Nickolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)--I think those are the four names the physicist said led the way to how we view the cosmos.

[March 30, 2009: I've got the names right. I know Galileo was one of them; the other three appear together in the last line of the second last paragraph of this article.]

The following three posts were originally posted at God Cannot Veto Science on Reasonable Faith.org.

Post 1

So Ptolemy mapped out the universe, with the earth at the centre, the gods at the outer rim, and the stars and planets on their spheres at various intervals in between. When the Christians overtook the West and its intelligentsia in the fourth century of the Common Era, they inherited this universe.

For fifteen hundred years, no one challenged this view of the universe. Then in 1609, Galileo Galilei made the first telescope strong enough to look at the night sky. He saw what human eye had never seen before. The winter of 1609-1610 (400 years ago; this is the International Year of Astronomy), he made an intense study of the night sky and proved that the math would make more sense if the sun--not the earth--were at the centre of the universe. Today we know the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa.

But the church forbade him to publish such data.

Post 5

jeffr wrote:
RSM wrote:
he made an intense study of the night sky and proved that the math would make more sense if the sun--not the earth--were at the centre of the universe
Well I guess Galileo was wrong, since the sun is NOT the centre of the universe.

The two parts of that sentence have no relationship to each other if they are supposed to be a response to the OP of this thread.

So far as I know, Galileo never said that the sun was the centre of the universe. Possibly he did, but my OP does not say that he did because I don't know that he did.

Therefore, jeffr, if you want your post to stand, you will have to document when and where he said it.[/quote]

Post 7

Pumbelo wrote:
rsmartin is wrong because it was Copernikus from which Galileo got heliocentrism from. And Galileo was wrong because he didn't use Kepler's equations.


Oh, that's right. The several month's work he did studying the night sky in the winter of 1609-10, the drawings he made and published that exist to our day, etc.--none of that had anything to do with it, naturally. The telescope he built that allowed him to see things no human eye had ever seen before--none of that would have played into the situation. That's right.

The only thing that counts is that he built his findings on top of the foundations of those before him. I see.

Seriously, I agree that all of us stand on the shoulders of our intellectual forebears. We owe it to them to give them full credit. Galileo gave full credit to Copernicus. Due to him giving this credit, the work of Copernicus was banned seventy years after it was published.

Galileo was definitely wrong about the cause of the tides. No sane person denies that. However, no sane person denies that he made a major contribution to science and that a major and politically powerful segment of the Christian church suppressed this contribution for centuries.

Had the information not been smuggled beyond the powers of that specific powerful church, our Western civilization would not be technologically advanced as it is today. Nor medically advanced as it is. The two go together intricately.

Back in Galileo's day, they used a religious procession of the Madonna and Child, along with prayer, as the most potent protection against the flu or plague or whatever they called it that broke out right after Galileo had published his book on the theory of heliocentrism. People were dying by the thousand. The authorities were also isolating sick people. But the religious procession dragging germs through town probably did more harm than good. The nuns who were isolated from the rest of society did not get sick. This included Galileo's daughter who was a nun. No one in her monastery got sick of that outbreak.

With today's advanced medical knowledge--and the tools to go with it--this plague could probably be stopped in its tracks with sanitation, disinfectants, and vaccinations. SARS did not decimate the earth's human population; it only killed enough people to scare the rest of us. Continued investigation brings in new knowledge on every front of science on an almost daily basis.

Things are possible today that were impossible ten years ago. So long as the scientific method is applied, and funding for research is available, this will continue. When these are stopped, Western society will degenerate into the Dark Ages out of which it was beginning to struggle in Galileo's time. Four centuries of hard work will be lost. This will take no more than fifty years.

You who believe in hard work and progress, you who believe in using your talents as Jesus commanded, how does this sit with you? God could not make the earth be the centre of the universe just because the church said it was. God could not make the sun be the centre of the universe just because it appeared to Galileo as though it might be. God cannot make Intelligent Design to be correct, and natural selection to be wrong, just because conservative Christians say this is the case.

