Questions+for+Discussion+1

Evaluate the validity of the following statement: ** The Revolution accomplished from Copernicus to Newton was the great spiritual adjustment that modern civilisation had to make. **

Please provide your views on this statement. Please type your name after you have provided your views.

It is valid to a large extent as throughout the revolution, the perception of God's role in our everyday life phenomenons was continuously reduced. In Copernicus' time, the Bible was used as the answer book to everything. The general perception then was that God created the universe and put mankind at the centre of this universe because mankind is special to Him. All other planets and sun revolved around Earth in perfect circles. However, since Copernicus' time, this perception had become controversial and was countered with theory by Copernicus, observations by Galileo, mathematical calculations by Kepler, with Newton wrapping everything up. Eventually people accepted the heliocentric theory, and this would be a great spiritual adjustment as mankind do not seem to be very important anymore, being just one of the many planets revolving around the sun. Moreover, what they perceived to be perfect heavenly spheres are not perfect, the sun has sunspots, moon has craters and the orbits of the planets are not in perfect circles but are elliptical. ---Karen

Comment: Regarding Karen’s comment on how the perception of the universe changed in Man’s eyes due to new discoveries in astronomy, I think there are more spiritual adjustments than just the position of man in God’ universe and the universe that they live in. There was a shift in how Man thought of themselves and their role in the universe. From Copernicus to Newton’s time, there were certain ideas which were fostered by the scientific development which happened during that time, such as the idea of progress and discovery through scientific experimentation. During Copernicus’s time, people were more reluctant to question the ideas that have developed since the Middle Ages. They rarely questioned Aristotle’s ideas even when they found them not to be true all the time. For example, Aristotle’s concept of the universe having four fundamental elements which were constantly mingled together, forever trying to sort themselves out into those natural places. The Cannon ball would have refuted this theory, because the cannon ball would not have went back to the ground straight after being fired. However, not many people questioned Aristotle’s theory which the church supported. People also referred to the Bible for answers and explanations and rarely questioned the truth and content of the Bible. This is very different from Newton’s time, when the scientific method was already invented and people were eager to discover their universe through experimentation. The ancient “truths” had already been proven wrong science had become a model for thought throughout intellectual and high social circles. The Bible had a separate entity from scientific discovery (i.e. new discoveries about God’s universe.) There was a change in how people looked at the Bible. (though I cannot exactly explain what, perhaps from the “truth” to a guide on how to get closer to God.) Therefore, this is another aspect that can be looked into.

May 308

Comments on May's answer: I would like to add on to May's second last sentence. I think the change in how people looked at the Bible could be referring to how people began to see that the Bible was actually open to many interpretations. As such, they did not rely so much on the Bible as an answer book to everything, but rather preferred to rely on empirical experiments to provide solid proof for what they discovered. --- Yi Xian

Thanks Yi Xian, I agree with you. ---May :D

I agree to a large extent of the validity of the statement. For more than 3000 year ago, people strongly believed in that sun and stars(other planets) were moving around the earth depend on what they can observed in the sky --- the sun and star moved from one horizon to the other every day and night. When Copernicus initially raised the idea of heliocentrism, he offered a more accuate explanation of the heavenly perfection. In that time, the Bible was the messages from the god. His ideas contradicted many biblical passages that described a fixed earth and moving heavens, and discarded centuries of assumed astronomical knowledge. By doing so, he established the begining of the new astronomy which build a new model of the heavenly bodies. His discoveries raise questions to what people used to believe and leave room for other philosophers continue to discussion on the raising Astronomy. The following natural philosophers continue to refine and build up on Copernicus's theory. Brahe collected the most accuate astronomical data and further objected the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system. Kepler use mathematical means make more adjustments to Copernicus's model by turning the circular orbit into elliptial orbit. Galileo transform Galileo's theory into larger debate about teh role of natural philosophy in revealling the nature of the world. Newton mixed all the theories which were discovered by the previous natural philosophers into a new and coherent cosmology which the world was seen largely in mechanistic terms. Throughout years of scientific revolution, western people's mind was greatly changed by the new ideas they accepted by SR natural philospher's theories. They had a entirely different view of universe and realised the old theories of ancient scientist which was authority in the past could be wrong as well. Besides that, people started to look into scientific development of other fields as well. Therefore, the revolution accomplished from Copernicus to Newton was the great spiritual as justment that modern civilisation had to make. ---Chen jiayi

