Tag: astronomy

The Demise of the Copernican Principle

Around 450 B.C., the Greek philosopher Empedocles propounded the idea that all matter is comprised of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire.  Since earth was the heaviest element, he, and Aristotle after him, reasoned that the Earth must be at the bottom and therefore the center of the universe (“geocentrism”).  Much later, the Greco-Roman philosopher Claudius Ptolemy (100-170 A.D.) developed an elaborate model of the solar system based on geocentrism, which was not eclipsed (pun intended) until the 17th Century when Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) showed that the Earth orbits the sun (“heliocentrism”).

[What follows is an essay I wrote for a class while studying for a degree at Biola University in 2010.]

What has become known as the “Copernican Principle,” then, posits that the more we learn about the universe, the better we understand our own insignificance.  The notion constitutes a profound misinterpretation on many levels.

First, the Copernican Principle assumes that the relocation of the Earth from being orbited by the sun to orbiting it constituted a lowering of the Earth’s status. This notion is based, however, on the false assumption that Aristotelian geocentrism was anthropocentric – man-centered – which it was not.

Aristotle thought the Earth to be located at the center of the universe not because of man’s importance but because of the Earth’s weight, being the heaviest of the four elements, Earth, water, air, and fire.  Also, the sublunar realm (beneath the moon) was deemed corruptible, unlike the heavens.  The lowly position of the Earth is seen in Dante’s decision to locate hell, which is even more dishonorable, under the Earth.  It is also reflected in Galileo’s insistence, upon discovering proof of Copernicus’ theory, that the Earth “is not the sump where the universe’s filth and ephemera collect.”  Thus in Aristotelian terms, moving the Earth away from the center was a promotion.  Kepler, too, considered Copernicus’ model to be more anthropocentric than Ptolemy’s because God had given Man an advantageous location – away from the center – the better to survey the universe.

So Copernicus’ theory did nothing to undermine the importance of human life. Emphatically, that was not his purpose.  He was a Christian neo-Platonist who expected physical reality to reflect the precision of mathematics and who was disturbed by the Ptolemaic model’s contrivances and lack of elegance.

Second, the Copernican Principle uncritically accepts the idea that the physical universe is governed by impersonal, mechanistic necessity, and uncritically discards the teleological hypothesis in nature.

The Copernican Principle gained plausibility for a while, after we learned that our sun is an ordinary star in a galaxy of a hundred billion stars; more so when we learned (not until the 1920s) that our galaxy is an ordinary galaxy in a universe of a hundred billion galaxies; and even more so when we learned that the universe, though not eternal, is billions of years old, to say nothing of the discovery of physical explanations for the origin of the solar system.

Since Hubble, however, the Principle has been wearing thin.  We have learned that the universe is neither infinite nor eternal; that in the finite past the universe began with an enormous explosion of energy from a point in space-time, out of nothing as far as we can tell; and that intelligent life would have been impossible anywhere in the universe were it not for the fact that there are hundreds of physical parameters which must be exactly what they are.  Relative autonomy and teleology are back!

Moreover, it is not theists alone who are saying so.  Consider the observations of Lee Smolin in The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (Houghton-Mifflin 2006)).  Smolin is not sanguine about the return of teleology.  He states that string theory is in crisis.  It makes no predictions, and there have been no useful new proposals for fixing it in decades.  That leaves us with the standard model of particle physics, which dates to 1973!  Says Smolin, we haven’t had that kind of a drought in centuries.

Where, then, does that leave us?  In a recent interview, [Leonard] Susskind claims that the stakes are to accept the landscape and the dilution in the scientific method it implies or give up science altogether and accept intelligent design (ID) as the explanation for the choices of parameters of the standard model:

If . . . the landscape turns out to be inconsistent . . . we will be in a very awkward position.Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tuning we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics.  One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.  (Quoted in Amanda Gefter, “Is String Theory in Trouble?”  New Scientist, December 17, 2005; Smolin, p. 197; emphasis added.)

The failure of the Copernican Principle gambit may make it necessary for Smolin and Susskind to reconsider whether accepting ID really means giving up science altogether.  Peace between faith and reason may break out sooner than we think.

Thomas Alderman 2010

ps. Don’t miss The Story of Everything, a Discovery Institute feature film in theatres beginning April 30. “We don’t ask you to believe despite the evidence: We SHOW you the evidence!” It’s sure to be worthwhile.

What About Laplace’s Protoplanetary Disc?

Today I was thinking about one of the arguments for naturalism (atheism) that I discussed in a recent oral presentation.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) was a French scholar who contributed to the eclipse of theistic science in the 19th Century by observing that the origin of the solar system could be explained mechanically.  Under the force of gravity, a “proto-planetary disc” formed, and as it collapsed and became denser and denser, it clumped together, forming a system of star and planets.

My only comment at that time was that that was all very fine, but where did Laplace suppose the gravity came from?

And that, of course, remains a perfectly good critique; but today it dawned on me that there is a lot more that can be said.  Readers of this blog know about stellar nucleosynthesis, whereby the elements of the periodic table (oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, chromium, etc., etc.) are by-products of the fusion reactions still taking place in the stars.  When the stars reach the end of their life cycle, they collapse and explode, spreading these elements into space, where they become the material for another generation of stars, which continue the process.  Eventually all 90 naturally-occurring elements are formed and spread abroad in space.  It was those materials which formed Laplace’s proto-planetary disc, which became our sun and our home, the Earth.

They also became our food source.

What is even more wonderful is that as that magnificent cosmic process produced our planet, it at the same time assembled all the elements we need for all our bodily functions; and we take those nutrients into ourselves whenever we consume plants grown in the soil or the animals that consume them.

Now, while the majority of our bodies are made up of common elements like oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, some “exotic” elements are present in trace amounts: silicon, fluoride, iron, zinc, copper, lithium, manganese, iodine, cobalt, chromium, selenium, and molybdenum.  In large proportions many of these elements would be extremely toxic to us, but are required in very small quantities for proper bodily function.  And that is what we have: lots of carbon for our muscles and bones, and trace amounts of copper, zinc, selenium, and iron, essential for healthy hearts. Why did stellar nucleosynthesis produce all the elements in exactly the right proportions that we needed in order to thrive?

And there is more!  Our planet has a surfeit of iron and uranium, much more than is typical of most planets.  And it’s a good thing, too, as it is the molten iron core of our planet which produces the magnetic field which surrounds the Earth and deflects the solar wind which otherwise would strip away our atmosphere, and it is the uranium whose decay produces the heat that keeps that iron core molten so that it can circulate and produce that magnetic shield!

Glory to God!