Imagine yourself or your dearly loved one lying in your country's best hospital deathly ill. The world's best doctors and healthcare professionals are at your beck and call. You have everything money can buy--and the money to buy it. The year is 2059. Intelligent Design has been improved so that every healthcare professional can work miracles at a touch, though as all Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other believers know, it is not always God's will to heal.

Your doctor comes into the room bringing with him a very old man. The old man takes one look at the critically ill person on the hospital bed, and at the equipment surrounding the bed. This includes the piously bowed heads of the pray-ers. "I remember the days," he says in a cracked voice full of emotion, "when a few tests and injections would have gotten you back on the road of health in a few weeks."

He stops to gain control of his emotions, then continues. "That was before ID won the court cases. I worked in the old system for ten years." He turns his back and walks out of the room, rides the elevator down to the main floor, and walks out of the hospital. The next day he passes to his reward. So does the very ill person in the hospital who could have been healed.

Next I'll post a bit about these scientists and their accomplishments.

Claudius Ptolemaeus lived from 90 to 168 CE. In English, he is generally known as Ptolemy; the "p" is not pronounced. According to the wikipedia article, Ptolemy:

• was a Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer
• lived in Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou
• died in Alexandria around 168 AD
• authored several scientific treatises "three of which would be of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science."

What did the world look like to one of the world's most highly educated people in the second century of the Common Era?

Ptolemy was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe, and an erroneous extension of China southward suggests his sources did not reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

FROM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy#Geography

See the above article, and also Ptolemy's World Map, for reproductions and more details of his view of the map of our world. These articles also describe how he measured degrees of longitude and latitude. It seems he was no scientist and used out-moded measurements for determining east-west degrees, a problem that was not corrected until the "invention of the marine chronometer at the end of the 18th century" (source).

According to the wikipedia article, astronomers think Ptolemy used the Greek astronomer Hipparchus's geometrical models. His star catalogue list of constellations is "ancestral" to the "modern system of constellations," but it covers only the sky that Hipparchus would have seen (source). The same article continues:

Through the Middle Ages it was spoken of as the authoritative text on astronomy, with its author becoming an almost mythical figure, called Ptolemy, King of Alexandria. The Almagest [book containing his star catalogue] was preserved, like most of Classical Greek science, in Arabic manuscripts

During the 12th century, the Algamest was translated into Latin twice, once in Sicily and once in Spain.

Ptolemy's Cosmos

Like those of the people who went before him, Ptolemy's model was geocentric. This meant that the earth was in the centre of the universe. According to wikipedia, this model was almost universally accepted; wikipedia does not say who or what the exceptions were. It does tell us that this acceptance was almost universal until the "equally systematic presentation of a heliocentric geometrical model by Nicolaus Copernicus" (source).

More Links:

• Geocentric Model
• Celestial Sphere
• Universe of Aristotle and Ptolemy
• Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia, by Russell M. Lawson, p. 208

Important Note

This Ptolemy should not be confused with Ptolemy I, who was a great military general under Alexander the Great more than four centuries earlier. That would be like confusing Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great, 2007) with Christopher Columbus (who found the American continent in the 1490s) because they have the same name. The Ptolemy of this thread was a scholar; Ptolemy I was a political leader. According to Wikipedia, Ptolemy was a common name in the ancient world; I had not been aware of that.

Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe (wikipedia).

Ptolemy and Copernicus on their cosmological postulates This article contains diagrams of both Ptolemy's and Copernicus's views of the cosmos. There are also links to books Copernicus would have read for his education and used for his work. This includes some of Ptolemy's books. If you follow the links, you also find the work of Johannes Müller von Königsberg, who worked under the name Regiomontanus (1436-1476).

As shown in the opening post of this thread, things remained pretty much as they had always been for more than a thousand years. What happened in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds to change all this? Anyone who has lived through an "information explosion" will have some appreciation for the impact of the printing press in the middle of the 1400s. By 1500, there were more than two hundred printing presses in operation in Western Europe and millions of books had been produced (wikipedia.

With reference to the impact of the printing press, Adam Mosley says in his article on "Early Modern Books":

Many ancient and medieval astronomical texts were issued in print before the close of the fifteenth century, and an increasing number of new works were published via the presses. Several astronomers, including Regiomontanus, Johannes Schöner, and Tycho Brahe, engaged with the printing process by managing their own presses; a greater number were, like Johannes Kepler, involved at some level in overseeing the printing of their own and others' works.