Comments on Jiayi's answer: [Please correct me if I'm wrong] I don't think Copernicus established a new astronomy but rather a new view of the universe. Also, I feel that ancient scientists were not spiritual but were like outdated textbooks, therefore the revolution accomplished from Copernicus to Newton led to a shift from belief in the ancients' theories to empiricism.--Moira

I thought MR Ganesh had mentioned this word before. I wanted to say it's a new astronomy since it established a new concept of the universe which is more accuate than before, therefore it's considered a new astronomy. I agreed that the accomplishment from Copernicus to Newton is a paradigm shift from the beliefs of the ancient authorities and changed their beliefs that common sense is not necessarily correcta and led to the empiricism. Thanks for the commend. jiayi

the statement is valid to a grerat extent. Prior to Copernicus, astronomers had favoured the view , following both Aristotle and Ptolemy, that the earth was at the centre of the universe, with both the stars, suns and the moon revolving about it. Copernicus was the first one to put the sun at the center and the earth as a planet.He revolutionized man's conception of himself and his place in the universe than perhaps any other thinker. However, he delayed publication of his findings for fear of censure by the church, although he believed his views were not inconsistent his theology. Copernicus also claimed that his work was no more than hypothetical.though still not widely accepted during his lifetime, his idea gave birth to the scientific age and helped to remove many of the superstitions and ignorant beliefs,also it was famously supported by Galileo,Kepler and Newton Galileo (observation) - he recanted his old view and strongly supported Copernicus' heliocentric theory.He used the newly invented telescope to dramatic effect,showing by his astronomical observations that the Ptolemaic or geocentric theory which held that the earth was at the centre of universe was seriously flawed.He used the obsevation corresponding his theory. Kepler (mathematical calculation) -he created a formula in which a planet's rate of motion is inversely proportional to its distance from the Sun. He calculated and recalculated various data fit the Mars elliptical orbit so he immediately concluded that all planets move in ellipses//,// with the sun at one focus—Kepler's first law of planetary motion. - Kepler had proposed three Laws of Planetary which were supposed to apply only to the motions of the planets without anything about any other motion in the Universe. Further, they were purely empirical: they worked, but no one knew a fundamental reason why they should work. Newton -he demonstrated that the motion of objects on the Earth could be described by three new Laws of motion so he came out with his Newton's three Laws applied to all the objects in the universe. - Newton's three law was really profound and remarkable achievement in the history of human t houghs. therefore, the revolution accomplished fron Copernicus to Newton was a great spirital adjustment that modern civilisation had to make.

- yueyue

Comment on yueyue's answer: I think her answer showed the achievements of the important people in the Scientific revolution but did not fully show how this was a great spiritual adjustment that modern civilisation had to make. What is the spiritual adjustment mentioned in the question? This is an important point that needs to be considered and will affect what the answer is skewed towards. Spiritual adjustment in context of the European world, with the Catholic and Christian Churches holding most of the religious authority, can refer to how they viewed the Bible or how they thought God viewed themselves. It can also mean how mankind viewed their abilities and realised that they have the power to change the world that they were living in. Copernicus's heliocentrism and the later proofs that came to support this caused mankind to think differently about their position in God's eyes(whom they thought was in space, outside the orbital paths of the planets). They were no longer in the centre of the universe but just one the the planets orbiting in the vast universe, which can be quite a humbling thought. The rest of the acheivements stated in yueyue's argument fostered the idea of people's potential to control their destiny. This idea significantly influenced a number of great political revolutions in Europe in the last 200 years, like the French and Russian revolution. It also fostered the idea of progress: the achievements in the scientific field during the Scientific Revolution caused mankind to think how else they could progress, thus sparking off the Industrial Revolution.

