Astronomy: A Fad Science?
NOTE: This paper was written for an English class and a non astronomy audience. Thus, several arguments were left out to make the material easier to understand for the target audience. These arguments would include (but are not limited to) dark energy, dark matter, and the inflationary model of the universe. If I later have time I may revise this paper to cover such topics and be more comprehensive.
Science is a field that prides itself on being objective. To help ensure that this objectivity is met, scientists have formed a process to test each hypothesis. Each hypothesis is then subject to revision, or replacement should a theory come along with more support. As a science, the field of astronomy also strives to reach this goal. However, astronomy has been riddled with mistakes. Just as teens chase after fads today, be it fashion or the latest heart-throb, astronomy too has tenaciously followed trends that were logically flawed. Almost from its inception, astronomy has followed this pattern of clinging to these erroneous ideas. Much like today’s fads, these ideas seem silly in hindsight. However, this makes them no less powerful in the time they occur. But even knowing that such fads exist, which topics today are legitimate science and which are dead ends?
Astronomy’s beginnings can be considered to go back as far as humankind has looked up at the sky in wonder. A simple question then led to an answer that is still being uncovered today. That question: “What is everything up there?” Two-thousand years later, some questions have been answered. Many still remain. However, the process in which these answers have been obtained has not been simple. Many times throughout history, astronomers have believed the answer was in sight and tenaciously believed the idea, only to discover they were wrong years later. These astronomical fads have held the progress of astronomy, and consequently almost all other branches of science, back for hundreds of years as the truth was sorted out. One of the first examples of this was the model of solar system. Aristotle first reasoned that the Earth was at the center and the sun and planets traveled around it on crystalline spheres (Baron 44). The most distant sphere was black and had many small holes punched in it (Baron 44). Behind that was the light from Heaven which shown through the holes making the stars (Baron 44).
Many of the heavenly bodies were considered to be the representations of deities. The master of reason, Aristotle, stated once long ago that everything was made of only five elements the final being what makes up the heavenly bodies, after all they lacked the proper technologies to know differently. It was Galileo in 1610, using his telescope, that found dark spots on the sun. So as technological innovations occur our understanding of physics and astronomy grow. Newton in 1687 discovered the laws of gravity, suggested that all the solar and stellar bodies operated the same.
Has the question of “who even thought to invent the telephone or metal detector?” ever came into your head? Or been going through the internet and came across the name Alexander Graham Bell and wondered who it was? Well Alexander was the inventor of many things like the telephone, and the metal detector. Bell was a very smart man who came from a very smart family.
Henry David Thoreau pens his book Walden during a revolutionary period of time known as American Romanticism. The literary movement of American Romanticism began roughly between the years of 1830 and 1860. It is believed to be a chapter of time in which those who had been dissatisfied by the Age of Reason were revolting through works of literature. All elements of Romanticism are in sharp, abrupt contrast to those types of ideas such as empirical observation and rationality. An online article describes American Romanticism in the following manner, “They celebrated imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control, subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus monarchy, and so on” (Strickland). In 1845 during that period of time, Thoreau decides to spend two years of his life in an experiment with Mother Nature in a cabin at Walden Pond. He tells exquisite tales of life in natural surroundings in his book, Walden, through a most primitive organic style. Walden is a key work of American Romanticism because of its embedded ideas of solitude, individualism, pantheism and intuition.
...on, Mitchell. "Alexander Graham Bell." American Science and Invention: A Pictorial History. New York: Bonanza, 1960. 278-83. Print.
Henry David Thoreau once stated, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 906). However, Thoreau believes that living in nature is the only true way to live. Thoreau’s writings have produced generations of readers to view their duty to society, nature, and themselves. However, Thoreau writes a novel that is called Walden. Thoreau is known for transcendentalism and simple living. Transcendentalism is an idealistic individual central of society. With this being said, as a transcendentalist, Thoreau believes that each individual’s should have the power to live a deliberate
...farm, mowing the grass, feeding the animals, and harvesting the garden. The only real value of the farm, the close contact with nature, can be had for no cost. Thoreau found more freedom in his small hut by the pond where he was truly free from the trivial life of living in a village. He was free from the commercial rat race and was able to let himself be roused by nature.
