It’s the third day of Coynezaa, my own personal holiday (everyone needs one), and three more days to go after today. This is a banner day for all biology-philes, for it was on December 27, 1831, that Charles Darwin embarked on his Beagle voyage. It was to last five years, and gave rise to the greatest revolution in human thought ever. Fourteen years later, another step forward for science: Dr. Crawford Long used ether anesthesia for the first time ever in childbirth. He had also used it 1842 to remove a tumor from a man’s neck, which was the first use of ether anesthesia ever. It’s a science-y day, this December 27, for Louis Pasteur was also born on that day in 1822 (died 1895). And we’ll leave it at that. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Furry Princess of Poland is out on the tiles for the evening:
Hili: The right doesn’t look interesting.
A: And the left?
Hili: Also somewhat dark.
Hili: Prawica nie wygląda interesująco.
Ja: A lewica?
Hili: Też jakaś mroczna.
Leon: Christmas is so tiring!
OK. I’ll bite on that one.
Other contenders would be the Copernican Revolution. Ohm’s linking of electricity and magnetism (leading fairly directly to motors, dynamos and all of electronics. Newcomen’s removal of muscle power from work (maybe more for it’s practical consequences than for it’s intellectual content).
I happened to be driving the length of the country on the day that McKay et al’s 1996 paper on ALH84001 and it’s alleged fossils came out, and had plenty of time to think about the consequences of that (if proven to be true, which it doesn’t seem to have been) ; the discovery of non-Terrestrial life will be a big day, despite the inevitable kvetching by panspermiatists (sperm-panners?).
Yes, but, despite all the mind-blowing, progress-abetting advances in those fields, presenting a theory (with plenty of evidence) for the diversification of life on earth was the only paradigm change (ahem) with the potential to shake the grip of medieval superstition–religion–on the world.
I think the Copernican Revolution (in it’s more general sense of removing the Earth and humans from being the literal and metaphorical centre of the universe) was explicitly understood as begin profoundly inimical to the conceptual basis of mediaeval religion.
Which his also, fundamentally, why Giordano Bruno got roasted (for suggesting that there might be other churches on other planets circling other stars in the sky, amongst other things.
I wonder if they were being used when Galileo was shown the instruments of torture? Personally, I can’t look at a cloth square and a bucket of water without shuddering these days.
What’s going wrong with my fingers? “Which was also”
David Deutsch (in The Beginning of Infinity) argues that the Enlightenment is the mother of all intellectual revolutions, since it set in place the culture of critical thought and explanation-seeking, and the recognition that all knowledge is provisional, without which those other revolutions would not have been possible.
That, as described, is going to be a difficult furrow to plough, because Copernicus in particular was well over a century before the period generally known as “the Enlightement.”
Hmmm, I see from the Wikipedia page that
but that is then getting towards answering your challenge by moving definitions. And even pushing the Enlightenment back to 1620 still leaves it piggy-backing on Copernicus.
Try this then: what made Copernicanism revolutionary (per Deutsch) was not so much the removal of Earth from the center of the universe as the realization that such a move was fair game in pursuit of better models of reality.
Yes, but ascribing “motherhood” to the Enlightenment seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Makes much more sense to think that one example of science & critical thinking changing the concept of an important part of nature gave rise to the insight that such explanations might be available and should be sought for all previous natural quandaries than to think that some folks set around some where and thought, “why don’t we come up with critical thinking?”
The problem with assigning importance to Copernicus is that his innovation was not influential until Galileo Galilei. He was out of sight and out of mind. Thus, it was only when ideas started circulating in intellectual circles that the floodgates were opened.
Kepler used Copernicus’ “model for calculation”.
Before Bacon, Newton …
Be careful with that plough on thin ice!
I think I was remembering his reluctance to publish which was because he feared the reaction of the church. His “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” was finaly published in 1543, long after it was first completed.
Kepler’s “Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae” was published around 1620.
The Church pretty much ignored Copernicus until the era of Galileo 70 years later. But his ideas were in circulation among scholars.
Wow. An example of the Church (whichever church ; any church) completely missing the ball on a really quite important bit of information. That’s never happened before. You’d think that their Big Invisible Non-Existent Sky Fairy friend would tip them the wink or something …. but it’s that damned non-existence thing again, isn’t it?
Leon looks fabulous embedded in tangerine and peach gauziness. What a prince!
He is quite the handsome boy! While Hili is the quintessential cutie-pie. 🙂
But Hili needs to lay off the mouse pie until PCC(E) visits next.
Mouse pie in a PCC(E) friendly form.
Or mouse pie as a cure for incontinence of the tongue or bladder.
Or … from a dolls house site (even weirder than the Quarrymen) … mouse in a cherry pie.
Are comments with links in being moderated?
Sniffs so.
Those first & third links (esp. the first) are adorable.
I’ve found that 3 or more links per comment can set off the delay, “no matter who you are.” (Even for you & me!)
“It was to last five years, and gave rise to the greatest revolution in human thought ever.”
That gave me goosebumps.