Science Education Pedagogy Seminar

Contemporary Events

“Romeo and Juliet” is published– the manuscript was printed in 1597, and then performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in a theater outside of London.

Harvard university was founded – in 1636, the university was established by the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and named after a minister called John Harvard. Today, Harvard is one of the most respected universities in the US and in the world.

Contemporary Figures

William Shakespeare (born April 1564 – April 23, 1616) was another famous historical figure who lived at around the same time as Galileo. He was important because he contributed much to English literature at the time, to the point that he is still read and studied. His writing continues to inspire and affect new works of literature to this day.

Reflection

At first, I found learning about this context interesting because it was intriguing to me that all of these discoveries did not happen in a vacuum. While something was happening in one part of the world, other things were happening at the same time in another part of the world. I can only imagine every scientist or artist was scrambling to try and become the next great in their respective fields.

Thinking about it a bit more, I can’t tell if that era only seems this way to me in retrospect. When I think about our current era, there are tons of discoveries and music and art being created every day. It is really not too different in this aspect than how it was at the time these astronomers were alive. Maybe in the future people will be researching the scientists of today and trying to find what other historical figures lived in our time.

For this assignment I chose to focus on Tycho Brahe:

Tycho Brahe (14DEC1546-24OCT1601) is arguably most important to astronomy (and physics) because of his observation of a supernova (SN 1572– which he called a “new star”). Before this observation people still clung to the Aristotelian view of the universe (and physics), Aristotle’s influence in other fields such as medicine and politics had already been weakening, but letting go of his physics and astronomy proved difficult (not because people didn’t realize his physics was wrong, they didn’t have anything to replace it with). Aristotle said that the “celestial sphere” was unchanging; however the sudden appearance of a “new star” proved this to be wrong. Tycho of course had other contributions to astronomy-including his many recorded observations, which he was able to use to correct many calculations-including the Copernican tables (a goal of his after seeing a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and realizing that the existing values were off by days). Tycho also had his missteps; he proposed a model for the solar system (The Tychonic System)that tried to conserve geocentrism by having the other planets orbit the sun which would in turn orbit the earth.

To put Brahe in context, here are two major historical events that occurred during Tycho’s lifetime:

1. 1553: Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”- daughter of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) after being disinherited by her half-brother due to fears that her accession to the throne would bring about the reinstatement of Catholicism, she deposed of Lady Jane Grey (named successor by her brother), had her beheaded and became the first queen regnant of England.
2. 1580: Formation of the Iberian Union as a result of the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580 in which King Sebastian I died in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir and left no immediate heirs. Although technically third in line for the throne, Phillip II of Spain was able to convince the Portuguese nobility to support him as a union with Habsburg Spain (then owner of many new world territories that had many natural resources) would be economically beneficial to them.

For further context, here is one other famous historical figure who lived at the same time as Tycho:

René Descartes (31MAR1596-11FEB1650), best known for his quote: “I think, therefore I am,” has been dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, but he was also a mathematician (father of analytical geometry and namesake of the Cartesian coordinate system).

I love this assignment! I often find that when I learn about history or even other countries in modern times, I have a tendency to compartmentalize them into these separate spaces that are completely independent of each other. This has been a great opportunity to try to put the pieces together and to realize that even though big events seem to occur in isolation they are all interconnected and concurrent. Hopefully this post has helped you as much as it has helped me!

Tycho Brahe has recently been described as “the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts” by Edwin Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925). He is the best naked-eye observer of all time, and was able to observe a supernova and a comet in 1572 and 1577, respectively. These two observations, albeit interpreted incorrectly, contradicted the current theory that the heavens, beyond the Moon, never changed. He also made the best measurements for stellar parallax, and came to 2 possible conclusions: (a) the Earth was at the center of the universe or (b) the stars were so far away that their parallax was too small to detect. He ended up choosing the wrong conclusion, but that doesn’t discount his incredible observations. Brahe also studied planetary motion, Mars’ in particular, and his observations laid the ground work for Kepler, who at one point was his assistant, to find out the planets follow elliptical orbits.

A few important historical happenings that occurred during Brahe’s life were:

In 1560, the Geneva Bible is first printed. This is the first time that a mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible was made directly available to the public, and preceded King James’ translation by 51 years. This Bible included study guides and aids, citations, introductions, book summarizations, maps, tables and illustrations, which is why it is known as the first study Bible.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar is adopted and replaces the Julian calendar. This is important as the Gregorian calendar is the calendar we use today. The original goal for implementing the Gregorian calendar was to allow for a realignment of Easter with the spring equinox.

