THE THREE STARGAZERS

Revolutionary Of Unimpeachable Orthodoxy.

This entry is the first in the triptych collectively called The Three Stargazers, dedicated to three exceptional astronomers: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johann Kepler (1571-1630).

Copernicus, in the words of Bertrand Russell, “was a Polish ecclesiastic of unimpeachable orthodoxy.” His science however was revolutionary, even though it followed in the footsteps of the great Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who had lived nearly 1800 years before him but of whose work Copernicus seems to have known nothing. He called his theory a hypothesis, and some say that this was done to protect himself from persecution by the dogmatic and reactionary Church. But this was, indeed, not a definitive science on his part, but a daring hypothesis, based on patient and insightful observation. It is this revived heliocentric hypothesis, rather than the rest of his science, that constitutes the greatness of Copernicus. Needless to say, his audacity was handily rejected by the Catholic Church, while the new emerging Protestants, Luther and Calvin, condemned this hypothesis in even stronger terms. Luther called him an “upstart astrologer and a fool,” while Calvin pitched Copernicus’ authority against the authority of the Holy Ghost and smugly dared any man to venture to place the former (Copernicus) above the latter (God).

Yet It Revolves!

Galileo, was of course the most prolific among these three astronomers: he was also a mathematician and a physicist of genius, and his discoveries in various fields of scientific endeavor are truly astonishing. He was a Pythagorean in his philosophy, and to him belongs the famous dictum about the “Book of Nature [having been] written in mathematical characters.”

Three Galileos And Newtons.

Oddly enough, Kepler (at #75) comes a rather distant third to the other two, Galileo (#12) and Copernicus (#19) in the Hart List, although, historically, his esteem may have been somewhat greater, if we go by what Coleridge tells us about him in his 1830 Table-Talk: “Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler.” Remembering Newton’s rank #2 in this list,-- Wow!-- the Coleridge remark sounds like a huge overstatement, but still there is hardly any doubt that Kepler belongs among the greatest scientists the world has ever known. Curiously, he was yet another devotee of Pythagoreanism and Platonism (which did not prevent him from being a good Christian), but a fascination with sun-worship allegedly played a major role in his unequivocal and wholehearted adoption of the heliocentric hypothesis.

What was only a hypothesis to Copernicus would become a full-fledged science to Kepler, to which fact his three laws of planetary motion convincingly testify. His rejection of the perfect circle as the representation of the movement of a perfect celestial body, in favor of the ellipse, was a totally unanticipated breakthrough in astronomy, geometry and physics and the rare laurels of the undisputed pathfinder go to him, Kepler, and to him alone… Incidentally I am wondering why the aesthetically exquisite ellipse had not been considered as a perfect geometrical figure by the Pythagoreans, but, I guess, I am now musing with the advantage of the retrospect.

On a concluding personal note, being closely familiar with the mindset of the Evangelical Christians in the ardently fundamentalist modern-day America, I can only wonder why, having fairly successfully mutinied against the Darwinian theory of evolution, they have so far been content to live in peace with the theory of heliocentricity of the Solar system. Perhaps, this may have been just an unfortunate oversight on the part of their leaders, whose preoccupation with other worthy issues (abortion, evolution, legitimate/forcible rape, and Armageddon) may, so far, have left the heliocentric heresy off their radar screen.