place.In fact, according to Aquinas, man's lower nature is draggedtoward hell at the center of the earth while the higher natureseeks a union with God in the heaven beyond the stars,while in the meantime in between is,in between earth and the heavens is the angels' realm.You see how this comes from a Pythagorean thing to Aristotle.Here we've got God in heaven beyond the celestial sphere.It's like the Pythagorean Olympos.We've got the corruptible part of the universe, where not onlydoes change take place, as Aristotle said, but man's low nature corrupts him.

This is a perfect place to stick hell in the middle, right, thelowest possible, the most gross based place is at the center of the earth.And, of course, this ties in with volcanoes and fire and brimstone.In the meantime, there's empty space where the planets go intheir crystal spheres as Ptolemy said and this space is the realm of the angels.When God wants to send a message back to earth,he sends it through the angels who travelthrough space and come down to earth.It's a really nice fit.I mean, it's amazing that all this stuff fits together.It's also interesting to note that the angels during this periodof time not due to Aquinas, himself, but angels suddenlyappear in art and literature as cherubic, friendly, cute littlethings like Cupid, you know, shooting arrows into people's hearts.Where, after hundreds of years, during the medieval timesangels were seen as dark, fearsome and aggressive,in charge of the motion of the heavens and transferringmessages between heaven, but occasionally comingdown to earth to punish somebody.If you read some of the stories, like the Archangel Gabrielin traditional literature was not a nice guy.So, all these changes took place generally as a result of Aquinas.It's very clear that this model reflects that three tieredPythagorean model containing Aristotle's imperfect sublunarregion with the addition of hell at the center.Cosmos and Olympos are easily associatedwith heaven and the heavens.

It also, by the way, places hell much closerand much more attainable than heaven.After all it's very close to hell.It's the center of the earth,but heaven's really a long wayaway, separated from earth by crystal spheres.This also fits nicely into the Christian theology where it'seasier to go to hell than it is to get to heaven.So, following Aquinas and the publicationof the "Summa Theological" comes the Renaissance.The renaissance is kind of a general term which simply means reawakening.It's the beginning of the age of enlightenment.This reawakening of learning was due to many factors but muchof it was sparked by the discovery or the rediscovery of theseancient writings coming in from the various places in the Mid-East.

A lot of other things were going on too.There was a general feeling of indignation amongstthe people with corruption in the Church.By this time the Church had become a fairly powerfulpolitical organization as well as a religious organization,and there was a tremendous amount of corruption, just asthere is in any large bureaucratic organizationlike those that run our own government today.The Church was also in preparation for Reformation.Reformation is the Calvinists in England, the Lutherans,the Protestant Reformation which was a rebellion in the Churchwhich would ultimately lead to the establishmentof the Protestant faiths and present a serious problem to the Church.Not only that, but Europe was recovering from a culturalbreakdown following the great Bubonic Plagueepidemic of the early 14th century which killedabout three quarters of the population of Europe.

Now, if you try to think of the disruption of social orderand the cause for change, you've got to kind of wonder the effectit would have if three quarters of the population was wiped outby this plague, especially three quarters of the populationwho'd been told for 600 years that if they did certain things,they'd all go to heaven, and, now all of a sudden, God,is smiting them with this disease.It kind of shakes the faith in the Church a little bit.There was also for various reasons renewed interestin paganism, the study of the ancient doctrines, and art,nature and music and language from the ancient world.There was already a resistance developing and only a coupleof hundred years to the rigidity of the Scholastic Philosophy,which by the way, was also the basis for the Inquisition whichwas used to punish and persecute those peoplewho did not conform to the Church's ways.There was also as civilization beganto rebuild a rapid economic advance and political changes.And, of course, there were many new manuscriptscoming in from the rest of the world.

As new manuscripts of the old documents showed upthere were more and more and more discrepancies.Manuscripts in the original Greek showed significantdifferences from those in Arabic.Manuscripts coming in from the Middle East showed verysignificant differences from those which had been publishedand republished and recopied in Europe.Besides that, Aristotle's homocentric spheresand Ptolemy's devices were at odds.Remember, Aristotle had the homocentric spheres of Euxodusand Ptolemy had these epicycles of Hipparchus.Although Ptolemy offered superior astronomy, he gave no cosmology whatsoever.Remember, he removed the entire link and the reason why these things happen.So, in abandoning Aristotle's qualitative simplicityfor quantitative precision, Ptolemy offered actually a morecomplex system which was extremely inconsistent and verydifficult to use, but, which had given reasonably accuratepredictions of the motions of the planets.You see the problem here.

