The Copernican Revolution
The Copernican Revolution
The story of Copernican Revolution is the classic example of a major shift in worldview. So, before exploring what is happening in the present day and where it may be leading us, let us first go back and briefly recap the salient features of this earlier revolution. The parallels between what happened then and what may be about to happen now will begin a journey that will take us far beyond the current worldview to a startling new vision of reality that has far-reaching repercussions for both science and religion. We may be standing on the threshold of changes even more fundamental and far-reaching than those initiated by Copernicus.
The Geocentric Universe
Five hundred years ago, as the Middle Ages began to give way to the Renaissance, the reality within which most people lived and conducted their affairs was one in which human beings played a pre-eminent role; everything revolved around man, both physically and in God's eyes. The Old Testament story of Genesis was taken as historical fact. God had created the Earth and the Heavens around. Man (and to a lesser extent woman) was the focus of God's attention.
The model of the cosmos was still that formulated by the Greek philosopher Ptolemy around 140 AD. The sun, moon, planets and stars all revolved around the earth in circular orbits. Back then, everyone “knew” that the earth stood still at the center of the universe. But there were problems with this model. Although the stars move smoothly through the heavens along fixed circular orbits, the planets do not. They wander among the other stars (which is where the term “planet” came from; it means “wanderer” in Greek). Their speed varies, their orbits wobble, and they occasionally reverse their direction of travel -- what is known as "retrograde" motion. At that time it was believed that planetary motion must be based on circles. Plato had argued that heavenly bodies were governed by different laws than those that governed the motion of
The story of Copernican Revolution is the classic example of a major shift in worldview. So, before exploring what is happening in the present day and where it may be leading us, let us first go back and briefly recap the salient features of this earlier revolution. The parallels between what happened then and what may be about to happen now will begin a journey that will take us far beyond the current worldview to a startling new vision of reality that has far-reaching repercussions for both science and religion. We may be standing on the threshold of changes even more fundamental and far-reaching than those initiated by Copernicus.
The Geocentric Universe
Five hundred years ago, as the Middle Ages began to give way to the Renaissance, the reality within which most people lived and conducted their affairs was one in which human beings played a pre-eminent role; everything revolved around man, both physically and in God's eyes. The Old Testament story of Genesis was taken as historical fact. God had created the Earth and the Heavens around. Man (and to a lesser extent woman) was the focus of God's attention.
The model of the cosmos was still that formulated by the Greek philosopher Ptolemy around 140 AD. The sun, moon, planets and stars all revolved around the earth in circular orbits. Back then, everyone “knew” that the earth stood still at the center of the universe. But there were problems with this model. Although the stars move smoothly through the heavens along fixed circular orbits, the planets do not. They wander among the other stars (which is where the term “planet” came from; it means “wanderer” in Greek). Their speed varies, their orbits wobble, and they occasionally reverse their direction of travel -- what is known as "retrograde" motion. At that time it was believed that planetary motion must be based on circles. Plato had argued that heavenly bodies were governed by different laws than those that governed the motion of