The Time Of Aristotle 's Theory On Religion And The Understanding Of The Universe

Aristotle’s model by today’s standards can easily be picked apart, but at the time, it was the best explanation that could be made with so little technology and insight. Although his theories have long since been replaced, they created a base for future scientists to work off of and challenge. Over time many great scientists began to question Aristotle’s theories. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), for example, contested the absolute significance of the earth, and he did not agree that it should be viewed as the center of the entire universe (Lizhi & Youquan, 1987). He plotted the earth at the center of the universe and created a heliocentric system just as mathematically complicated as the Ptolemaic system (one that also improved on Aristotle’s), but it explained a number of anomalies, including resolving the issue of retrograde motion (Ede, A. & Cormack, L., 2004). The problem was that Aristotle’s physics of ‘natural motion’ fell apart without the earth in the center of everything.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German astronomer who believed in the heliocentric theory. Kepler is a clear example of the narrow line that separated science and religion. Nonetheless, his ideas would show that things could be solved through reason alone. He believed that the harmony of the human soul could be found through numerical relationships that existed between planets. He found that the planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn all revolved at different times. For example, the earth revolved around the sun in a year while Saturn revolved around the sun in fifty years. From this, Kepler found a mathematical ratio, nine to the two-thirds power, to explain this phenomenon. This was revolutionary to humanity’s place in the universe. People were shocked that the universe could be explained by math alone rather than religion. This went strongly

For Body 2 T^2/r^3 was 1.99E-5, for Body 3 it was 1.97E-5 and for Body 3 is was 1.97E-5. For Body 4 this was 1.85E-5. The data helps support the fact that the T^2/r^3 should be the same for all planets because the numbers were all relatively similar, especially for Bodies 2 and 3 which were identical and thus proved Kepler’s Law of Harmony, which states that T^2/r^3 should be the same for all planets orbiting the same central body.

Among these people were Copernicus who believed the sun was at the center of the world and the earth, stars and planets revolved around it. Danish astronomer Brahe helped contribute to this idea by contributing a large mass of data about the universe that he was able to discover. His student Kepler kept his ideas going, as he formulated many laws of planetary motion. He said the orbits around the sun were elliptical, planets don’t move in a uniform speed and the time a planet completes its orbit is related to its distance from the sun. Meanwhile, Florentine Galileo decided to use experiments to find out what happened and not what should happen, and discovered that a uniform force makes a uniform acceleration as well as inertia laws, that an object will be in motion forever unless stopped by another force.

the heliocentric solar system. Johannes Kepler further modified the heliocentric system, by mathematically showing that the planets’ orbits are elliptical. With his invention of the telescope, Galileo made new observations about the solar system and found mathematical laws that described the movement of the planets. Later, Isaac Newton established a universal law of gravity. With the new scientific discoveries, the gap between religion and science increased. Science revolutionized the human though and its understanding of the universe.

His model said that the planets moved not in circles around the sun, but in ellipses and the mathematics was proved using three laws:

All his writings consisted of numerous references to God. He saw his work as a fulfilment of his Christian duty to understand the works of God. Kepler believed that God had made the Universe according to a mathematical plan. Although, Kepler did thank God for granting him insights, but the insights were still presented as rational. While studying theology at the university at Tubingen, he fell under the influence of Michael Mastlin. He then abandoned theology and became a teacher of astronomy and mathematics in Austria. Johannes Kepler’s work illustrated the narrow line that would separate magic and science in the early Scientific Revolution. Kepler compared numerical relationships between planets in harmony of the human soul. He described it as discovering the "music of the spheres." Overtime, Johannes Kepler devised the three laws of planetary motion. He confirmed Copernicus' heliocentric theory, and eliminated the scientific possibility of crystalline spheres moving in perfectly circular orbits. Eventually, Johannes Kepler’s three laws affected the eliminated idea of uniform circular motion. By the end of Kepler’s life, the Ptolemaic system rapidly lost its ground to the new ideas. Many questions do remain unanswered. However, it was an Italian scientist who achieved an important break through to a new cosmology by answering the first question and striding through the

