Gonzalez and Richards Chapter Eleven

Assumptions and implications are not the same thing

Chapter Eleven, of The Privileged Planet is entitled, “The Revisionist History of the Copernican Revolution.” 

Originally, I was going to give up and quit with chapter 9.  As my children will attest, book-report-style evaluations are time consuming.  In the present case, they are tedious and difficult as well.  Sometimes doing the hard things is its own reward.  Where I have misrepresented the authors or given them short shrift, I guess I have to apologize.  Where I have kicked a reader’s puppy, as it were, or their sacred cow for that matter, I care a lot less.  Cosmology is not, at its heart, science; it is philosophy and should probably be treated as such.  A few years ago, I read a Geographic article on the cosmos wherein the author even gave the candid admission that whatever happened before the Big Bang was the domain of Philosophers and Theologians.  Cool!  I have a Doctor of Philosophy in Theological Studies and so I am uniquely qualified to hack and slash at the subject from two angles.  However, what science cannot seem to admit is that when it makes observations and begins to reason backward through instrumental causes to formal causes, they have entered the domain of metaphysics and philosophy.  That is a game we can all play.  Every human being is a philosopher – that is they will have certain rules of engagement about life and existence – even if it is only their own personal survival and pleasure!  Also every human being (that I’ve ever met) is a theologian.  That is to say they will have certain ways they view supreme beings or a Supreme Being.  Even atheists have to know enough about God to know what it is they deny the existence of. . . . 

I thought I’d start with one of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes:

If we discover other bodies, they must be habitable or uninhabitable: and the odd thing is that both these hypotheses are used as grounds for rejecting Christianity.  If the universe is teeming with life, this, we are told, reduces to absurdity the Christian claim – or what is thought to be the Christian claim – that man is unique, and the Christian doctrine that to this one planet God came down and was incarnate for us men and our salvation.  If, on the other hand, the earth is really unique, then that proves that life is only an accidental by-product in the universe, and so again disproves our religion.  Really, we are hard to please.  (C. S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe.” in The Grand Miracle and Other Essays on Theology and Ethics from ‘God in the Dock,’ W. Hooper, ed. [New York: Ballantine Books, 1990], 14; quoted by G & R p. 412, n. 47.)

This chapter in G & R is entitled “The Revisionist History of the Copernican Revolution.”  Just like the “Galileo, the Martyr of Modern Science” myth,[1] the history of the Copernican Revolution was pretty easy to hijack.  Forsooth! 

As we have seen in the previous sections and chapters, it would appear that the place and time for complex life and intelligent observers to exist and look around is here and now.  Standing in the way of all this is the so-called “Copernican” notion that we don’t occupy a privileged place in the cosmos.  Because the idea has taken on a life of its own, it might be questioned as to whether Copernicus himself would have either accepted or even recognized it.  The modern revisionist legend has it that Ptolemy and Aristotle – followed by that stifler of all knowledge and truth: the Church! – held that the world was the physical and metaphysical center of the universe (p. 222).  Benighted as we were, Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo demonstrated that the world was not flat and that our corner of the universe was solar centric rather than geocentric.  Of course, this is subsequently encumbered by the metaphysical baggage that we are neither the focus of any god’s attention, nor particularly unique.  It is claimed that such proponents of the new science were persecuted for their faith – despite the fact that “Copernicus wasn’t persecuted and died the same year (1543) that his ideas were published, not at the oil-soaked stake but peacefully and of natural causes” (p. 222).  If Galileo was persecuted for anything, even by 21^st century standards, he was persecuted for either stupidity or breaking parole . . . which may not be an exclusion in terms. . . .  I think G & R caricature the theatrics well:

The popcorn movie continues on from Copernicus’s persecution with a bravura medley of fact and fiction: The messiah Copernicus leaves his even less fortunate followers, like Bruno, the first martyr, and Galileo, the first saint, to suffer even more hideous consequences.  In Time, however, the brave and unflagging march of scientific evidence overwhelms the darkness and idiocy of religious superstition – swelling and triumphant musical score followed by cheers and the film’s credits.  The test audience loves it; everyone goes home fat and sassy in the knowledge of modern man’s incalculable superiority to the superstitious fools of a dead and defeated past. . . . Thus is the story purged of its cumbersome subtleties (pp. 223-4). 