Maybe I can do more on this another day.

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), was a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. Coming from Scania, then part of Denmark, now part of modern-day Sweden, Brahe was well known in his lifetime as an astronomer and alchemist (wikipedia). "Tycho Brahe" is the Latin form of his name.

More points from the wikipedia article:

• built the research institute Uraniborg on the island of Hven where he took careful astronomical measurements
• 1597: invited by the Czech king and Holy Roman emperor Rudolph II to Prague, where he became the official imperial astronomer.
• built new observatory at Benátky nad Jizerou
• 1600-1601: assisted by Johannes Kepler until Tycho's death at the observatory

FROM the Galileo Project, written by Dr. Albert Van Helden of Rice University in Texas, who gives permission to use his work for personal and educational purposes:

• 1572: observed the new star in Cassiopeia
• 1574: gave a course of lectures on astronomy at the University of Copenhagen

• visited German astronomers; accepted offer of Fredrick II to fund an observatory....Uraniburg, which became the finest observatory in Europe.
• ran his own printing press
• trained a generation of young astronomers
• built instruments and wrote books
• 1597: packed up and left Denmark because of falling out with King Christian IV
• 1599: settled in Prague as court Mathematician for Emperor Rudolph II
• 1601: death

Tycho and Kepler

Also from van Helden:

• At Prague, Tycho hired Johannes Kepler as an assistant to calculate planetary orbits from his observations.
• Kepler published the Tabulae Rudolphina in 1627. Because of Tycho's accurate observations and Kepler's elliptical astronomy, these tables were much more accurate than any previous tables.

According to van Helden, Tycho revolutionized astronomy by watching, and taking measurements, of the moon and planets throughout their orbits. He tells us that because of this, anomalies of orbits never noticed before became explicit, and it was because of this research that Kepler was able to discover that "planets move in elliptical orbits."

Tycho did not accept the heliocentric universe. For a description of his cosmology, see the article. For a diagram, see The World System According to Tycho Brahe.

Theological/Philosophical Implications

Also from van Helden:

Tycho's observations of the new star of 1572 and comet of 1577, and his publications on these phenomena, were instrumental in establishing the fact that these bodies were above the Moon and that therefore the heavens were not immutable as Aristotle had argued and philosophers still believed. The heavens were changeable and therefore the Aristotelian division between the heavenly and earthly regions came under attack...

Up to now it had been believed that planets were carried on material spheres (spherical shells) that fit tightly around each other. Tycho's observations showed that this arrangement was impossible because comets moved through these spheres. Celestial spheres faded out of existence between 1575 and 1625.

Reference to these "spheres" exists in hymns such as "This Is My Father's World":

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.

These words were composed by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, who lived from 1851 to 1901. Quite possibly Babcock used the term only for their poetic value and not for their scientific accuracy.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include:

• improvements to the telescope and
• consequent astronomical observations, and
• support for Copernicanism (heliocentric universe that removed earth from centre; also, earth moved, which is contrary to scripture Ps. 104:5).

The above is from wikipedia article

Scientific Revolution

The period which many historians of science call the Scientific Revolution is commonly viewed as the foundation and origin of modern science. It was a time roughly coinciding with the later part of the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance in which scientific ideas in physics, astronomy, and biology evolved rapidly (wikipedia).

[T]he Scientific Revolution refers to European developments or movements extending over periods of at least 75 to 185 years. These developments involve changing conceptual, cultural, social, and institutional relationships involving nature, knowledge and belief (Dr. Robert Hatch).

The scientific revolution occurred from approximately 1543 to 1727. Radically new ideas came to dominate European thinking. That the sun--and not the earth--is the centre of our solar system is only one of these radical new ideas. That the earth moves--contrary to scripture as mentioned above--was another scandalous detail.

