When Earth got dethroned as the centre of the universe
“The sun rises and the
sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.”
- Ecclesiastes 1:5
Consider the scenario: The earth is fixed and immovable and lies at
the centre of all things. The sun moves around the earth, not the other
way around. The earth is flat and finite with hell below it and heaven
above. Its boundary may be circular, but the earth is most certainly not
a sphere as was hypothesised by Eratosthenes.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet,
astronomer, and music theorist.
He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library
of Alexandria, who lived two centuries before the birth of Christ.
The sky is the roof over the earth - a solid impervious barrier that
protects both human beings and all of earth from the waters beyond, and
in spite of water seeping through occasionally as rain.
The term “outer space” was not even a notion imagined. The stars on
the sky are much smaller than the earth - the word “on”, is not a
typographical error - and the notion of “distant suns” is nothing more
than a theory entertained by misguided scientists. The laws of physics
as they exist on the earth are different from those of the sun, moon,
stars, and planets.
Outrages
Anyone who subscribed to the notion that we live on a tiny rock,
circling an insignificant star, in a galaxy of billions of stars, in a
universe of billions of galaxies, would be regarded a heretic. This
indeed was the cosmos, and the thinking, at the time of Copernicus; in
early 16th century, and few of us would recognise it today, as described
then.
From then on, science and especially the science of astronomy had
inflicted on humanity several great outrages upon the vanity of Mankind
ever since our planet earth fell from grace and came to be, dethroned as
the centre of the universe.
The first blow to man’s vainglory and insufferable arrogance was when
the sixteenth century astronomer Copernicus, started the plunge with his
prediction that our earth was not the centre of the universe, but only a
tiny speck in a world-system - let alone the universe - of a magnitude
hardly conceivable to the mind of men of that time. No matter, that not
many men are better informed even in present times.
They remain as ill informed as those in the dark ages. Copernicus, by
discovering the real status of the earth, had abated the vanity of men
who had thrust themselves into the chief place of the Universe. That
being so, I must also say that this feeling of being the centre of the
universe, this great Copernican cliché over the discovery of not being
the centre, presumes too much and simplistically assumes that central is
good, or special, and that to be removed from the center is bad.
We see this mind set, this naïve self-love, even in the modern man;
wherefore, the arrogance of human vanity demands to be central to
everything - the folly of fools having no limit to its self-esteem.
If anything, and as I see it, Galileo and his fellow Copernicans were
raising the status of the earth and its inhabitants within the universe,
not dethroning them; because, it made man realise that as of now, there
is no globe nobler or more suitable for man than the earth. With the
abolition of geo-centrism, we could truly say that we occupy the best,
most privileged, place in the universe: the cosmic cauldron that
proclaims our smallness, weakness, and often, moral incapacity against
the immense greatness, goodness, and otherness of the Universe.
Notion
The scientific notion that, we live in a place that is not special as
first thought to be; dealt the opening blow to the pride of ostentatious
man.
As a result, to this day, human conceit and self-importance keeps
tumbling, notwithstanding the achievements in all fields of human
knowledge; such accomplishment, however, being a miniscule in comparison
to all that is out there in the universe, awaiting discovery. Discovery
and invention are not to be confused.
We can only discover that which exists, or what has existed, but not
known to us hitherto. Whereas an invention, on the other hand, is when
we invent, combinations or arrangements, typically a process or device,
not before in use; and call it invention or innovation. The irony of
this supposed dethronement is that, some men still believe that while
purportedly rendering Man less cosmically and metaphysically important,
our dethronement; actually enthrones us modern “scientific” humans in
all our enlightened superiority.
Historically and philosophically, no sane person need believe this
tale of fabrication; there being nothing further from the truth. All I
can say is that even today, notwithstanding the contribution of science
to knowledge, most humans remain firmly rooted in the dark ages of
knowledge.
Experimentation
It was not so always. Over 2,500 years ago, from as long ago as
600BCE, the Ionians, an ancient Hellenic people inhabiting Attica, parts
of western Asia Minor, and the Aegean islands, discovered a new way of
thinking.
They devoted their time to rational study backed up by physical
experimentation and logical critical thinking based on known facts.
Nowadays we call their ways the scientific method. They believed that
the Earth was a planet that orbited the sun, and that the stars were
very far away.
The then city of Alexandria, from where the Ionians ruled, was the
greatest in the ancient world.
The famous Library, known as the Ancient Library of Alexandria,
created by Ptolemy I Soter, who was a Macedonian general and the
successor of Alexander the Great, was constructed in the third century
BCE. During the rule of the Macedonian dynasty who ruled Egypt, it
became a scientific research centre and publishing capital of the world.
Ionians forged ahead in many arenas of knowledge. Eratosthenes
accurately calculated the size of the Earth.
Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician of the
Hellenistic period, better known as Hipparchus of Nicaea which was the
capital city of the Empire of Nicaea located in present day Turkey,
anticipated that the stars come into being, slowly move during the
course of centuries, and eventually perish.
He was the first to catalogue the positions and magnitudes of the
stars. Considered as the founder of trigonometry, he is more famous for
his incidental discovery of precession of the equinoxes.
Euclid, a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the “Father of
Geometry” who lived in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I,
produced a textbook on geometry from which humans learned for
twenty-three centuries. Such astounding wisdom backed up by studious
thinking and experimentation launched the world into the modern era.
Discovered
Science advanced through observational means and theories formed to
explain discovered facts. Knowledge was beginning to bloom. Sadly, as
always, due to the folly of fools and the ignorance that emanates from
man, the last remains of the Alexandrian Library, by then Alexandria
being a part of greater Greece, was destroyed not long after the death
of Hypatia, a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt. She
was the head of the Neo-Platonic school at Alexandria, where she taught
philosophy and astronomy.
Nearly all the books and documents the Library held were completely
destroyed. The Western Dark Ages had begun and all knowledge and science
was, forgotten in the West for over a thousand years until Copernicus
dethroned earth as the centre of the universe.
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