---May

I agree with the statement as religion and spiritual beliefs were highly involved in the conception of the Universe and underwent several changes while old theories were refuted and new theories were formulated.

Prior to Copernicus, the view that was commonly held was that there were “limits to the rightful scope of human knowledge” (McGraw, 2005), as is supported by the depiction of the Universe in Giovanni di Paolo’s painting “The Creation of the World and the Expulsion From Paradise”. It depicts Adam and Eve being shoved out of the Garden of Eden by an angel after having eaten the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, showing that a boundary exists between humans and God. In addition, the painting showed God who reaches down and spins the heavens with his finger, reflecting that he is almighty and that the Bible presented the truth and should never be questioned.

Also, in Aristotle’s day, his concept of the Universe was one that can be called a “spiritual Universe”, as is evident since the outer realm consisted of God and his saved souls and angels and demonic beings at another point, elements of religion. This showed that the spiritual aspect played a great role in their lives.

However, after Copernicus had conceived the heliocentric universe, this was humbling and created uncertainty as people had thought that they were special since they had been created by God, and thus, they ought to have been at the centre of the Universe. This met with opposition from the Protestant Church, possibly because Biblical authority was emphasized and they had regarded the Bible as the single fundamental source of Christian knowledge. (Kuhn, 1997)

Galileo contributed to this by using empirical observations to offer evidence for a heliocentric universe, presented his ideas as the truth in //The Dialogue//, and insinuated that the interpretation of the Bible by the Church was incorrect. This fuelled controversy as it reinforced the theoretical explanation with concrete observations that displaced humans from the centre of the universe. It clearly had a significant impact on spiritual belief and this is evident from the Church’s trial against him for heresy as they feared that the people might question their authority and Biblical interpretations.

Lastly, “with his (Newton’s) discovery of gravity, Newton taught that understanding the cosmos is not confined to the divine”. (McGraw, 2005) The belief that there was a limit to knowledge was shattered when Newton came up with the law of gravity, which meant that Man could at least understand the physical aspect of the Universe, and this led to great spiritual adjustment whereby Man had the abilities to find out how the Universe worked.

Sources and Bibliographies: -Mano Singham’s Web Journal: The Role of Protestant opposition to Copernicus. (26 April 2005). Retrieved 27 February 2010 from []. -Kuhn, T. (1997). //The Copernican Revoluion.// Published by MJF Books. -McGraw, Hill. (2005). //World History – Volume 2: 1500 to the Present, 8th ed.// Article 18, pg 82-83. (Apologies for I could not find the publisher)

Zera

I agree with this statement to a large extent. There was a spiritual adjustment that the modern civilisation had to make, and christianity and the bible were viewed rather differently after the accomplishments of Copernicus to Newton. Before the Scientific Revolution, the europeans were in the middle ages, and during this time period, the spritual life of people was very different from what we have now. The church wielded considerable power over the people and they believed in what the church told them about god and god's world. Their knowledge about their world was mainly based on what the greek and romans thought, and what the clergy had interpreted from the bible. The universe was thought to have been made up of perfect circular crystalline spheres that surrounded Earth, with god and heaven right outside the 9th "prime mover" sphere. This was clearly a spiritual view of nature. However, when Copernicus came up with heliocentrism and displaced the god created humans and Earth from the centre of the universe, when Brahe proved that Aristotle's crystalline spheres and static universe did not exist, when Kepler found that the planets' orbits were far from perfectly circular, when Galileo lobbied for his heliocentric universe against church authorities and Bible teachings, and Newton tried to explain the physical forces in the universe, things changed. This was a spiritual adjustment for many as religion and the Bible could not explain everything anymore, humans were not at the centre of the universe, thus meaning that were not the most important beings in the world and they lost the clear direction where heaven was and God resided. Their religion and spiritual beliefs were now only limited to certain areas of their life and certainly did nothing to explain nature. This was also a necessary spiritual adjustment for the modern civilisation as science and technology had stagnated during the medieval times due to their belief that the Bible and old masters and already explained everything. With this shift in spirituality, scientific knowledge could finally be split form religion and technology could advance, leading us to the tecnologically advanced present.