In 1550, French Army surgeon Ambroise Pare began creating artificial limbs for wounded soldiers. He is considered to be the father of modern amputation surgery and prosthetic design. He was born sometime in 1510 and died on 20 December 1590.

At this point in time, there is no separation of church and state anywhere and any challenge against the church was unacceptable, so it’s fascinating to see that the passion these astronomers had drove them to go against the status quo and what was the law of the land– and space. I also found it very interesting to see how related the work of all these astronomers was. Even though they were spread out all over the world, they were still able to use each other’s work to spring board their own ideas. We have the internet at our finger tips and I get frustrated when I can’t find the information I want in the first few links of my google search.  Another thing that ceases to amaze me is the accuracy of all the measurements. They were able to track sand grain-sized stars move in the sky, and I sometimes struggle to even focus on one star. Seeing how incredible these guys were without modern technology excites me for what tomorrow’s technology will allow our brightest minds to do.

Tycho Brahe has recently been described as “the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts” by Edwin Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925). He is the best naked-eye observer of all time, and was able to observe a supernova and a comet in 1572 and 1577, respectively. These two observations, albeit interpreted incorrectly, contradicted the current theory that the heavens, beyond the Moon, never changed. He also made the best measurements for stellar parallax, and came to 2 possible conclusions: (a) the Earth was at the center of the universe or (b) the stars were so far away that their parallax was too small to detect. He ended up choosing the wrong conclusion, but that doesn’t discount his incredible observations. Brahe also studied planetary motion, Mars’ in particular, and his observations laid the ground work for Kepler, who at one point was his assistant, to find out the planets follow elliptical orbits.

A few important historical happenings that occurred during Brahe’s life were:

In 1560, the Geneva Bible is first printed. This is the first time that a mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible was made directly available to the public, and preceded King James’ translation by 51 years. This Bible included study guides and aids, citations, introductions, book summarizations, maps, tables and illustrations, which is why it is known as the first study Bible.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar is adopted and replaces the Julian calendar. This is important as the Gregorian calendar is the calendar we use today. The original goal for implementing the Gregorian calendar was to allow for a realignment of Easter with the spring equinox.

In 1550, French Army surgeon Ambroise Pare began creating artificial limbs for wounded soldiers. He is considered to be the father of modern amputation surgery and prosthetic design. He was born sometime in 1510 and died on 20 December 1590.

At this point in time, there is no separation of church and state anywhere and any challenge against the church was unacceptable, so it’s fascinating to see that the passion these astronomers had drove them to go against the status quo and what was the law of the land– and space. I also found it very interesting to see how related the work of all these astronomers was. Even though they were spread out all over the world, they were still able to use each other’s work to spring board their own ideas. We have the internet at our finger tips and I get frustrated when I can’t find the information I want in the first few links of my google search.  Another thing that ceases to amaze me is the accuracy of all the measurements. They were able to track sand grain-sized stars move in the sky, and I sometimes struggle to even focus on one star. Seeing how incredible these guys were without modern technology excites me for what tomorrow’s technology will allow our brightest minds to do.

Johannes Kepler was born on December 27th, 1571 and died on November 15th, 1630. Kepler was important to astronomy primarily because of his development of the  laws of planetary motion. In short, these laws state that all planets’ orbits are ellipses, show that a planet’s orbital speed is inversely proportional to its distance from the body it orbits, and give an equation relating a planet’s orbital period to the planet’s orbiting distance. These laws have allowed us to better understand how our solar system works as well as how objects, in general, orbit a center of mass.

Around this time, Shakespeare published Romeo and Juliet  (1597), perhaps his most famous play, and the British established their first permanent colony in the America’s, Jamestown (1607). Furthermore, Ivan the Terrible was born in 1530 and died in 1584. He was the first tsar of Russian and is most famous for his conquest of vast amounts of present day Russian territory.

In present times, it is easy to scoff at the discoveries that astronomers made hundreds of years ago and refer to them as fairly obvious. When we think about what was occurring during the time of the discoveries, though, it becomes more clear that these discoveries were actually pretty remarkable. As mentioned, around the time Kepler came up with his laws of planetary motion, Jamestown was founded, Shakespeare first published Romeo and Juliet, and Ivan the terrible ruled Russia. Comparing the founding of Jamestown, in particular, to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion is quite fascinating. One of the primary goals of the Jamestown colony was to find a short water route to the Pacific. This shows how little people’s understanding of Earth’s geography was. Thus, the fact that Kepler was able to observe planets millions of miles away and come up with accurate calculations regarding the orbits of these planets is astonishing given the technology and knowledge of his time. This causes us to think about what people in the future might think of the discoveries we are currently making. Though we consider people making these discoveries to be geniuses, will people in the future scoff at the discoveries we are currently making?