Of course, the textbooks are full of that kind of thing.  For instance, Clark says, “Astronomy leads us to believe that the Universe is so vast that we, on planet Earth are nothing more than an insignificant mote” (quoted on p. 224).  Well, that sword cuts both ways: if the Universe proves to be fecund, then he is only possibly right – presuming, of course, that life is not precious, regardless of its proliferation; if, however, we end up being a group of one in a Universe of a billion, billions, then significance is rather elevated, no?  I have never though of Bertrand Russell as being worth much more than a second look, but here is his spin along with others who hate Christianity: “The Copernican Revolution will not have done its work until it has taught men more modesty than is to be found among those who think Man sufficient evidence of Cosmic Purpose” (quoted on p. 224).  So Russell arrogantly presumes that Copernicanism as he understands it is somehow more modest than Creationism.  Somehow, “man as the measure of all things” is hardly a modest premise. . . .  G & R say it this way:

The intended subtext, of course, is that one will be scientific only to the extent that one is nonreligious.  To be “religious,” in the narrow sense intended here, is to believe that there is something unique, special, or intentional about our existence and the existence of the cosmos.  “Science” here has a special definition as well.  Rather than a search for the truth (scientia means knowledge) about nature – based on evidence, systematic study, and the like – science becomes applied naturalism: the conviction that the material world is all there is, and that chance and impersonal natural law alone explain, indeed must explain, its existence” (p. 224)

The model we’ve inherited is from Aristotle’s physical and metaphysical vision along with the observations and mathematical models of Ptolemy (p. 225).  They envisioned a set of nested spheres with the earth in the center and various of the celestial bodies in the next dozen or so spheres.  It took into consideration the movement of the heavens as observed from what was at the time thought to be a stationary platform.  They never really asked why it appeared that way and if their observations were correct. 

Neither Aristotle nor Ptolemy thought that the earth was huge: it was of “no great size” (Aristotle) and “. . . has a ratio of a point to the heavens” (Ptolemy; p. 226).  They deduced that the stellar sphere had to be huge to be on that level and be that far away from the Earth.  Copernicus’ observation?  “How astonishing, if within the space of twenty-four hours the vast universe should rotate rather than its least point!” (quoted on p. 226).  In fact, more than the center of the universe, the earth was considered to be the bottom of the universe.  That is where everything base was said to fall (apparently more fact than fiction!).  They decided that the laws governing the super-lunar regions were somehow superior to those rules governing the sublunary regions (p. 227). 

I’ve read John of Damascus’ discussion on this (749 A.D.), and it seems to me that there were several ideas current and the whole topic of what the universe “looked like” was a matter of discussion.  My theory is, that if “scientists” ever read something beyond their own cult propaganda, they might find out that there were a lot of things that were dogmatically held by very few.  It would appear that these things were held at the level of “opinion” and that how much influence the opinion had was directly proportional to the person’s influence otherwise.  Not much different from today . . . it’s just that now the clerics are in the university and are ordained to the priesthood of scientism – oh, and tithing is mandatory . . . it’s called taxation. 

Dante immortalized this in the Divine Comedy by taking his readers through the nine mirror-regions of the nether world.  These regions were said to reflect the celestial spheres (pp. 227-8).  “Metaphysically speaking, reality in the medieval scheme was God-centered, not man-centered” (p. 228).  And so Augustine said that God made humankind merely because he wanted to.  “It’s false, then, to say that the pre-Copernicans gave Earth and human beings the position of highest esteem while Copernicus relegated us to an insignificant backwater” (p. 228). 