-Ziwei (Miss Liu)-

I agree with the statement to a large extent. Before I further explain my views on this question, I would like to highlight some key words in the statement—“spiritual” and “modern civilization” What do we consider as spiritual? As is known to all, the reason why Scientific Revolution has been bearing such significance is that it does not only perform as a great stride in human’s search for knowledge, but it also caused drastic changes to people’s mindsets and hence made much more profound contributions in this field. What does modern civilization refer to then? The most widely accepted understanding of modern era is the historical time line after the Middle Ages, corresponding to the occurrence of Scientific Revolution. (of course alongside other relevant events, such as the Renaissance. etc)Let’s now look at the question more closely. Why is the whole process considered a great spiritual adjustment? First of all, it freed people’s minds from the constraint of theology. Back in the “dark” Middle Ages, people’s lives were dominated by theology and the church, which stretched its tentacles to every aspect of people’s lives. At that time, people were required not to have their own ideas and only to obey the will of God. This can be clearly seen from the artwork of that period. The topics of contemporary paintings were mostly God and the facial expressions of the characters were monotonous & obedient. What’s more, as scientific authorities’ theories (such as Aristotle, Ptolemy and Galen) also corresponded to the idea which the Church taught, people almost never had a single doubt of the well-accepted theories. Thus, that was a time when people’s minds were hampered from progress. During the Scientific Revolution, the role of God was greatly reduced—the perfect circle orbit was proved to be elliptical, the earth turned out to be the one that was revolving around another star and humans were not that special any more. Gradually, people began to see that God was not so dominant that He would control and decide all things in their lives. This also leads to my second point. During the Scientific Revolution, it appears gradually that authorities like Aristotle and Ptolemy can also be proved wrong. With the later help of scientific instruments, such as the telescope, the world was suddenly turning from a finite one into an unknown space. This fired people’s interest to discover more about the world around them. They got to understand that the use of science would eventually lead to all knowledge. I believe the explosion of knowledge in the modern era can find its origin here. -Zhang Peiwen

Being overly-reliant on the Church to dictate their actions and beliefs in the medieval times, the people seldom took time to think about the natural world as they left this thinking to the clergy, the men who ruled the church and the people through religion. Thus, it was seen as radical to even begin to doubt the teachings and preachings of the Church, seeing as they were the most highly educated people with the highest societal ranks. In my opinion, it is then ironic to have the first radical idea to be conceived of by a member of the clergy (Copernicus). However, this resulted in a revolution in the way people saw the world, and most importantly, their religion. During the time of Copernicus to Newton, Europe was undergoing many changes with regards to the Church administration. There was the Reformation, where the Protestants split from the Catholics, as well as the 30 Year War, a conflict between the various denominations of Christianity. With so much anger, threats and conflicts to deal with in the 16th to 17th century, the Scientific Revolution couldn't have been placed in a more tumultuous backdrop. However, it was precisely this period of chaos which helped new ideas and discoveries to spread freely among the people, thus finally allowing them to choose what they wanted to believe in. Though some of these ideas conflicted with the teachings of the Church, they gradually began to gain acceptance among the people as society emerged from a dark period of didactic leadership to a more liberal and open one, whereby each and every person was entitled to their own beliefs and ideas. Hence, I agree with the statement, as I think that the Scientific Revolution was the main driving force behind this change. ---Cheah Qinrong  The statement is valid to a large extent. The Scientific Revolution led to people moving from an organic view on the world, where everything was the handiwork of God to a mathematical view of the world, where everything was written in the language of mathematics. Before Copernicus, people believed that everything could be interpreted from the Bible and consulted it to see if what they were about to do was in accodance with God's will. However, through the Scientific Revolution, as people were discovering more about the world and themselves, they realized that almost everything in the universe could be calculated, like the speed of falling objects or the trajectory of an airborne object. It was only throught the Scientific Revolution that people realized that they could find things out by themselves using Scientific method and empiricism and that not everything was dictated by God. Thus, they moved from depending on the Bible and God to know find out things to finding out things for themselves through that they advanced to modern science. --Moira Low

