Discoveries of Scientists of the “Age of Reason”The discoveries of many scientist and great thinkers of the “Age ofReason” have all contributed to the entire scope of how we view astronomytoday. The shift was of a less secular thesis to one based on humanism andthe Scientific Method. There were several great thinkers that led to thisdiscovery on the scientific level, which chiefly began and ended with theastronomers/scientists Copernicus and Isaac Newton. Copernicus was a mathematician as well as a scientist whom found thestars fascinating.
He did, however, find a great flaw with themathematical results of the universe being a Earth- centered one. He thensaw that if the universe was to revolve around the sun (an error onCopernicus’s part. . .
only our solar system revolves around the Earth — notthe universe!) then all of his mathematical formulas would become more”aesthetic”. Thus, he composed the theory, which led to great controversialbook “On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres” in which the church wasgreatly angered. While Copernicus’s book was not a revolutionary book, itwas, however, a catalyst to make other minds ponder the new Heliocentrictheory. After Copernicus’s death there were three other scientists whichhelped credit the Heliocentric theory.
Tycho Brahe was the first, heplayed with the idea that the planets all revolved around the sun, but thesun instead revolved around the Earth(still Geocentric). After Brahe’sdeath Johannes Kepler took the notes and data that Brahe had taken. Keplercame up with the idea the it would be even more mathematically plausiblethat the orbits of the planets around the sun (Heliocentric) wereelliptical, instead of circular and published the book “On the motion ofMars”– the problem was unfortunately that this could not be proved. Themost important of these three scientists was Galileo Galilei, whom lookedout his telescope one night and saw something very dangerous to the church. He saw the Jupiter had a moon which orbited it. This meant big troublebecause it proved that everything did not revolve around the Earth –contradicting the church.
Galileo was attacked and pressured to deny thisevidence the rest of his life. The final great thinker of the time was Isaac Newton, whom ended upsolving all the problems of the astronomers previously. Newton (Thanks toan apple falling on his head — just kidding!) developed the theory ofGravity and several laws of science and Physics which now serve as thebasis of all we study today. Newton theories intelligently explained theideas and why the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun, andalso why there were elliptical orbits. The great achievements of the scientists whom disproved the Geocentrictheory of the universe, contradicting the church’s strong scholastism, aveproved to be one of the greatest examples of courage and truly usingscientific method. The entire structure of our humanism and therelationship with the universe changed forever.
Hopefully now that we knowour place in the universe, we can work on fixing some of the problems backhere on Earth!