Beyond this, it is usually posited and over emphasized that science and religion were always in something of an adversarial role visa vis each other.  In reality, both western (Greek) philosophy and biblical theology were essential in us arriving at the place we are now.  Let us begin with the linear notion of time: “One of modern science’s most important biblical inheritances is the notion that linear time is fundamental to the physical universe rather than an illusion.  In other words, that cosmic history actually goes somewhere rather than merely in circles” (p. 228).  Secondly, because we held the important distinction between the creation and the Creator, there were several important repercussions.  Although it was not in line with Greek thought, biblical thought held matter to be good and work to be ennobling (p. 228).  Nature was to be respected but not worshiped or held to be some divine progeny.  This meant that it could be experimented with (p. 229).  There was nothing particularly wrong with the development of technology.  In addition, because God had (at least, constrained) free will in creation, that meant that the creation was contingent. 

It might not have existed, or it might have had different properties from the ones it has. As a result, nature’s properties must be discovered rather than merely deduced from the principles of logic or mathematics (p. 229). 

The goodness and rationality of God, as contrasted with the capricious pagan deities, pointed to a creation that was “orderly and even lawful in its structure and behavior” (p. 229). 

Nature as a whole is contingent, but in its regular operations it is not capricious or perversely deceptive.  The origin of modern science drew from this careful balance of contingency and order.  Science emerged . . . in a culture that held these ideas in careful balance (p. 229). 

Finally, there is the unity of God and the unity of the universe to deal with.  It should all be accessible to the human mind if, as Jews and Christians believed, mankind was created, as variously understood, in the image of God. 

The authors then discuss the Greek cosmogonies in respect to their capricious gods.  The philosophers wanted to remove the poets and priests from the mix and attempt to arrive at a unified field theory of the cosmos rather than some chaos theology (p. 229).  Modern science may claim to derive from this philosophical predecessor; but the relationship to Judeo-Christian thought is much more involved than the inoculating and indoctrinating we received in school (p. 230). 

In the early years of the church, there was no synthesis of Christian cosmogony.  This is simply because the biblical material precluded the possibility of more definitive statements.  However, the eventual baptism of Aristotle into Christianity by Thomas Aquinas made a way for a more Ptolemaic model (p. 230).  Eventually, this teaching became a foundation of the university across Europe.  The Islamic connection with this form of materialism and its role in transmission to the west is usually ignored (p. 230). 

The up side of this was the teleological: that is, there was some purpose to the universe.  There was also a “prime mover” (God as Creator) and so no absurdity in regard to first causes.  However, there was nothing in any of this Aristotelian thought that was essential to Christian doctrine.  Aristotle’s organic teleology was not the same as that of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Boyle.  These Christian thinkers used teleological (purpose driven) statements to describe “the natural world by pointing to the particularly intricate and orderly configuration of natural features, with suggested the activity of an intelligent designer” (p. 230). 

And last but certainly not least, the key figures who proposed the new cosmology were religious.  Nevertheless, once grown up together, wheat and tares are difficult to separate, and the stage was set for discord when the old, essentially Aristotelian/Ptolemaic cosmology began to crumble (p. 231). 

The authors then launch into a less politicized and revisionist history of “The (Real) Copernican Revolution” (p. 231).  We are first to be reminded that the whole period of Copernicus (1473-1543) was one of ideological revolution and the upheavals and movements of society.  Sociology, anthropology and psychology are one thing; but Copernicus was aware of some very real problems in the reigning cosmological model: empirical problems became most dissonant when the movements of the planets were gauged against Aristotelian/Ptolemaic thought.  “Explaining planetary motion required postulating complicated and inelegant ‘epicycles’ and ‘equants’ to accommodate their apparent variation and reversal as they crossed the sky” (p. 231).  His mathematical model proposed a heliocentric solar-system.  “While this scheme promised to resolve some of the complexities in the planetary orbits, it didn’t dissolve the need for epicycles and other ad hoc explanations” (p. 231).  Observations necessary to confirm his mathematical theory were not available until the year of his death.  Be that as it may, he had made quite a theoretical bound: his math contradicted sensory evidence (e.g., the moon rising a few minutes earlier and the outer planets advancing and then retreating as we pass them). 

