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Johannes Kepler's contributions to Science
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Johannes Kepler's contributions to Science
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Karissa Oder Course 9/18/2014 T/TH The Father of Astronomy As we grow up and go through the challenges of school we are constantly asked to read. Sometimes it can be a fun little story but more often than not it is a boring, factual book. I don’t know about you but I spend twice the amount of time procrastinating the reading of said book than it take to actually read it. Recently we were asked to read The Earth Moves by Dan Hofstadter. For the first time in a long time I can actually conclude that my reading assignment did not completely suck. When I picked up my books from the bookstore I was pretty disappointed. They all seemed like boring textbook types and most of them will be. The cover seems pretty sciencey and weird. It has a picture …show more content…
of the night sky and some old dude on the front. It didn’t take to long for me to discover the old dude is Galileo Galilei. Most of us grew up learning about Galileo and his discoveries.
We know that he had a fascination with the stars that lead to some very important discoveries many years ago. What we don’t know is how those discoveries affected his life. In The Earth Moves by Dan Hofstadter we learn a little bit more about this great man and what happened during the inquisition of his work. In the early 1600’s science, art, and religion were not as separate as they are today. In fact a great number of the worlds famous scientists were talented artists as well. However, at some point, as these talents and ideas seemed to intersect more and more, a decision had to be made. There can only be one truth, and to the Church, that would always be the word of God. Since the church and government were connected back then they had some serious control on what was allowed to be said or done and what is not. If you stepped outside those boundaries then you would be summoned to a inquisition. “.. the Roman Inquisition, had banned any advocacy or teaching of the Copernican position..” (Hofstadter, 2009, P. …show more content…
19-20) In short, it was not a good thing or something you wanted to be involved in. If they felt as though you were withholding information or that you weren’t being honest, you could be sentenced to death. They had the power to force you to give up your work and passions if it conflicted with their rules. They were there to make sure nothing would disprove the words of the bible. That’s how it happened; The war between science and religion.
Hofstadter (2009, p. 22) calls it, “..the great religion-science clash of 1633..” Eventually scientists started to discover things about our world that were not supposed to be true. This is where the term copernican might be a good thing to look up. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says, “ of or relating to Copernicus or the belief that the earth rotates daily on its axis and the planets revolve in orbits around the sun.” The church did not agree with this idea. The bible says that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. If the Copernican theory was correct, that would be going against the word of God. (Merriam- Webster Dictionary, online
version) Hofstadter has amazing amounts of information. It’s important that an author or reporter has done thorough research but they also need to be able to tell you what needs to be said in a way that will keep your attention. You can read the passion the Hofstadter had for galileo, the inquisition, and his telescope. It is one of his hooks, whether he realizes it or not. This book has a nice flow for the most part but there were some parts of the book that dragged by a little. For example, the telescope. If you want to know every single, tiny detail about Galileo’s telescope then this is the book for you. Hofstadter devoted over 25 pages to describing Galileo’s improvements and his work with the telescope. My mom used to tell me we learn from our mistakes, and she is right. This book has made me realize that although we saw that having church and government as one unit did not go well, we haven’t progressed that far. There are many of us, especially Americans, who like to think that we have advanced from what our societies used to be. Such as keeping religion and government as two completely different sources. In reality the only difference between how our society runs is that they, societies of the 1600’s, were not afraid to admit that the church affected their laws. I think reading this book didn’t complete suck because I actually got something out of it. I didn’t read the book because I desperately wanted to know about the telescope. I started it for an assignment but I continued to read it because I enjoyed the way Hofstadter writes.
The Bible was one of the most important pieces of text during Galileo’s lifetime. If you went against what the Bible stated then you were considered to be a heretic. The Bible indicated that the earth was in the center of the universe and the sun and the other planets revolve around it. a theory known as the geocentric model. Many scientists argued against this theory by stating that actually the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth and the other planets revolved around the sun, this theory was known as the heliocentric model. Nicolas Copernicus was one of the first out of many scientists who publically shared this theory. Later Giordano Bruno also supported this theory and because of this the Church ordered him to be burned
During the Scientific Revolution, the struggle between faith and reason was exhibited through Galileo and his discoveries. The Catholic Church during the time period of the Scientific Revolution did not approve of any outside scientists who came up with new theories and observations. The Church believed that all information about how the world worked was in the bible and that was the only right source. In an excerpt from “What is Scientific Authority?” written by Galileo in 1615, it states, “Showing a greater fondness for their [Catholic Church’s] own opinions than for truth, they sought to deny & disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them…” Galileo Galilei himself knew that the Church was not willing to approve of new ideas from other scientists, but only from the teachings in the Bible. Later on in the excerpt, Galileo writes, “They [Catholic Church] hurled various charges &…made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properl...
The Catholic Church stated, “The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures’(Doc.2). This shows the hindrance that the church creates to impede the advancement of science. As known today, the sun is the center of the solar system. Even while Galileo and Copernicus knew that this was the correct arrangement of the solar system and even had evidence, the church still dismissed them and stopped them from sharing their thoughts and
In his Letter to The Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo challenged the widely accepted religious beliefs of the time, claiming that the conflict lies in their interpretation, not the context. In Galileo’s eyes science was an extremely useful tool that could and should have been used in interpreting the Scriptures. He argued that “the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven not how heaven goes” (Grand Duchess). The purpose of science was not to counter what the bible teaches; rather its purpose was to help explain the teachings of the scriptures. Furthermore, it was “prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood” (Grand Duchess). However, because of the terminology in which the bible was presented the perception of what the Scripture defined as truth was skewed. The Bible was written so that the common man could understand it and follow its commandments. The people also showed a greater inte...