In conclusion, before I wrote this paper I would have to say that even though every night when I happen to glance upwards I see a whole bunch of stars, I never even had the slightest idea of where they came from until now. Stars come from these cosmic nurseries that scientists and astronomers refer to as nebulas in one of the oddest ways imaginable. I learned quite a bit about where stars come from and I hope to continue to learn even more about stars in the not so distant future.
Despite all our advances in particle physics and astrophysics, we still don't know what form of matter makes up 95% of the universe. Physicists have named this mysterious substance dark matter, for it can not be detected by observation (it does not emit visible or other frequency light waves). However, we know that dark matter must exist, following Newton's universal law of gravity.
Growing up as a child living with his deaf mom, Eliza, Alexander Graham Bell sympathized with the hearing impaired and later devoted his life to teaching speech and liberating deaf children. In 1870, Bell and his family moved to Canada where Melville taught his son Visible Speech and setup teaching jobs for him around New England. One year later Alexander Graham Bell moved to Boston, which was a hotspot for commercial, education, and scientific activity. He began writing articles on deaf education and teaching scientific lectures (Grosvenor, Wesson). When Bell moved to Boston he was able to spread the teaching of Visible Speech. He pursued his career in teaching the hearing impaired where technology and inventions were flourishing. “It makes my very heart ache to see the difficulties the little children have to contend with on account of the prejudice of their teachers. You know that here all communication is strictly with the mouth… and just fancy little children who have no idea of speech being made dependent on lip-reading for almost every idea that enters their heads. Of course their mental development is slow. It is a wonder to me they progress at all ” (Letter to Melville and Eliza, MS,). Alexander Graham Bell began teaching at Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts where he used his playful nature and knowledge in Visible Speech to educate the deaf children. He devoted his life and career to helping making a difference in the lives of deaf children and using new, innovative techniques to make their lives easier. As people began to realize Alexander Graham Bell’s extreme talents, he was hired to teach private lessons with kids especially struggling with reading, writing, and speech. Thomas Sanders, a Salem...
...ity, strange energy-fluid that filled in space, and that Einstein’s theory of gravity could be wrong and a new theory could be found about the cosmic acceleration. Dark energy effects space and time. Dark energy overcomes gravity. In the 1990s, astrophysicists examined distant supernovae to calculate the deceleration of the universe. These astrophysicists were surprised by the results of actually seeing that the universe is accelerating. The Hubble law is the rate of expansion and acceleration of the universe. The results from measurements made off the Hubble law confirms the existence of dark energy and how much of it exists. Quintessence is the possibility that the universe is filled with a changing energy field. According to Einstein’s cosmological constant for a stationary universe, empty space can have its own energy and can increase when more space emerges.
Later Life ~ After the tragic deaths of his brothers, the Bell family and his brother’s widow Caroline decided to move to the “New World”. They settled in Tutelo (Tutelary) Heights, Canada. His father was offered a job at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, but it contradicted with his tour on visible speech. Bell asked for the job, and his father let him take it. Later, Bell married a former st...
Many theories accepted as knowledge in the natural science of astronomy are readily discarded. For instance, an ancient Greek astronomer known as Galileo developed the theory that the earth is the center of the universe. Although it was initially believed to be true by some, it was discarded as a...
Much to the dismay of the Church, two astronomers Galileo and Kepler had the audacity to challenge the authorities by suggesting that the sun-not the earth-was at the center of the universe. The church had a stronghold on the way the spiritual and physical world worked, so these discoveries only added to the Church’s resistance to their aims. Their discoveries came only after Kepler and Galileo began to question ancient theories about how the world functioned. These ancient truths were widely held but were inconsistent with the new observations that they had made. Kepler had discovered the laws of planetary motion which suggested that the planet would move in elliptical orbits, while Galileo followed with his discovery of the principle of inertia. Galileo concluded his finding b...
Alexander always had an intellectual curiosity that kept him regularly searching, striving, and wanting always to learn and to create...
Space has always been a pivotal and utmost important subject for many years. In the past, scientists have made monumental advances in this field such as sending people into orbit and landing a man on the moon. Of course, this has only barely been explored and we still have a lot more to see of the ever-vast outer space. One of the most significant topics of all of science has only been touched and there’s still more to come.