On one hand you have something that works, but isn't very satisfactory.On the other hand you have something that's verysatisfactory, but doesn't work.So, the problem was that the Ptolemaic method nolonger matched the observations.In other words, it didn't work very well either.The long time period since the observations were made back inHipparchus time had magnified errors in the modificationswhich had been made to the methods were unknown havingbeen obscured by nearly a thousand yearsof translations, transcriptions and additions.Besides that, it's becoming increasingly clear thatAristotle's views on motion had many flaws.By 1400 it was clear to most scholars thatAristotle was not an authority on motion.This is kind of contrary to what we usually hear,because we usually hear that in this time Aristotle wasconsidered to be the authority on everything,and Aristotle couldn't be wrong.Not the case.In fact, one important detractor of Aristotle's views on motionwas a professor at the University of Paris, whose name wasJean Buridan, who taught, this is a quote, "there was no motion innature that was properly described by Aristotle."In other words, Buridan's saying here that Aristotle didn't have any of it right.It's not that he made a few mistakes, it was nothinghe said about motion was right.Buridan, himself, openly questioned Aristotleand questioned his ideas of projectile motion.Now what's significant about Buridan is that his studentswere to become among the most influential men in Europe.

The University of Paris at that time was a training centerfor presidents of universities, heads of state, and various other things.So, the University of Paris was actually the institutionof choice amongst the wealthy and powerful of Europe.So, Buridan was a very influential guy, teaching this stuff thatAristotle wasn't a complete authority.So, you gotta ask, why wasn't this considered a challenge by the Church?If the Church is saying on one hand that Aristotle is the authority,and the Church is punishing people, murdering peoplein the Inquisition, who disagreed with the Church's philosophy,how can Buridan get away with saying this stuff?Interesting question, don't you think?Well, it really wasn't a serious challenge to the Church,and in fact, the Church paid very little attention to it.It's easy to see why if we think about it for a minute.How many of us today know what kinds of researchand study goes on in universities?How many of us, for example, know the theories of the quarkthat physicists are studying in universities today.In fact, how many of us care?I'm not suggesting we shouldn't.I'm just suggesting that we don't.

The study of motion in these times was as of little interestto most people as the study of quarks and leptons is to people today.The positions of the planets were important for religious purposes.But, there was really no relationship among the motions of the planets.Everybody knew that the planets moved independentlyof one another and there was no connection.So, to the scholastics who considered alongwith Aristotle, that mathematics was of little use in describingchange, the study motion, heavenly or otherwise, wassimply not a potentially fruitful pursuit for scholarly studiesand the Church simply thought that these people were just outthere being effete intellectual snobs at the Universityand studying things that didn't matter to anybody.If that sounds familiar to you, there are and have beenand still are many members of our own Congress who feel thatway about much of the research that's being done today,and would stop that if they had the chance.I suspect that the Church would have stopped itif they had known about that as well.I think there's a lot of important parallels here between thebureaucracy of the Church and the bureaucracy of, am I allowedto use the word oppression, of current bureaucracies?

Another important contributor to the development of sciencewas an Englishman named Roger Bacon.He lived from 1214 to 1294.He was a philosopher and scientist.He was another one of these renaissance men.In fact, he studied languages, mathematics,alchemy and astronomy at Oxford.He wrote a book called "The Opus Majus," major work,which he actually wrote for Pope Clement IV.In this he argued that extensive studies of these areas, meaningmathematics, alchemy, and so forth, should be studied in university curriculums.Pope Clement, unfortunately, died before acting on the proposal.But, the idea remained alive and was eventually incorporated.Our modern universities reflect Bacon's ideas in our curricula.