Johannes Kepler was a man who made a surplus of achievements and discovery. What he is most known for is discovering that planets don’t go in a circular motion around the

The article, The New Astronomy and Cosmology of the Scientific Revolution, states, “Tycho’s accurate observations of planetary positions, made it possible Kepler’s reconceptualization of the Copernican revolutions as eclipses rather than perfect circles.” (Saylor Foundation 3). The observations that Brahe concluded benefited Kepler’s with his laws of the planetary motions. Kepler used Brahe’s accurate observations for his planetary law of motion. The article also states, “Tycho’s observation of a falling star also made possible the conception of space as isotropic and non-hierarchical.

The Scientific Revolution is the qualitative jump in sciences in the 17th century. New discoveries in natural science, engineering, geography rejected many traditional ideas and a common picture of the world. Aristotle, Claudius Ptolemy, and Christian Theology represented the universe as geocentric conception where the earth was motionless and in the center of concentric spheres. (479) Such representation was supported till Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) argued Ptolemy's conception and suggested heliocentric understanding. His conception opened the Earth as a planet where the moon took place as Earth's satellite and the sun was the center of planets. Also as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler disagreed with Ptolemy's geocentric system. Based on the Brahe's work, Kepler came to conclusions that each planet moves in an ellipse and were able to calculate relations between planets' size and

Before Newton talked about gravitation the main knowledge of scientists was a elementary knowledge of optics, mechanics and astronomy.Copernicus Kepler and Galileo provided the background knowledge of the stars and planets, but Newton used their data to discover the whole gravitational system.10Newton reasoned that the planets and all other physical objects in the universe moved through mutual attraction of gravity.Newton said that every other object in the universe affected every other object through gravity.This explained why the planets move in an orderly fashion. Newton found that “the force of gravity towards the whole planet did arise from and was compounded of the forces of gravity towards all it’s parts, and towards every one part was in the inverse proportion of the squares of the distances from this part.”Newton proves all of this mathematically. This was known to be the single most important contribution to physics that ever has been made.11

This provides a great example of Ockham’s razor because not only did it eliminate false assumptions about the rotation of planets, but it also provided a better understanding of the solar system today. However, sometimes simpler explanations for theories is not always the correct

Kuhn (1957) explained that by the sixteenth century, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) revised the Copernican system in a fundamental way (p. 210). Kepler's arguments are the same as Copernicus', according to Kuhn (p. 210). However, Kepler discarded all epicycles and thought the earth including other planets orbit the sun in elliptic orbits (Kuhn, 1957, p. 210). Also, Kepler resolved the problem of the planets, transformed Copernicus' cumber some system to a sample and correct technique for computing planetary place, according to Kuhn (p. 211). According to Kuhn (1957), Kepler thought the planes of the orbits should intersect in the sun since the sun is central to all planets (p. 210).

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer and mathematician who lived between 1671-1630. Kepler was a Copernican and initially believed that planets should follow perfectly circular orbits (“Johan Kepler” 1). During this time period, Ptolemy’s geocentric theory of the solar system was accepted. Ptolemy’s theory stated that Earth is at the center of the universe and stationary; closest to Earth is the Moon, and beyond it, expanding towards the outside, are Mercury, Venus, and the Sun in a straight line, followed by Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the “fixed stars”. The Ptolemaic system explained the numerous observed motions of the planets as having small spherical orbits called epicycles (“Astronomy” 2). Kepler is best known for introducing three

After Tycho’s death, his assistant, young mathematician Johannes Kepler used Tycho’s observations and came up with his First Law that orbits of the planets are elliptical instead of round like Copernicus believed. With his Second Law, Kepler stated that the speed of the planets depends on their distance from the sun which helped English astronomer and physicist Isaac Newton, to come up with his Law of Universal Gravitation.