Sunday Observer Online
 

Home

Sunday, 8 March 2015

Untitled-1

observer
 ONLINE


OTHER PUBLICATIONS


OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified
Government Gazette

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.

For views, reviews, encomiums, and brickbats:

[email protected]
 

 | EMAIL |   PRINTABLE VIEW | FEEDBACK

Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)
www.army.lk
www.news.lk
www.defence.lk
Donate Now | defence.lk
www.apiwenuwenapi.co.uk
LANKAPUVATH - National News Agency of Sri Lank
www.batsman.com
 

| News | Editorial | Finance | Features | Political | Security | Sports | Spectrum | Montage | Impact | World | Obituaries | Junior | Youth |

 
 

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2015 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Editor