Our so-called liberal arts curricular is almost directly aresult of this persuasion by Bacon to Pope Clement.Bacon has another affect here.He was also an advocate of using the inductive methodby using experiments and observations to ascertain the laws of nature.In other words, by Bacon's time we had come full circle backfrom Augustine who had encouraged us not to lookoutside and to look only at the internal world, to Bacon whocomes back and basically says that the only real truth is thatwhich is obtained by observation and if you know all of the factsthe way things behave, that the theories and reasonsfor it will become immediately obvious.(Crunch)It's time for another Food for Thought.In order for a theory to be a good one it must do morethan just explain the facts.There may be many ways to explain the facts, a truthwell known to courtroom dramatists.Although part of the scientific method,an explanation is not enough by itself.

Over the years as our knowledge of the world has advanced,we can look back and see what other qualities a good theory has.First and foremost, a theory must be feasible.That is, it must be consistent with the current paradigm.It also must provide a convenient and easily visualized modelwhether or not that model can be built mechanically.A good theory must organize the known information in sucha way to show relationships between different parts of the model.It must also provide a basis for the predictionof outcomes based upon specific inputs.There are two other aspects of a good theory which are often overlooked.A good theory will also point out previously unsuspected factsand suggest new relationships and newoutcomes which can be tested or observed.Copernicus was a Polish cleric and astronomer.He was born Mikotaj Kopernik but he preferred the Latin name,Nicholas Copernicus in respect for the official Church language.It's important to understand that Copernicus was very much a Church person.But his treatise called, "De Revolutionibus OrbiumCaelestium," published in 1543 expounded what we now callthe Copernican system and laid the foundations of our modern astronomy.

Copernicus was is often associated with the term,Copernican Revolution, for his role in the transformationfrom the geocentric to the heliocentric world-view.But the story is not quite so simple as that.And the main contribution of Copernicus was not theheliocentric theory, but it was the seeds that he plantedand the thought that his works stimulated.Though Copernicus was a minor Church bureaucratand renaissance man who was infused with Pythagoreanmysticism and scholastic philosophy, he was very welleducated in Poland and Italy, and, in fact, was a student therein Italy when Columbus sailed into the Western Hemisphere in 1492.He studied theology, law, medicine, math, economics,classics and took a prolonged study of astronomy.He made very few observations himself, but he was awareof the problems and he returned to Polandwith an ambitious project in mind.What do you suspect that project was?Well, to Copernicus, the Ptolemaic System seemedwhat he called to be "top heavy."He was concerned with Plato's question.Remember Plato's question?How do you fit the motions of the planetsinto the fewest possible circular motions.

An advocate of parsimony, after Ockham's Razor, Copernicus waslooking for the simplest solution to the problem.You gotta recall that in Copernicus' time there wasconsiderable discrepancy between observationand the prediction of planetary positions.The calendar was out of date and the exact lengthof the year was even in doubt.The Church, which was highly dependent on rituals such asPassover, Lent, Easter, and so forth, needed an accurateand reliable calendar to schedule events.It's hard, for example, to designate Easter as the firstSunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox whenthere was uncertainty about when the vernal equinox actuallyoccurred, and besides you couldn't see the moonon a particular night because it was too cloudy.So, you had to know, in order to have these holidays exactlywhen these events were going to occur.

Well, one of the things that Copernicus really did not likewas Ptolemy's inconsistent use of the devices,and he did not like the equant at all, thinking it to be far toomuch of a deviation of from the circular paradigm.So, trying to improve the accuracy of Ptolemy's measurementshe laboriously checked and rechecked Ptolemy'scalculations and found, for the first time, many, many errors.This is not surprising considering that in Ptolemy's timethe concept of zero, the rules of arithmeticand use of numbers hadn't been invented yet.Plus that, it had been more than a thousand years since Ptolemypublished his work and mathematics and algebra and soforth had come a long ways, largely through the efforts of the Arabic world.So, imagine, for example, trying to form these, perform theselong and arduous calculations using even Roman numerals.Did you ever try to multiply in Roman numerals?

