By Annie Lu Gravitational TheoryGravitational theory is the idea that any two particles of matter attract one another with a force directly proportional to the produce of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them (generally credited to Isaac Newton and his law of universal gravitation). GeocentrismWhy was geocentrism inherently attractive to people? These believers are mainly of antiquity, but this is not to discount the roughly 20% of Americans in 2006 who still claimed to believe the sun revolves around the Earth (Berman). Religious institutions have argued there is biblical support for a geocentric model. World-renowned modern geocentrist Gerardus Bouw dedicated a book to the geocentric nature of the Bible, and analyzed the semantics behind certain verses. For example, Psalm 93:1 from the King James Version of the Bible reads: “the world also is established; it shall never be moved.” Psalm 104:5 reads: “laid the foundations of the Earth that it should not be removed forever.” It is evident that these lines may be interpreted one way or another, depending on the beliefs of the reader. It is more widely accepted these days, however, that the universe is indeed not geocentric, which brings us to the next point in time. Galileo and HeliocentrismDuring the 17th century, outwardly repentant heretic Galileo Galilei championed the heliocentric theory—a bold and controversial move at this time. Spurning Aristotle’s basic heliocentrism and Ptolemy’s epicycles, theories then considered to be practically axiomatic, Galileo instead accepted the postulates laid forth by Nicolaus Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs. Essentially, Copernicus stated the center of the cosmos was the sun, and motion was uncompromisingly uniform (as opposed to Ptolemy allowing the center of his epicycles to move with variable speed around the circumference of the deferent, or a larger circle around which the center of the epicycle moves). The advantages to the heliocentric system were that it explained retrograde motion—the sudden reversal of direction of planets as they moved throughout the sky, from the perspective of the Earth—and it provided a principle by which the order of planets could be arranged. Previously, Ptolemy had no way of determining the actual sequence of planets in the solar system. Despite these theoretical strides forward, discarding Aristotle’s system of physics was equatable to defying common sense, and the Catholic Church was most unhappy at this intrusion of thought (Lindberg). Newton and the Universal LawIn colloquial language, the law states that every mass attracts every other mass by a force proportional the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them (Cohen et. al.). Newton published his findings in his written work Principia. Upon presenting his findings to the Royal Society (a club for promoting science and education etc), Newton was virulently accused of plagiarism by Fellow and rival Robert Hooke, as Hooke himself had also hypothesized on the inverse square law. The consensus on this 17th century controversy comes out to that the two scientists acknowledged each other’s work independently, but there is little evidence that anything new or original had been stolen from Hooke. Newton’s theory is accurate enough for common usage, but in certain situations general relativity is preferred because Newton’s theory requires that gravitational force is instantaneously transferred. Modern Theories of GravitationModern-day thought regarding gravitation, including general relativity and quantum mechanics, are beyond the scope of this article for now (maybe next time). CITATIONSBerman, Morris (2006). Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire. W. W. Norton & Company. Cohen, I. Bernard et al, translators. Proposition 75, Theorem 35: Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. University of California Press (1999): 956. Faulkner, Dr. Danny R. “Geocentrism and Creation”. Answers in Genesis. 1 August, 2001. H. W. Turnbull (ed.), Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Vol 2 (1676-1687), Cambridge University Press, (1960): 431-448. Lindberg, David C. “Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos”. When science and Christianity meet (2003): 33-60. Wiesner, Matthew P. “Modern Geocentrism: A Case Study of Pseudoscience in Astronomy”.
Wikipedia. “History of gravitational theory”. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. 12 November, 2017.
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