The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [153]
The first of the guidelines is the most general. It defines what the cosmos is and how it functions. All cultures in history have had their own cosmogonies. In pre-Greek times these were predominantly mythological in nature, dealing with the origins of the universe, usually in anthropomorphic terms, with gods and animals of supernatural power.
The Aristotelian cosmology held longest sway in Western culture, lasting over two thousand years. Aristotle based his system on common-sense observations. The stars were seen to circle the earth regularly and unchangingly every night. Five planets moved against this general wheeling movement of the stars, as did the moon. During the day the sun circled the earth in the same direction. Aristotle placed these celestial objects on a series of concentric spheres circling the earth.
These observations served as the basis for an overview of all existence. God had set the spheres in motion. Each object, like the planets, had its natural place. On earth this place was as low as the object could get. Everything in existence, therefore, had its preferred position in an immense, complex and unchanging hierarchy that ranged from inanimate rocks up through plants and animals to man, heavenly beings and finally God, the Prime Mover.
The cosmic order dictated that the universal hierarchy be mirrored in the social order in which every member of society had a designated place. The cosmology conditioned science in various ways. Astronomy was expected to account for the phenomena, not seek unnecessary explanations. It was for this reason that the Chinese, whose structure had no block concerning the possibility of change in the sky, made regular observations and developed sophisticated astronomy centuries before those in the West.
A papyrus manuscript illustration of the Egyptian sky-god Nut holding up the sky. The god ate the sun, in the west, causing nightfall, and excreted it again in the east to start the following day.
William Buckland lecturing at Oxford in 1823. His professorship was approved by the Anglican Church on condition that he use it to defend the biblical version of Creation.
The static nature of Aristotle’s universe precluded change and transformation, so the science of dynamics was unnecessary. Since each object was unique in its ‘essence’and desires, there could be no common forms of behaviour or natural laws which applied equally to all objects.
The title page from Linnaeus’ Systerna Naturae, in which he divided all organisms into classes, orders, genera and species.
A drawing made in 1870 of Bathybius by Ernst Haeckel, after whom the ‘organism’was named.
By the middle of the nineteenth century a different cosmology reigned. The Anglican Church was committed to the biblical record, the Mosaic version of the history of the earth involving six days of Creation, the garden of Eden and an extremely young planet. The Church strongly opposed the new geological speculation by James Hutton and Charles Lyell regarding the extreme age of the earth. This opposition took various forms including support for a professorial chair in geology at Oxford, initially given to the diluvialist William Buckland in an effort to promote views more in tune with ecclesiastical sentiment. It was ultimately this clerical interference which was to cause a split in the