OK.Really quick, folks.What's VI times XII?See what I mean?The Roman numeral system was much more efficient thanthe Greek number system, which simply used lettersof the alphabet to designate number, and I think I mentionedthis before, that Greeks, in order to do simple things likeaddition and multiplication required truth tables,where you matched something from a rowin a column and you find the answer.It's a really tough thing to do.Well, the major work of Copernicus was the Revolutionibus.By the way, the English translation of this is simply,"On the revolution of the celestial bodies."He waited until he was on his deathbed to publish this book,presumably to avoid controversy.It's not very clear about this, but it's fairly certain thatCopernicus was aware of the impact that this might have on the world.He or his publishers, it's not clear exactly which, took special careto avoid igniting the wrath of the Church, which one might expectfrom contradicting the paradigm.For one thing, he dedicated the book to Pope Paul III.That's a good way, you know, to stave off things like that.For another thing, the preface to the book contained a disclaimer.The disclaimer stated that the work was not being offeredas a cosmology, but rather simply a more parsimonious methodfor calculating the planetary locations.

Copernicus said, "This doesn't represent reality,it's simply a way for calculating."It's clear upon reading that he was justifying the heliocentricposition and showing its feasibility, at the same timethat he was denying its physical reality.It's actually a very clever writing style.It's sort of like I'm going to say that it really means this,but if you read it from the right perspective with the rightparadigm, you'll see that it really means this.Very clever thing to do.But, although the system was sun centered, and suggestedthat the earth moved, it was still circular.And not only that, but it still required the use of epicycles and eccentrics.In other words, it still required the uses of Ptolemy's devices.It was a little more accurate, not much, but a little more,and allowed the development of a calendarwhich was once again tuned to the heavens.

The calendar was the Gregorian calendar which we still use today.And this is kind of an interesting story.At the time they found out that the calendar was about 30 daysout of date, so the Pope decreed that one day would beOctober 11, and the next day would be November 23, or something like that.People all over Europe were complaining that they werehaving their lives taken away from them because they werelosing these 30 days of their life.It would be kind of weird, wouldn't it?Imagine you wake up this morning and the next day is a month later?It would be kind of confusing to people, but it did bring thecalendar back into sync with the stars and allowthe establishment of the modern calendar and broughtthe religious holidays back to where they were supposed to be.

Well, uniform motion, remember, was a Platonic tradition.And this is interesting because Copernicus, himself, althoughhe was advocating the heliocentric system, statedthat any type of celestial motion other than circular was obviously impossible.Why did he say it's obviously impossible?What's so obvious about it?See the strength of the paradigm here?In fact, this is a quote from Copernicus.He said, "The intellect recoils with horror at any other suggestion."And goes on to say, "It would be unworthy to suppose sucha thing in a Creation constituted in the best possible way."You see how strong this Platonic circular paradigm was?I mean, it's just incredible, isn't it?Considering that most of the objections to a moving earthwere traceable to Aristotle's views on motion which werecommonly held, largely due to Buridan, to be less than absolutely correct.Then you see if sort of represents a challenge, even though it hasthe circles and it's heliocentric, Aristotle'sauthority is a little bit in doubt.So, the Copernican system really is very similar to the way webelieve the solar system to be today.In this system, it's a solar system.

The earth is a planetwhich like the others isin a circular orbit around the sun.The moon, as we know today that it does, goes around the earth.The motion of all the planets, including earth,is truly circular and move at a uniform speed.But, Copernicus found that he had to shift the centerof the circles to fall a little to one side of the sun.But he kept the sun at the center, but the centerof the circle was shifted away from the sun.Doesn't it sound a little bit like what Ptolemy had done with the equiant?It's interesting that even though Copernicus didn't like theequiant, he still resorted to this same thing.What's going on here?Why is everybody having so much trouble puttingthe planets into circular orbits?Do you suppose it could be because the planetary orbits are not circular?Getting ahead of things again?But, compared to Ptolemy's system which required 80spheres and had some of the epicycles moving backwards,the Copernican system used only 46 epicycles and ecccentrics,all of which turned in the same direction.This is kind of significant, too, if you think about it.Everything moving in the same direction is a lot more like clockwork.