The Scientific Revolution refers to historical changes in thought and belief, to changes in social and institutional organization that unfolded in Europe between roughly 1500-1700.** Thus, **I agree with the statement that the Scientific Revolution brought about a **great spiritual adjustment during this period. ** **A significant achievement that brought about great spiritual adjustment would be the creation of the Copernican model. **Nicolaus Copernicus, a careful mathematician and faithful Christian, proposed the heliocentric model for a more accurate explanation of the universe in a book, “On The Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres”. He did not believe that God would create the world as messily as Ptolemy’s model proposed, suggesting that the Earth revolves around the Sun (instead of vice versa). It was also noted that the farther the planets were from the Sun, the longer they take to revolve around it. The retrograde motions of planets were explained as an optical illusion that arose as people were observing planets from a moving Earth. This can be considered to be a very significant achievement of the Scientific Revolution, for it sparked off a new direction in the people’s understanding of the universe. More importantly, the creation of the Copernican model also decreased mysticism. It led to uncertainty about the role of humans in the universe and God’s location. At that time, medieval religious dogma stood unshaken--people were of the opinion that humans were superior beings, created by God. Copernicus’ ideas led people to think that man was part of nature, and not its focus, contradicting the theories of the church. As a result, the Protestant church saw his ideas were seen as heretical and “On The Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres” was prohibited. The reactions of the church illustrates the significance of Copernicus’ findings, as well as the spiritual adjustment in people it brought about. **Another instance where people experienced a shift in their spiritual beliefs would be **Galileo Galilei’s contributions in astronomy. His work transformed Copernicanism from a theory about astronomy into a larger debate about role of Science in revealing true nature of world. His study of the skies using his telescope led to several new insights, the discovery of Jupiter’s moons being one of them. He named these moons the Medician stars. It is notable that this discovery served as proof against geocentrism, for it contradicted Aristotelian principles that everything should revolve around the Earth. He also made a thorough case for heliocentrism when he discovered that Venus exhibited a full set of phases and orbited the sun. Thus, it is evident that his work served as concrete evidence of heliocentrism. This had a large influence on man’s ideas of his place in universe and purpose in life. He was no longer seen as superior anymore, only as part of a whole vast universe. The Aristotelian system, based on arbitrary and mystical beliefs, was shown to be outdated in the world of evidence-based science. -- Vivian Goh, 301
 * In conclusion, new discoveries caused a drastic-and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving, for they provided the people with a new perspective of the universe. The statement that the Scientific Revolution brought about great spiritual adjustment is thus valid to a great extent. **

I agree with the statement that "The Revolution accomplished from Copernicus to Newton was the great spiritual adjustment that modern civilisation had to make." In the past, in the time of Copernicus, the people greatly believed in the existence of angels and demonic beings, and included their existence in drawings of the universe, along with the planets and the Sun. They also believed in everything the Bible said, from the position of the Earth, to the existence of God. They were taught not to question the Bible as well, but just simply read it and accept the facts as they were, as the Church at that time strongly advocated the sayings in the Bible, and arrested whoever went against it. However, this changed greatly in the time of Newton, with the exception of their belief in God. The people did not include the existence in their drawings of the universe, as the key point in the debate was the idea between heliocentrism and geocentrism. They were allowed to think in new ways about why things happen on Earth or in the solar system, and could come up with new theories and collect evidence to prove the old theories wrong, and that the ancients were infallible. Although they might have disagreed with the sayings in the Bible, the people from the time of Copernicus to Newton did not dispute one fact- that God existed. Therefore, I agree that modern civilisation had to make spiritual adjustment from the time of Copernicus to Newton, as they did not show their strong belief in the existance of angels and demonic beings anymore, and were allowed to suggest new theories to prove the ancients, or even the sayings in the Bible wrong. - Dawne, 301