Five hundred years ago, you were crazy if you thought the Earth was going around the Sun.
Today, you’re crazy if you think it isn’t.
What changed?
That turns out to be a fascinating question, one which involves profound issues of science, of faith, of identity.
While most people assume that it has long since been experimentally proven that the Earth is orbiting the Sun, a simple challenge to name the specific experiment which measured that motion will yield an easily-won bar bet (at least until “The Principle” is released!).
It may come as a surprise to some, but no such experimental proof has ever been obtained.
Remarkably, physics had to be entirely re-conceptualized by Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century; in part because no experiment had been able to directly measure this universally-assumed motion of Earth around Sun.
So, two of our greatest scientific revolutions- the Copernican Revolution and Relativity- are intimately associated with this question of Earth’s place in the larger scheme of things.
The Copernican Principle simply states that Earth is not in any special or central location in the cosmos. It is generalized, in modern cosmology, as the “cosmological principle”; there are no special locations in the cosmos. Under this fundamental assumption, on large enough scales, the universe will look pretty much the same everywhere, and it will look pretty much the same everywhere no matter where you might be looking from.
If this principle is wrong, then everything we think we know about our universe is wrong.
“The Principle” includes interviews with several leading discoverers and theorists wrestling with the implications of recently obtained observational evidence that this foundational assumption of our scientific world view may be wrong, and that our Earth may be very special after all.
Could this question, which has already launched two great scientific revolutions, be coming back around to haunt us yet again?
If we consider the dramatic changes in culture and world-view which accompanied these earlier revolutions, it is not too early to begin to consider........what would it mean for our future, and the future of our children, if it were to be established that the Earth is in a special position in the cosmos; that we are, truly, in some sense, the “center of the universe”?
awesome
ReplyDeletethanks for posting
As we know, grace builds on nature and our nature to a great extent is either formed or deformed based largely on our full acceptance, full rejection or anything in between of true knowledge. If that knowledge, regardless of how well it is established by correct observational science or otherwise, is unduly questioned or unrecognized, trivialized, relativized, ignored, and or deformed in the mind of a man the ability of that man will be greatly hampered in making the proper use of that knowledge.
ReplyDeleteBy means of illustration, we may point to Pontius Pilate as an extreme case of a man who was confronted with the question of knowledge. He asked Truth what is truth (John 18:38). The question was the first part of what is perhaps the most famous and -- at least in my opinion -- the most profound anagram of all time. (Remember that it is fairly safe to assume Pilate was speaking in Latin.) Pilate: "Quid est veritas." ("What is truth.") The unspoken answer thundered back at him as it has ever since down through the ages: "Est vir qui adest." ("It is the man who is here [i.e., who stands before thee]."
We may hope (and certainly pray!) that the minds of at least most men when confronted with the immense new evidence seen in The Principle -- that evidence which is so vital in establishing true knowledge -- will not be so hardened by the pride which inevitably darkens the intellect as to continue to reject, ignore, etc. the truth of the design of God's creation of the cosmos (a word seen in its origin to be opposite in meaning to chaos!) and even God Himself. May they come to know and accept that the Earth is geocentric and may that new found knowledge help bring them to the even greater truth of it being Christocentric.
Other principle also involved:
ReplyDeleteNew blog on the kid : Proximate causes are not always secondary
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2013/12/proximate-causes-are-not-always.html
"Now, sciences are concerned mostly with secondary causes. But traditionally speaking by admitting them to be secondary, they point up to the primary cause, to God. Unfortunately sciences have been cut off from theology last centuries. This gives them a non-scientific tendency, as to what scientific properly means, but a clear scientific communal tendency or scientific cultural tendency to not just ignore but even deny the primary cause. Solutions are "proven" by assuming secondary causes are the only ones - that is as if they are otherwise than secondary, as if the universe itself were primary."
ReplyDeleteThis is SPOT ON.
I had stated earlier: "As we know, grace builds on nature and our nature to a great extent is either formed or deformed based largely on our full acceptance, full rejection or anything in between of true knowledge." It should go without saying that to the extent a man has been denatured (in the sense of his being deprived of his natural character) by vice or otherwise grace will be hampered in building on that deformed/denatured nature of man. Grace needs something solid to build on no less than a helicopter needs something solid to land on or a builder needs something solid to build on.
ReplyDeleteTo the extent man's nature is deformed/denatured he will be less able to see the truth of God's designs. In effect he will be more prone to either rejecting the true observational evidence of science (Satan, the father of lies, can easily provide him with all kinds of sophistry and rationalizations if needed to allow him to reject the evidence or its proper interpretation) and or he will be predisposed to placing a false interpretation on that evidence.
Therefore, the task at hand (in a world sliding deeper and deeper into an immoral God-less abyss) is not merely to present men with observational evidence gained from observational science, but at the same time to seek to change their hearts and minds for the better so that they will be better able (through grace!) to fully recognize and then accept the truth they are confronted with. No small task, indeed -- especially when trying to reform the world always goes hand in hand with trying to reform ourselves!