In Copernicus' system planets nearer the sunmoved faster than those further out.In Aristotle's system everything had to turn at the same speed.But, still each planet moved at a consistent, constantspeed on each of its spheres.Does that make sense?Planets moved at different speeds, but each planetmoved at a constant speed.So, earth moved faster than Mars, but earth and Marsboth moved at their own constant speed.Copernicus also provided an explanation of how retrogrademotion is an optical illusion caused by the combined motionsof the earth and another planet moving at different speedsin orbits at these different distances from the sun.He even presented a picture which showed how theoptical illusion came about.Now this is a little strange, if you think about it.Because on one hand he is saying, in the book, in the preface,he's saying, "I don't really believe that this system works this way."He's saying, "This is only for calculation, everybody knowsthat the Ptolemaic system and Aristotle is correct."But on the other hand, he presents this picture showing howretrograde motion can be explained by the heliocentric system.It's strange that he would do this, isn't it?I mean, just looking at a parsimonious system.There's been a lot of speculation by scholars over the years asto what Copernicus really believed.And I think it goes far in saying that he's a very clever writerto put this into perspective so that even now, 500 years later,we have a very hard time understanding what he really thought.This is one reason that I say that Copernicus was not really a revolutionary.

You see, a revolutionary is someone who puts forth an ideawith the knowledge that it's going to cause revolution, or cause change.What Copernicus was apparently trying to do is to avoid a revolution.He didn't want the notoriety.That's why he published it on his deathbed.In fact, the first copy of the book was broughtto him about three or four hours before he died.So he had no idea what this would cause, but he waskind of scared of it as he had every right to be.So, the Copernican system was easier to use, but it wasn't much easier.And it wasn't a much better system at all.A little bit, but not much.The mathematics of the system was still well beyond the average scholar.Now you know how much trouble people have doing mathematicstoday; anything other than simple algebra or simple arithmetic.You can imagine that 500 years ago, that mostpeople couldn't do math very well at all.Even scholars, let alone the average citizen.So, it also turns out that the first version of the theory thatCopernicus put forth turned out to be very bad indeed.In fact, when he tried to use only perfect circles with the sunat the center with no epicycles and no deference, it didn't evenwork as well as Ptolemy's model.

Copernicus at first thought that he had failed miserably.So he went back, rechecked Ptolemy's calculations,rechecked his own calculations, and finally, against his ownobjections, he was forced to add eipcycles and deference.I use the word here, against his own objections.This happens very often in science that..You see, when you're inquiring and you have an open mindand you're looking at this in a scientific method;that is, you're open to whatever happens.It very often happens that the scientist has apreconceived idea of what he wants to happen.But, the good scientist will take facts that contradict thatand turn them into something different.This is basically what Copernicus did, even though as it turns outCopernicus was wrong in this sense, the orbits of the planetsare not circular and they do not move in eipcycles and on deference.Well, you know, it's easy to appreciate the amount of work this all takes.The idea of trying first one method and then another.All of this would have been impossible in Ptolemy's timesimply because the level of mathematical sophisticationand symbolism hadn't evolved to that point yet.

One of the great tests of Copernicus' theory other thanrearranging the calendar and putting the calendar backin sync with the stars was that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.Now, a conjunction of two planets is when the two planets appear to line up.Now, we know they don't really line up.They don't really collide with each other, but all through theastrological period, the conjunction or alignmentof two planets had great significance.In fact, people who were born during this time, for example,were said to have the great potential to be leaders and cause change and all this.So, it was very important to know when these kinds of conjunctions occurred.Copernicus predicted based on his calculations when a conjunctionwas due to occur between Jupiter and Saturn.It occurred one month earlier than waspredicted by the Ptolemaic calculations.In other words, the actual conjunction was 30 days soonerthan what Ptolemy's calculations had predicted.But it was only several days earlier than what Copernicus predicted.So, is it a better theory?It's still isn't perfect.But it did predict several days earlier, almost a whole month earlier.

Now, it's true that these calculations predictingthe locations of Jupiter and Saturn were based on old data.The old data was data of the locations of the planetshundreds of years before which had been projected by the calculations.The accuracy of these data were questionable to beginwith because the observational techniques of the peoplein the Medieval times was nowhere near as good aseven as the Alexandrian Greeks.At the time, of course, they had no way of knowing, in Copernicus'time, I should say, they had no way of knowing whether theerrors were the result of bad data, bad calculation,coincidence, or all three of these.The fact that the Copernican method was slightly easierand only slightly more accurate, gave it the edge.Despite all the cosmological problems that were so cleverly,or maybe not even so cleverly concealed in it.I think it's a key here to remember that the Copernicanmethod was only slightly better.

