The turning point

The Norman Transcript

January 28, 2006 12:15 am

— For The Transcript

Five hundred years ago Torun was a village; today it is an industrial and commercial center. Still it is so lost
in the complexity of European geography most Americans have never heard of it. Torun is north of the
Carpathians, south of the Baltic Sea, lying on the north European plain. Like Warsaw it rests on the Vistula
River, although some hundred miles to the northwest. The Teutonic Knights, a militant Christian Order,
founded Torun in the twelfth century. Ancient churches and a new flowering university are not its most
eminent characteristics, for Torun holds a memorable place in history as the birth place of Nicolas
Copernicus.
World history is marked from time to time by changes that permanently redirect human belief and shift the
foundations of our convictions and habits. The 16th century was just such a landmark. This is the era when
Mercator taught us how to represent round surfaces on a flat page, giving the world the Mercator map
projection. In the same century Tycho Brahe, Johann Kepler and Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon were
born. And Vesalius made a giant step into modern medicine with publication of "The Structure of the Human
Body." The same year Copernicus published his monumental study on astronomy.
Copernicus' interests were wide, his abilities remarkable and his education as deep as it was broad. Fine genes
were undoubtedly the foundation of his talents and successes, but his father's prosperity and family
connections with the Church bureaucracy also contributed to his varied educational training and his successful
career. His uncle, a bishop, wanted him to become a canon -- an official, usually at a cathedral, whose duties
varied but who enjoyed a lifetime support from the Church. In his late 20s he actually became a canon at the
Cathedral of Frauenburg on the Baltic coast. He studied at the University of Crakow where astronomy
commanded his attention. His uncle then sent him to the University of Bologna, an opportunity greatly
contributing to his intellectual maturity. At Bologna, usually identified as the first of the modern universities,
he not only studied astronomy but also the Greek language, the philosophy of Plato, and mathematics. Then at
the University of Padua he concentrated on both law and medicine. A decade after Columbus' first voyage to
the New World, Copernicus crowned his academic career with a degree in canon law from the University of
Ferrara.
Copernicus' place in history is firm, although establishing such a niche took many years. One fundamental
cause of the delay was that Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle, dominated the intellectual-
philosophical life of Europe. It took a long time to correct his errors, particularly in the fields of biology and
astronomy. The heart of the problem lies in the fact that standards in the physical sciences rest on
experimental data. Only some 800 years after Aristotle was scientific method maturing enough to become the
accepted measure of truth in the phenomenal world, supplanting tradition, authority and emotionally grounded
subjective preference. His ideas of a fixed unchanging species and a fixed unmoving earth slowly gave way
over the centuries.
Three principal reasons kept our ancestors from understanding the behavior of the physical world --
insufficiently developed mathematics, the virtual non-existence of precise measuring instruments and the
absence of systematically inquiring intellectual habits. In a very real sense "progress" is accurately defined by
improvement in these fields.
Copernicus not only advanced our understanding, he successfully undermined Aristotle and the older
Ptolemaic view that the earth is the center of the universe. Claudius Ptolemy gave his contemporaries and the
medieval world an organized defense of the geocentric theory -- the idea that the earth is fixed and the
"heavens" are revolving around it. Claudius Ptolemy -- not to be confused with the pre-Christian dynasty in
Egypt that terminated with Cleopatra's son -- systematized the geocentric view in the second century after
Christ.
Carefully investigating what was thought to be known about astronomy Copernicus read and analyzed most of
the earlier studies. As he grew in understanding he became dissatisfied with the Ptolemaic geocentric theory,
but he did not press his criticisms because he did not think the mathematical calculations were adequate. He
wrote a paper, passing it around among his friends, explaining the helio-centric theory the idea that the sun is
the center of our system. Copernicus not only emphasized mathematics, which he thought gave an improved
account of the orbits of the earth, moon and planets, but he also emphasized the aesthetics of his theory.
Generally aesthetics has been left to artists, humanists and philosophers only rarely receiving a central place
in a scientific theory.
The year 1543 was an exceptional one. Arbitrarily we can say it marks the beginning of the "modern" period.
It also marks the publication of two documents showing that science was maturing, passing from the age of
superstition to the age of objectivity and realism. A 29-year-old Belgian anatomist, Andreas Vesalius,
published his masterwork "The Structure of the Human Body." He learned especially from dissection, and
probably escaped the Inquisition by making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And Nicholas Copernicus had
been writing his classic, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs," for some decades; it was published this
same momentous year which was also the year of his death. He probably escaped the malediction of the
Church for two reasons: The prudent way his views were advanced, and the fact that he and his family were
entwined with the hierarchy of the Church.
The significance of Copernicus' work has been the acceleration of scientific investigation, the achievement of
an astronomical revolution and the broadening of human insight. For the human race to see itself clearly has
always been a problem. Much of our confusion rests on a considerable misjudgment of the nature of the
physical world. We have tended to think of the earth as the center of the universe and therefore to glorify
ourselves as preeminent. Such presumption has lead to over self-evaluation producing contradictions among
our ideas and between our thought and behavior.
If philosophy is the queen of university studies then astronomy is one of her most valuable courtiers. And one
of the first reflective principles to be derived from the study of astronomy -- along with the wisdom of inquiry
and the indispensability of mathematics -- is the insignificance of humankind. In our solar system the world is
little more than a chunk of rock drenched in salt water. And in the totality of the universe our solar system
itself is little more than an inconsequential speck of scattered matter.
Philosophy, psychology, poetry and religion sometimes help us accommodate to the startling realities of life.
And one outcome of their insights should be peace, humility and mutual aid offsetting arrogance and
aggression as well as an appreciation of the skills and creative talents of astronomers.
Lloyd Williams is a retired educator. His column runs in The Transcript every other Saturday.

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