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Cosmologies, Ancient and Modern
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16193 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
7,637 Words |
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Richard P. Buch
Richard P. Buch, a retired engineer and a student of A.N.
Whitehead at Harvard, has published extensively on scientific
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Since the earliest times, men have gazed in wonder at the night sky and observed the glittering constellations. Before writing was invented, primitive star watchers had named the celestial bodies, and before ethical systems were conceived, men worshiped images of the sun and moon. The earliest astronomers, however, were practical men, who followed the movements of the sun and moon to keep track of days, months, seasons, and years. For farmers and herdsmen, the moon's phases and the sun's annual journey foretold the times for planting and harvest; early seafarers used the North Star for navigation. Star watching led naturally to speculation about the origin and development of the universe as a whole--to the formulation of a cosmology.
Most early cosmologies were a mix of the supernatural and the familiar. According to ancient Chinese myth, first there was a cosmic egg, inside of which was chaos. Floating in chaos was P'an-ku, an oversized divine embryo, who burst out of the primordial egg and created the world. In India, the Hindus believed that the universe rested on the back of a giant tortoise, although what the tortoise was standing on was not fully explained. In ancient Mesopotamia, priests kept accurate records of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, which they used to predict lunar eclipses. In the New World, the Mayans were superb astronomers. Their calendar was, in some ways, more convenient than ours.
The Greeks were the first scientific astronomers of antiquity. In Miletus, as early as 600 B.C., the philosopher Thales conceived of the earth as round. Two centuries later, Pythagoras and his followers maintained that the earth was spherical and that it moved through space. Most early Greeks, however, believed the earth was stationary. Hipparchus developed a system of epicycles and deferents, which Ptolemy perfected about A.D. 140. This system, used throughout the Middle Ages, withstood all challenges all challenges for thirteen centuries until Copernicus scientifically established the heliocentric solar system. His work led to Galileo's famous heresy and trial by the Inquisition in 1633. It was not until four years ago that Pope John Paul II admitted that the heresy charge against Galileo was baseless.
My own special interest in cosmology was kindled by the renowned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in a course called "Cosmologies, Ancient and Modern" given at Harvard during the early 1930s. Until I studied with Whitehead, my cosmological knowledge consisted of the account in Genesis (reflecting the beliefs of my pious German Methodist ancestors), blended with elementary star study at a Boy Scout summer
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