As he believes that this would threaten jurisdiction of the church and would also undermine the interpretation of the Holy Scripture “harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false” (Bellarmine, 1615, pg 68). Therefore using Copernicanism as a working hypothesis is a better option for the church than expecting it as reality. He also recognises that by accepting Copernicanism outright would demonstrate that the church had interpreted the Holy Scripture wrong thus causing the Church to lose its authority in the community more quickly and essentially causing the believers of the Church to lose faith in it. He uses this example in order to get his point across “ likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosopher and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false…many ways of interpreting Holy Scripture, but has not applied them to particular cases; without a doubt you would have encountered very great difficulties if you have wanted to interpret all those passages you yourself cited” (Bellarmine, 1615, pg 67). Further explaining that not only would people who believe in the Church would start having doubts but also philosophers and theologians. This further drives this message that it is better to accept Copernicanism as a
My reading experience in junior-high and first three years of high school were not so much different. I had never been enthusiastic to read about predetermined topics assigned by my teacher and they continued to assign predetermined reading topics that made me feel frustrated and at times uncomfortable. But there was positivity that came out of these repulsive and devastating books, such as Lord of The Flies by William Golding or The Night by Elie Wiesel. Lord of the Flies caused me to confirm that humans must have rules and a government to help
Before the scientific revolution, it was widely believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything revolved
In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish Canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs”. The popular view is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. The notion is as old as the ancient Greeks however. This work was entrusted by Copernicus to Osiander, a staunch Protestant who though the book would most likely be condemned and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander therefore wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory which would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did, one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens--something Copernicus did not intend. The preface was unsigned, and everyone took it to be the author’s. That Copernicus believed the helioocentric theory to be a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. In addition to the preface, this was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of motion.
Astronomic theories are known as Pre-copernican. Before Copernicus, the widely accepted astronomical theory was known as the geocentric model and was the theory that the earth is the center of the unive...
Galileo Galilei was an Italian philosopher born in 1564. As an adult, he didn’t believe the universal geocentric theory of the planets and heavens which was established by the Catholic Church. The church taught that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around our planet. Another theory that the Church supported was that the Earth stood still while the sun rose and set every day. Society in the 1500’s believed that the Pope spoke for God through a divine connection and to against the church was to go against God. To speak out against the church in this time was strictly taboo. If one was to speak against the church was considered to be heresy, which is exactly what happened to Galileo. Galileo invented the telescope and began studying the heavens above and noticed that changes within the stars and planets. He noticed that the “stars” that surrounded Jupiter moved. He came to the conclusion through rational thinking, that the Copernicus’ heliocentric theory was correct. Copernicus was a scientist and philosopher whose theory proposed that the sun was stationary and the heavens orbit around the sun. Galileo tried to convince the church not to aboli...
Seventeenth-century European study was controlled by two powerful forces: the Roman Catholic Church, headed by the Pope, and ancient philosophy dominated by the 2000-year-old ideas of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. The Church had an overwhelming influence on the lives of most Europeans. During Galileo’s time one in twelve people living in Rome was either a cleric or a nun.1 The Church forbid any teaching that deviated from what was taught in the Bible. To enforce this control, the Church set up the Inquisition. Galileo was targeted by the Inquisition for his observations and experiments. 2 Because his teachings differed from the socially accepted ideas of Aristotle, the Inquisition believed he should be persecuted. Even though Galileo’s observations were much more factual than Aristotle’s and, more important, backed up by experiments and the use of the telescope, he was still sentenced to house arrest for life.
In the early 17th Century, there had already been many opposing views on the Heavens and the Earth. For example, for centuries, the Earth had been considered flat and although there were some early scholars that suggested the Earth may be round or spherical, it wasn’t until about the time that Aristotle provided empirical evidence, such as the gradual disappearance of ships on the horizon with the tops of the sails disappearing last, or the curvature of the shadow of the Earth during an eclipse that the idea of a flat earth began to diminish. The Catholic Church ultimately came to believe in the spherical Earth. The Catholic church had established the Council of Trent by this time and had relied on the holy Fathers to discern the Scriptures and look for the answers and disseminate the final word on such matters. The Catholic Church’s position on the Heavens was that the Earth was stable and in the center of the universe and the sun and moon rotated around it and this viewpoint was
During this time of the century, every subject revolved around Christian religion. Every subject from bodily organ function and chemical reactions to scientific discoveries were said to be from one intelligent creator working behind the scenes.
The modern science view as well as the Scientific Revolution can be argued that it began with Copernicus’ heliocentric theory; his staunch questioning of the prior geocentric worldview led to the proposal of a new idea that the Earth is not in fact the center of the solar system, but simply revolving around the Sun. Although this is accepted as common sense today, the period in which Copernicus proposed this idea was ground-breaking, controversial, and frankly, world-changing. The Church had an immense amount of power, and was a force to be reckoned with; in the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, new scientific proposals and ideas were discouraged in many cases by the Church. A quote from Galileo’s Children does an excellent job summing up the conflict: “The struggle of Galileo against Church dogma concerning the nature of the cosmos epitomized the great, inevitable and continuing clash between religion and reason.” If evidence goes against scripture, the scientist is considered a heretic and is, like in Galileo’s case, forbidden to discuss the ideas any further. Galileo Galilei, who proposed solid evidence and theory supporting the heliocentric model, was forced to go back on his beliefs in front of several high officials, and distance himself from the Copernican model. This, luckily, allowed him to not be killed as a heretic, which was the next level of punishment for the crimes he was charged with, had he not went back on his beliefs. Incredible support was given through the young developing academies with a sense of community for scientists and academics; “Renaissance science academies represent a late manifestation of the humanist academy movement.” Since the Church was grounded traditionally evidence that went agains...
Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were the center of everything, ultimately causing people to question theology’s role in science and sparking the idea that people were capable of reasoning for themselves.