Copernicus also had a vision of a larger universe.  This would reach its logical conclusion in Newton’s infinite universe, as the history of thought would progress.  He did not intend to demote mankind or introduce anything of a “principle of mediocrity.”  He was a true child or the Renaissance: he was an anthropocentric humanist when it came to his deductions.  Rather than being an Aristotelian, he was more Platonic in his thought.  This motivated him to the quest for “mathematical simplicity and ‘harmony’ in nature” (p. 232).  We should recall from college Philosophy, that the Platonic trilogy of perfection was: the good, the true and the beautiful.  These were real ideals in the mind of the Platonist.  Copernicus was a true heir of this philosophical legacy: “It instilled in him an aesthetic sense [“the beautiful”] that the apparently inelegant motion of the planets was a problem to be solved” (p. 232).  At this point the authors note and extremely important work in the history of scientific thought: Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).  Also important in the discussion is Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).  Enough bibliography!  And so Copernicus, following selected poets, elevated the Sun to the status of nobility “upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle round him (quoted on p. 234). 

Platonic thought had a bad way of becoming like Hindu thought: “reality is unreality and unreality is reality,” “all is illusory” and so on.  And so he pursued specific observations.

His was a Christian neo-Platonism in which the material world itself, as the creation of an omnipotent God, could reflect the precision of mathematics, something unthinkable to the strict neo-Platonist.  Without this modification of pure Platonism, the seemingly inelegant and mathematically messy movement of the planets would not have struck Copernicus as a problem to be solved.  This neo-Platonism, tempered by Christianity, was an important guiding influence, then, for Copernicus and for other Renaissance scientists who followed him, including Galileo and Kepler (p. 234). 

Despite his innovations, Copernicus tended to hold to the ideas of perfectly circular celestial spheres and orbits and other baggage of Aristotelian thought.  Following Copernicus, however, in time, was Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).  Despite holding to a geocentric universe, he was noted for his tenacious observation record (p. 235).  This man was followed by his more Copernican disciple Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).  Kepler was able to solve some of the problems that beset the Copernican model.  His observation of a nova coupled with Brahe’s observation of comets helped to destroy a couple more of the old Aristotelian notions: “the immutability of the heavens and the existence of concentric heavenly spheres” (p. 235). 

At this point, we might nit-pick the authors.  On page 234 we are told that Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler were Renaissance thinkers.  Fine, that could go unchallenged until page 238 wherein we are told that Kepler was a “deeply religious Lutheran.”  Recognizing that there are some overlaps, for instance Luther’s interest in Augustinian thought and some Platonism in contrast to the reigning Thomist (Thomas Aquinas from Aristotle) thought.  Since the art history of Francis Schaeffer, it is somewhat difficult to hold both ideas in your head without some subordinate clauses and adversatives.  Lutherans were not, strictly speaking, part of the Renaissance; as the Luther/Erasmus debates tend to illustrate, Lutheranism could be very much at odds with unbridled humanism (used in the late-medieval sense). 

Be that as it may, the authors pay us a great service by showing us a couple of the illustrations detailing Tycho’s system.  In one (1660), the Sun continued to circle the Earth, but the planets circle the Sun.  Obviously, it is something of a blend of the two rival systems – but it was a break from tradition (p. 236).  In the other illustration (1651), Urania, the Muse of astronomy weighs the two rival systems with Tycho’s system outweighing that of Copernicus.  The illustration has the Ptolemaic system on the ground kicked off to the side and not worth weighing (p. 237). 

Kepler was able to use Brahe’s observation records and thus correct some of the inaccurate ancient records that Copernicus had received.  Be that as it may,

. . . Kepler internalized the logic that Copernicus had only partially embraced.  He had a mystical attraction to harmonic regularities that inspired him to search for mathematically simple laws of celestial motion.  At the same time, his commitment to realism and his access to reliable data eventually led him to propose elliptical planetary orbits that vary in speed, both ideas repugnant to the strict Aristotelian (p. 238, emphasis mine). 