The standard way of thinking of this is to say, "Well, you know,Copernicus came along and he came up with this modeland all of a sudden we could calculate and we knewwhat the solar system looked like."But I want to emphasize again.Copernicus' method was only slightly better, good enough,only slightly better, but still not really a very good system.So, what would you suspect that the reception of the Copernicus' theory was?I mean, here we have this guy who's coming outwith something that goes completely against the Church doctrine.There had been people who had been persecuted, horribly,for having these ideas that went against the Church.And here comes this guy who puts out this book, basically sayingthat everything that the Church believed in as faras the rotation could be wrong.The rotation of the earth and the movement of the planets.

Well, despite these seemingly justified concernsof Copernicus and his publishers about the possible impactof this, the thing went over like the proverbial lead balloon.The publication of Revolutionibus caused no particular stir.In fact, the Church officials welcomed it.It was used by the Church to determine the gregoriancalendar which is still in use today without very many modifications.And I said that before, it brought the synchronizationof the calendar back in with the stars and besides that, it wasn't taken seriously.It wasn't a serious model.It really didn't represent anything.It was, and also the addition by Copernicus of moving devicesand the offset equant and offset sun and all thesethings really obscured its simplicity.I mean, let's face it.If you don't know how to do math, and you look at Ptolemy'stheory which you can't calculate anyway, even if you wanted to,and you look at Copernicus' theory, which you also can'tcalculate anyway even if you wanted to, I don't know which one's simpler.So, even though it's simpler, the simplicity was obscured.Plus, along with this disclaimer in the preface,Copernicus had an obtuse writing style.He was not a very good writer.So, all of this together totally obscuredthe physical reality of the thing.

Another factor that contributed to this sort of non-response wassimply that everybody knew that the Copernican system could not be true.Because it contradicted the widely held views of Aristotle on motion.These had become incorporated into the paradigm, and eventhough, the Medieval philosophers Buridan and others hadquestioned Aristotle's theories on motion, these things weresimply seen by most people as axiomatic.Whoops.Remember that word, axiomatic?Requiring no proof.There was nothing in the Copernican model which pointedto significant contradictions within the geocentric paradigm.In other words, Copernicus never did anything in this book to say,"Here's what's wrong with the geocentric idea."In other words, he did not analyze the geocentric paradigm,he simply provided a new method for calculating it.Aristotle's concepts of motion which we'll study laterin greater detail required certain effects which ought to havebeen detectable if the earth was spinning on it axis and orbiting the sun.Such things as: Aristotle had claimed, for example,that if you jumped up into the air.If the earth was rotating, he said, if you jumped up into the air,the earth would rotate away from under you and you'dland behind where you jumped from.This doesn't happen, right?You jump in the air, you land back in the same place.Aristotle used this as proof that the earth couldn't be moving.The other thing Aristotle said is that the earth was moving fastenough to rotate once every 24 hours.It would create this tremendous wind as the earth movedthrough the air, sort of like when you stick your hand out the car window.

You don't observe this either.Also, Aristotle said that the, if the earth was spinning thatfast, that we'd simply be thrown off the surface sort of the waya spin drier in the wash cycle throws water off out of the bucket.All of these things weren't observed,and if Aristotle said they were supposed to be observedand they weren't, well then, it couldn't possibly be true.So, the ability to observe.I should say the inability to observe these phenomena thatAristotle said should be there, was taken as an "A Priori"proof that earth could not be moving thereby confirmingthe nature of the Copernican theory as a convenient toolrather than any physical theory of the world.I use the word, "A Priori."Does anyone know what that means?"A Priori?"It means without proof, "A Priori."You might want to look it up in the dictionary.I'll use the word again, I think, as we go through the course.So, despite the fact that none of these things could be observed,Copernicus' theory simply sort of fell between the cracks.It's important, by the way, to note here that regardless of howmuch sense these ideas make to us, or don't make to us,as the case may be, they were the paradigm and Aristotle was theauthority on natural philosophy so one doesn'thave to question Aristotle.