Theological Implications

All of these ideas had major theological implications regarding how humans saw themselves and their place in the universe. However, the scientists themselves remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith. As per wikipedia:

Despite some challenges to Roman Catholic dogma, however, many notable figures of time known today as the Scientific Revolution - Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and even Galileo - remained devout in their faith.

Regarding Galileo specifically:

Although he tried to remain loyal to the Catholic Church, his adherence to experimental results, and their most honest interpretation, led to a rejection of blind allegiance to authority, both philosophical and religious, in matters of science. In broader terms, this aided to separate science from both philosophy and religion; a major development in human thought (scientific methods)

Here is an interesting question raised in Galileo's Confession of Jan. 15, 1633 (click on his name in this list):

If, on the contrary, whenever the works and the Word cannot be made to agree, we consider Holy Scripture as secondary, no harm will befall it, for it has often been modified to suit the masses and has frequently attributed false qualities to God. Therefore I must ask why it is that we insist that whenever it speaks of the Sun or of the Earth, Holy Scripture be considered as quite infallible?

Some Links on Galileo

• Galileo's biography.
• Britanica's Biography of Galileo.
• Galileo Project Links to extensive topics and writings of Galileo's life and works.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry on Galileo Galilei contains: biography; description and discussion of Galileo's works and philosophy.

ADDED APRIL 7, 2009

After watching a few videos and reading these biographies, I conclude that Galileo was a very creative person with an insatiable thirst for knowledge on how the universe worked. He was not satisfied with theory only; he had to prove with experiment that this theory could work in reality. He has been proved wrong on more than one item. Perhaps the biggest item on which he was wrong was his argument that the movement of the tides proved the movement of the earth.

He rejected Kepler's hypothesis that the moon regulated the tides because it sounded to him like astrology and magic. See SEP article. Galileo believed that only mechanical means could be trusted as reliable evidence; magic, the occult, and astrology could not be trusted. The backward and forward sloshing of the tides was very like the backward and forward sloshing of water in a basin that was moved; hence his conviction that this proved the movement of the earth (SEP).

According to the SEP article, Galileo also came up with theories that he did not publish because he was unable to come up with the evidence he felt was needed to prove his point. In other words, he did not feel personal conviction that the evidence he found was proof for his theory or hypothesis. We know this because of unpublished notes and articles he left behind.

Even though he remained faithful to the Christian faith to the end, he ran into major misunderstandings with the Roman Catholic Church leaders of his time. He ended his life under house arrest. I have come across at least three different accounts of his "confession" at his trial by the Holy Office in Rome. I cannot read it in the original language and must rely on English translations. I think, though, that the differences are greater than can be accounted to different translations. It is equally difficult to discern exactly what the charges were, what the original agreements were between him and the authorities, and what went wrong in the end. For this reason, I call it "major misunderstandings." All the biographies agree that he spent the last years of his life under house arrest and that he smuggled a final work out of Italy to get it published. The SEP article lists a few book-length biographies for interested parties as follows:

For detailed biographical material....[t]he best and classic work dealing with Galileo's life and scientific achievements is Stillman Drake's Galileo at Work (1978). A popular, readable biography is James Reston's Galileo: A Life (1994).

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution.

During his career, Kepler was:

• a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria,
• an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe,
• the court mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II,
• a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and
• an adviser to General Wallenstein.

The above all come from wikipedia.

Kepler is famous for his three laws of planetary motion. This article contains diagrams and mathematical equations and formula. He challenged the astronomy and physics of Aristotle and Ptolemy, which Christianity had adopted, and to which its theology had been adapted. See the Early Church Fathers, Augustine, and Aquinas, and what role they give to "the Philosopher" (Aristotle) and the ideas of Plato. Some of Plato's ideas also show up in the New Testament, if I am not mistaken.

Ptolemey's ideas might not be overtly acknowledged in the Early Christian Writings because he was a hated Roman scholar. However, historians of antiquity and medieval times can see the records of text and diagram; the Ptolemaic system was absorbed by post-Constantinian Christianity which (in the West) became the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, by challenging the physics and astronomy of Aristotle and Ptolemy, Kepler was knocking the very foundation of how people saw themselves and their place in the universe.