My fear is that I will bore you with more quotes; but, this is the second half of the central thesis of the authors – that indigenous habitability and observational measurability are necessarily related.  And so, this, from the period of the Reformation of northern Europe in Kepler’s own words:

Thus it is apparent that it was not proper for man, the inhabitant of this universe and its destined observer, to live in its inwards as though he were in a sealed room.  Under those conditions he would never have succeeded in contemplating the heavenly bodies, which are so remote.  On the contrary, by the annual revolution of the earth, his homestead, he is whirled about and transported in this most ample edifice, so that he can examine and with utmost accuracy measure the individual members of the house. Something of the same sort is imitated by the art of geometry in measuring inaccessible objects.   For unless the surveyor moves from one location to another, and takes his bearing at both places, he cannot achieve the desired measurement (quoted on p. 238, emphasis mine). 

And in my opinion, this proves that Science was the destined avocation of the Theologian.  I really do not think that theologians that do not attempt to analyze, challenge and integrate scientific thought into their work are worth much in the real world.  Conversely, I really do not think that scientists – practitioners of the religion of scientism really – are worth much if they do not integrate the notions of intricacy and design into their cosmologies. 

The authors then move on to discussions of Galileo.  Because he was able to enhance his observations with the use of a telescope, he was one of the first to observe what you and I consider the obvious: that there’s a lot of stuff out there invisible to the naked eye!  He discovered such things as the four “Galilean” moons around Jupiter, spots on the sun, lunar-like phases on Venus and craters on the moon.  He observed, for instance, that the motions of the Galilean moons had exactly nothing to do with the motion of earth – or were not centered or focused on earth . . . I suppose at the micro level, we’re all connected, gravitationally speaking. . . .  Spots and craters did quite a bit to disprove the Aristotelian baggage view that the spheres were pristine.  Galileo neither ignored nor explained these anomalies away. 

But remember, we are talking about the hijacking of the Copernican principle into becoming the Principle of Mediocrity.  “So, far from demoting the status of Earth, Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler saw the new scheme as exalting it.  Galileo in particular defended the notion of “earthshine,” in which Earth reflected the light and glory of the Sun more perfectly than the Moon did.  He thought that Earth’s new position removed it from the place of dishonor it occupied in the Aristotelian universe, and located it in the heavens. . .” (p. 239).  In Galileo’s own words: [The Earth] is not the sump where the universe’s filth and ephemera collect” (quoted on p. 240). 

With the help of G & R, let us do a little Galilean demythologization.  In the first place, G & R disabuse us of the notion that historical events can be reduced to simplistic presentations.  It was not a case of the tyrannical suppression of a proletariat uprising of the oppressed in their scientific pursuit of truth by the Tsars of religious superstition.  Neither was it a case of the powerful self-absorbed ignorant elite suppressing the wise but powerless opposition.  As the authors say: “. . . with one-dimensional heroes and villains in short supply” (p. 240).  Arrogance reigned supreme in Galileo’s case . . . nothing foreign to science there . . . even the science that has had to eat crow so many times in the last hundred years. 

Galileo not only insisted that the Church immediately endorse his views rather than simply allowing his insights gradually and inevitably to gain widespread acceptance, he also mocked Pope Urban VIII in his 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.  At the same time, he angered the secular Aristotelians who ruled the universities and whose careers were dedicated to the older cosmology.  He further irritated them by publishing his ideas in the popular Italian vernacular, rather than in the usual scholarly Latin.  In any case, Galileo was primarily reproved not for teaching Copernicanism but for going back on his previous promise not to teach that it was literally true (pp. 240-242). 

And so his recantation in 1633 is complicated by the fact that he demanded that his version of the theory be accepted as true without further ado.  As we might well gather, there have been some modifications of Galilean thought since then. . . .  However,

Even after his censure he continued to receive a Church pension for the rest of his life, hardly the sort of treatment one would expect from a monomaniacally oppressive Church authority.  These are just a few of the complexities that make the incident poor material as a symbol of an eternal warfare between science and religion (p. 242). 

We might be reminded that there was no shortage of inquisitions and executions in the high middle-ages.  However, after the burning of Servetus (October 25, 1553 – only 80 years earlier), there were a lot of publications that came out decrying the persecution of heretics from the Protestants at least.[2]  The fact that Galileo was only forced to recant the position that his was the absolute truth, says that the church had learned some leniency by that point – or expediency, if the martyrdom theory be pursued. 