Remember, if you're an authority, you, if you rely upon anauthority to tell you what to think, you don't have to think about it.There were other factors, by the way, which could be usedto show that Copernicus' theory couldn't be taken seriously.Some of which had already been used against Aristarchus in 250 B.C.There still was no parallax of stars and Venus still didn'tshow phases, and besides that, everybody knows that earthis sublunar, and sublunar things can't be planets,because the planets are out there.And even more so, the idea of a sun centered universe was seenby many people as a return to the pagan sun worship whichthe sun had worked so hard to, the Church had workedso hard to overcome all these years.People didn't want to see it return back to the old days.OK, so although Copernicus' ideas were not revolutionaryin a strict sense, they did provoke a lot of thought.In his own time there was not much, not much happened.It was the speculations that followed which causedmost of the trouble with the Church.One such speculator was Bruno.

Bruno is a very interesting story and Bruno is not alone in this.There are other people who did this, but I pickedBruno as our representative here.Bruno was a renaissance man, like many people in these times.I suppose if you lived in the renaissance, you're a renaissance man.But, you know what a renaissance man is, don't you?A renaissance man means someone who studies everything,whose knowledge is very broad, like Copernicus.So, anyway, Bruno was a renaissance man who beganto speculate on the architecture of a Copernican universe.By the architecture I mean the structure of the Copernican universe.Much of the same way that Aquinas had done this with Ptolemy's universe.So, here's what Bruno thought about.If the stars don't rotate, the celestial sphere doesn't haveto turn, then the stars don't have to be all the samedistance away on the celestial sphere.

You see, if the whole sphere is rotating, then all thestars have to be at the same place, right?Plus they have to rotate really fast.So, if the stars don't have to rotate, then the stars could bespread out through space and they might be really far away.And, Bruno went on to say, the stars as littlepinpoints of light might be like our sun.Only just so far away that they appear very small.And, he went on to say, rather than being only pinpricksin this black celestial curtain, allowing the lights of heavento shine through, the stars, themselves, might be self luminous.And, he said, they might have planets.Like the earth, and they might have life on some of these planets.This is in 1600, by the way, we're talking about.

Now, you probably recognize that Bruno's ideas a very much likeour current ideas, and he went on to say, if the earth is not thecenter, then maybe the sun isn't either.In fact, Bruno speculated that the universe mighteven be infinite in size and infinite in time.Oh, heavy ideas for 1600!These ideas are very similar to our modern ideasof the universe, and they had been substantiated for us by threecenturies of observation of science.But, like so many people before and after him,Bruno was too far ahead of his time.Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600,nine years before Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens,and only one year before Brahe hired Kepler to work on his tables of data.Silico: "Excuse me, excuse me, you are getting ahead of the story again."Oh, yeah, am I?I guess I am but, you know, I'm making connections,so sometimes it's OK to get ahead of the story if I'm making connections.OK?

In this program we traced the river of our cultural heritagein physical science from the Roman Empirethrough Copernicus, his heliocentric theory, and the reaction to it.Along the way we watched the growth of Christianityand the growth of the Church as an authorityon everything, including physical science.We saw the influence and importance of contributionsfrom the Arabic world and we examined the conflict thatarose when the works of Aristotle and Ptolemy were comparedone thousand years after they were written.We watched the reemergence of learning exemplifiedby the Scholastic Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and laterby the Age of Enlightenment of the Renaissance.Out of that productive era of art, literature and music cameCopernicus who planted the seeds of a thoughtrevolution whether he intended to or not.

In the next programs we'll start lookingat the effects of the Scientific Revolution.In this whole section, in fact, culminatingwith Newton's theory of gravity.(Dang.)Oops, once again, I guess the time has run out on us.And that's it for Program 9, Lesson 2.1 that we called "Darkness and Dawn."So, remember when it comes to science, get physical.Hey, you know, you've been really quiet all throughout this.Don't you have anything at all to say about all this?You know, it's almost getting to the point where I'm afraid to ask.Silico: "Only three words."Music