As shown in this thread, Kepler was by no means alone. Like Galileo and Tycho, Kepler believed in the accurate observation and measurement of objects and their movement. Since he was a contemporary of both these men, he has already been mentioned. What I have not yet mentioned is his extensive use of astrology. He is noted by various authors for his combination of astrology and astronomy. Albert van Helden tells us only that Kepler studied astrology along with astronomy, but makes no mention that he used astrology in his work. Sachiko Kusukawa of the University of Cambridge writes on his website about Kepler's innovative work in astrology.

EDIT Dec. 13, 2009: I can no longer find the Kusukawa website. The Starry Messenger entry will suffice.

Kusukawa says Kepler believed that the configuration of the planets "physically and really affected humans as well as the weather on earth" (Kepler and Astrology). On the page, Kepler and Weather Prediction, Kusukawa explains how Kepler thought it works:

Just as planetary aspects affect humans because their soul may perceive that geometrical relationship, so too Kepler speculated that the Earth had a soul that stretched up to the moon and was affected by these aspects, which in turn produced weather variations.

Compare that with the following statement:

The significance of Kepler in the history of astronomy lies in his efforts to establish a celestial physics: he searched for physical causes of astronomical events describable by geometric proportions and harmonic relationships (Johannes Kepler).

Note the word "geometric" or "geometrical" in both statements. He truly believed this was science. Note also the pairing of the words "soul" and "moon" in the first statement. Who has not noticed a unique psychological impact on their feelings (or psyche) if they were out when the moon was full?

Kepler was deeply religious. He believed the universe was the work of God, and that it was filled with God's presence. He believed that humans and planets had souls that reached out for each other. As with Galileo, Kepler believed that since the universe was God's work, whatever was observed of the universe must be true of God's handiwork. Geometry was a proven science; it was true, and therefore equal to God's Word. In the words of van Helden, Kepler "introduc[ed] physics into the heavens (Johannes Kepler).

It is easy to see why Galileo dismissed Kepler's idea that the moon affected the tides; Kepler used astrology as a science. Yet, in so doing, he stumbled across facts that have been proven to be scientifically accurate by much higher technology. The same applies to Galileo's findings. Isaac Newton built on, and further developed, Kepler's Three Laws.

Conclusion of this Series

Hence Dr. Hatch's argument that the Scientific Revolution occurred from 1543 to 1727. In his book, De Revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), Nicolaus Copernicus presented his heliocentric theory of the universe. I am not sure that he had actually made literal observations and measurements, as did his successors. If I remember correctly, he presented it as a theory that was mathematically more appealing; I am sure he would have presented his reasons for this, though I have not read the book. His book was published in 1543.

This was "an alternative model of the universe to the Ptolemaic system," which system "had been widely accepted since ancient times" (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium). Tycho, Galileo, and Kepler built technology with which to better observe the night sky. This was the only means by which humans of the time could access space; it was a marvelous adventure for a hither-to-fore earth-bound species. These mathematicians could make measurements based on observation.

They could develop theories based on these observations. They could observe over time to see whether these theories held true as predicted. In this (developing theory and prediction based on observation of celestial objects in the night sky), they followed ancient tradition. What was different now was the printing press. Scientists could share their findings with each other and build on each other's work. Not being a scientist myself, I am not quite sure what was significant in Newton's development of the Three Laws, but I assume it marked acceptance of the new way of doing science.

As stated, the "new way" was to observe and to measure, and to build on each other's work. This contrasted with the old way of accepting the word of authority--whether of God (Bible, Qur'an) or of man (Aristotle, Ptolemy). While they still believed the Holy Books to be correct, they believed their interpretation to be in need of change. In other words, to rephrase Galileo above, the Holy Books were written by humans in a specific context, and must be understood as such.

Isaac Newton died in 1727, and Dr. Hatch suggests this might mark the end of the Scientific Revolution.

The Puzzle Of Life - Science vs Creationism

This video begins with humans in early prehistory and ends with the present day.

The narrator shows that by Isaac Newton's time the church could no longer ignore the advancing discoveries of science. Perhaps that is the reason Dr. Hatch thinks Newton's death is the end of the Scientific Revolution.