The authors then go on to demythologize the notion that Dominican monk Giordano Bruno was the first martyr of modern science.  Bruno was only a little nuttier than a modern SETI fanatic.  Without minimizing the tragedy that was his life and death, without minimizing the fact that we should not arbitrarily put nuts and heretics to death, we might note that these were the times in which Bruno lived.  His Copernican views really had little to do with his “martyrdom.”  He was most likely executed for his “views on the Trinity, the Incarnation and other doctrines” (p. 242).  He was said to be pantheistic; he believed in an eternal universe; he believed in an infinite number of occupied worlds and none of this is necessary to Copernicanism.  He was not even a scientist.  There never was anything clearheaded or empirical about him.  He was an unrepentant heretic. 

There would be a lot more water go under the bridge by the time Newton was finished with the river of thought.  Aristotle did not understand gravity and believed that for something to affect something else, they had to be in physical contact – however momentarily.  Newton apparently was able to describe, though not explain, the notion that you can “reach out and touch” something via gravity.  It explained why apples hit you on the head, as it were, and such things as the orbits of the planets (p. 242). 

Newton never stopped being a theist that we know of: “For Newton, natural laws were God’s ordinary or regular ways of acting in the world.  Miracles were God’s extraordinary or irregular ways of doing so” (pp. 242-3).  Some apparently equivocated over God correcting what He had done previously.  And so rather than having a God that acted and then reacted, they had a God that legislated – that is, a God Who put the laws into effect (p. 243).  As we might gather, this led to deism whereby God wound up the watch of the cosmos and set it to ticking and backed away to see what would happen (p. 243).  Eventually the argument produced a materialistic determinism, devoid of chance, design and God, very much like that with which our children are brainwashed in schools today. 

The concept of contingency in nature, so hard-won in the Middle Ages, and defended by many of the founders of modern science, was again in danger of succumbing to a deterministic system.  Darwin’s theory of evolution in the nineteenth century, and the mysterious disclosures of the quantum world in the twentieth century, led some to reintroduce chance as a scientific explanation – and increasingly, despite intense opposition, there are whispers that design, too, may have a role to play in the science of the twenty-first century (p. 244). 

In their conclusion, “Where are we and why does it matter,” G & R really show that the mythological collapse between Copernicanism and mediocrity is an attempt to ram the ideological baggage of the 20^th century down the intellectual throat of Renaissance and Reformation thinkers.  They would not recognize what we have done with their ideas.  Centrality and status are not necessarily related.  “The great Copernican cliché is premised upon an uncritical equation of geocentrism with anthropocentrism.” (Danielson quoted on p. 244, emphasis his). 

Denying either or both did not automatically disprove the existence of purpose or design in nature.  The official story gives the false impression that Copernicus started a trend, so that removing Earth from the ‘center” of the universe led finally, logically, and inevitably to the scientific establishment of our insignificance.  By sleight of hand, it transformed a series of empirical discoveries with ambiguous metaphysical implications into the Grand Narrative of Naturalism (p. 244). 

However, regardless of whether or not one is of the “religions of the book” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or a pagan like Cicero (p. 245), it seems that the human condition is predicated upon the design of an environment within which we can thrive.  Be that as it may, with what we know now, it is very easy to feel small and insignificant.  The Psalmist felt that way – without a telescope!

When I consider The heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You take thought of him? 

And the son of man, that You care for him?  (Psalm 8:3-4). 

Apparently, when we are not hopelessly full of ourselves, we have always felt rather small when looking up at the sky, over at a mountain, or down at a large body of water.  These experiences are not new.  What is new is that size is proportional to significance.  Reducing that logic, you could say that you are less significant than the loaves of bread you consume during your lifetime . . . a reduction to the absurd, I think.  That absurdity has been immortalized and the transformation from the historical Copernican Principle worried about by Shapley and popularized by Sagan as the Principle of Mediocrity (p. 245).  Perhaps we will see that neither we nor the Pale Blue Dot are as mediocre as we have been led to believe.

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004).

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