Slashdot Mirror
Search For the Tomb of Copernicus Reaches an End
duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The Associated Press reports that after 200 years of speculation and investigation, the tomb of Nicolaus Copernicus has been found. Although the heliocentric concept had been suggested earlier, Copernicus is widely thought of as the father of the scientific theory of the heliocentric solar system. The positive identification was made by comparing the DNA from a skeleton's teeth with that from hairs in a book known to have belonged to Copernicus. A computer-generated facial reconstruction is said to also bear a resemblance to contemporary portraits of the scientist."
Yes, Copernicus claimed that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the universe.
Obviously, in the past 475 years we have figured out that the sun is only the center of the solar system and not the universe.
The sun is the center of the universe? I though the sun orbited the Milky Way Galaxy's central black hole?
You're right. Copernicus didn't know this at the time (or at least if he did, he didn't tell anyone). He came up with a model that was simply better than the norm. Whether he and he alone did this or not is probably up for debate but he sure stuck his neck out there for it.
I would posit that I am the center of the universe. No matter where I am, I'm here. As I walk, the world moves beneath my feet.
And I would simply posit that you are a unique frame of reference. But that would just begin a pedantic physics discussion (more to come!).
A question for you math geeks: can an object of infinite size even HAVE a center?
I don't think the universe is an object of infinite size. It's constantly expanding, though ... and if you want to get technical, we can look at the red light shift of things moving away all around us and their velocity. Doing this, we can trace their vectors backwards to an intersection point--the point of the event theorized to be the Big Bang. The true center of the universe.
I'm going to have to reread Genesis. I don't recall seeing anywhere where it says the earth is the center of anything, let alone the universe.
Of that whole list you wrote, it sure does concentrate predominately on the earth. If you think about it, there's a whole lot more to talk about than merely the earth ... so in a way, it does give all the attention to the earth. The fact that it was created before the stars just makes it all that much more central. Also, where else would God put beings made in his likeness? If you're going to defend The Bible's creation story, I don't recommend Slashdot.
My work here is dung.
Can they not leave the man in peace. What possible value is there is disturbing him.
Nullius in verba
First they believed that the universe was a like a truck. Then they though it was like a series of tubes. Now its believed to be like a cloud, although with the points able to connect to any other point.
So sayeth the wise Alaundo.
-=Bang Bang=-
You've overlooked Nick's greatest contribution to humanity.
A scientific theory isn't judged on whether it's ``true''; we leave the concept of ``truth'' to theologians, creationists and other amateurs.
A scientific theory is judged on how useful it is.
I love this statement.
Not because it's true
but because it's useful.
Cute story, not very plausible. Both bread and butter have been around for thousands of years. Do you really think that before 1519, nobody thought to spread one on the other?
That's right, they thought his stuff was great. It meant they could work out exactly when easter was which made life much easier for them. Previously, easter kept migrating through the year because their calculations were based on the moon (or something like that). It was the greater issue of people using his work to fight the churches control of ideas that caused the crackdown.
I'm curious, how often do you read a piece of poetry and assume that the author was making a scientific statement? In the absence of scientific absence, it is understandable that people might read more into a statement than they should, as has happened, but there is no requirement for poetry to be interpreted literally, so while it might be accurate to say that these statements were taken to mean geocentric thinking was correct, it is not accurate to say that they actually endorse such thinking or even have the subject in mind.
(emphasis added)
I'm sorry if you misunderstood my post, but I wasn't trying to say anything about my beliefs but rather how people in the past attempted to justify the idea that the earth was the center of the universe by citing the bible.
it is not accurate to say that they actually endorse such thinking or even have the subject in mind.
Which was why I ended my original post with:
When dealing with religious issues, it's important to remember that what people actually believe can be quite different from what their scripture says, especially in periods of high illiteracy.
Back in the day when people had questions about the nature of the universe, they turned to the Bible. The Bible was considered the final authority on *all* matters, even ones that weren't particularly related to anything said in the book, an attitude that is dangerously carried into the present by people declaring that "all the answers" are in the Bible.
So when someone asked "What is the structure of the universe?" they frantically tore through the Bible looking for any clues related to how God created the Universe since Genesis is rather vague on the subject from what I can recall. It was not my intent to say that I agree with this line of reasoning but rather to explain it given the original poster's comment that geocentricity was not mentioned in Genesis.
Please. All these qualifications are unnecessary.
While those qualifications are not necessary, they certainly are worth to be mentioned. Let me elaborate:
Copernicus is not considered a great scientist because he woke up one day and said, "Gee, maybe the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around!"
This would imply that earlier heliocentric models where just that, i.e. wild speculations. It doesn't seem to me that the advances of astronomy in the hellenistic period can be described and explained that way. There is however a ...wild speculation in the historiography of science, which goes like this:
In the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos proposed an alternate cosmology (arrangement of the universe): a heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe (hence he is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus"). His astronomical ideas were not well-received, however, and only a few brief references to them are preserved. We know the name of one follower of Aristarchus: Seleucus of Seleucia.
The argument that we can estimate the reception of the heliocentric model from the references known to us is rather weak. On the contrary, there are far more hints that indicate the following: it is not the case that the heliocentric model was somehow forgotten, instead, because of the instrumentalistic outlook of hellenistic astronomy, astronomers didn't enter into a cosmological dispute over which model was more "real" and regarded both models as equivalent regarding the purpose of predicting celestial phenomena (this is known today as underdetermination of scientific theories). The choice of one model other another was dictated by convenience and it changed from one computational context to another.
His greatness came from all the insight, creativity, and mind-boggling hard work he put in to make this idea objectively sound.
Being the first to have an idea doesn't give you precedence. It's inventing the scientific structure that allows people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas that matters. That's what separates real science from mere speculation.
I totally agree with you. But: You seem to conflate this view with an hidden misconception, i.e. that we can determine the scientific advancement just by looking at the temporal relations between to points in this development (If point A precedes temporally the point B, then the point A denotates a less advanced step in the development of science). While this rule of thumb generally holds for the period starting with the 17th century up to now, we have to be careful to extend this rule inductively to other historical periods. It seems to be the case that this rule doesn't hold for the hellenistic period as compared to later periods, because we have evidence that the "invention of scientific structures that people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas" must be dated to the hellenistic period. Just by saying that this cannot be, exactly because of the rule of thumb, you are transforming this empirical rule of thumb (which is open to falsification by historians of science) into an analytic statement... and this, for one, doesn't fit into a scientific attitude.
It bugs me that people say, "the first in the world to do this, or the first ever to do that", when in reality they're merely among the first in Europe. Other cultures (eg Indian & Chinese) didn't have the political blinkers forced on them, and explored these idea hundreds of years before Europeans. http://www.crystalinks.com/indiastronomy.html