<note to students: I went farther than you need to because no one can use Hypatia as their historical figure>

Hypatia – 350?? to 415 C.E. pic source Mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, teacher

Hypatia was the first woman KNOWN to contribute to mathematics and science.  Her father, Theon of Alexandria, was a well-known academic and taught his daughter to follow in his footsteps.  Remarkably, she was the head of the Platonist school of philosophy in Alexandria, Egypt.  She was advisor to rulers and sought out by scholars and those who wanted to learn for she was famed for her oratory skills, her sharp mind, and her virtue.  She worked on astronomical bodies and tools (astrolabes especially), on density, and abstract mathematics of the day.  Her greatest contribution to mathematics turned out not to be an original work but one that described the mathematics of conic sections (ellipses, parabolas, hyperbolas) in a manner more easily understood than the original author.  Unfortunately, she is perhaps most well-known for her manner of death: a mob of Christian fanatics kidnapped her, took her to a church, stripped her of clothing and then of her skin using roofing tiles, then burned her mutilated body.  Many historians say this event was really the end of rigorous scholarship in the once great city of Alexandria.

Other sources of interest about Hypatia:

• Hypatia biography (from University of St. Andrews)
• Biographies of Women Mathematicians: Hypatia (from Agnes Scott College)
• Women in History: Hypatia (Humanist Network News Ezine)

Contemporary person:

•  St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) – considered a founding father of Christianity, author of “Confessions” (one of the greatest works of Christian theology) and about a hundred more books.  Of note to my personal thoughts on science and religion, read about his thoughts on creation and natural knowledge and biblical interpretation.

Contemporary events:

• Stained glass starts getting used in Roman churches
• The Sack of Rome by the Visigoths (410 CE) – basically ended the Western Roman Empire (though the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire lasted another 1000 years).  Generally said to be the end of “classical history” and the start of the “Middle Ages”
• Hadrian’s Wall (separating “barbarian” Scotland and “civilized” (a.k.a. Romanized) Britain) is overrun for pretty much the final time and allowed to fall into ruin (406 CE)
• In China – Jin Dynasty
• In India – Gupta Empire (“The Golden Age of India”)
• In Africa – People start settling the area of the Great Zimbabwe (but don’t build stone structures yet)
• In Mesoamerica – the Maya and Zapotec were the most well-developed cultures but were mostly city-states with Teotihuacan as the most powerful (too early for Aztec)
• In America – Southwest: Late Basketmaker II Era ; In Midwest/East: Hopewell Culture
• In South America – most significant cultures are Moche and Nazca (the ones with the lines) (too early for Inca)

Reflection:

I really enjoyed seeing what was going on in the world of Hypatia’s – the things that affected her spheres and what was going on throughout the globe.  Hypatia’s specific world was one where scholarship was valued but it could really be affected by the politics of the era, especially with fanatic Christians.  It seems once Christians of the day got a bit of power or really just stopped being murdered, they adopted some of the same intolerant tactics.  She just happened to be in the wrong city in the wrong time period but she did get to live a scholarly life and be appreciated by MANY in her rather long (for that period) lifetime.  However, she lived when the mighty Roman Empire was finally defeated – what a strange time!  The Western Empire (i.e., not Byzantine) was floundering anyway but that Visigoth sack of Rome was so disheartening to the people of the day.

Elsewhere in the world, I found that what was going on in the Americas particularly interesting – I always have trouble with putting the ancient American civilizations into context.  We hadn’t gotten anywhere near Incans or Aztecs or Iroquois, but the civilizations that were there were mighty themselves.  I always wonder at what we’ve lost over the years from American cultures (from idiotic conquerers), from Mediterranean cultures (from the fires that happened at the Library of Alexandria and from religious zealotry), from just the passage of time…

There are two different types of eclipses; lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. I want to talk today about a particular solar eclipse coming our way. The Great American Eclipse. But I regress. Solar eclipses and lunar eclipses differ in a very important way; a lunar eclipse is when Earth lies directly between the sun and moon while a solar eclipse is when the moon lies between the sun and Earth. As a result, when a lunar eclipse takes place, anyone on the night side of the Earth can see it. A solar eclipse, on the other hand, can only be seen by people living in a very specific stretch of land. This is because of how small the moon is when compared to the Earth and Sun. With this in mind, let’s get back to The Great American Eclipse.

On August 21st 2017, right around move in day, there will be a solar eclipse in the United States. So, for just a few minutes, in a few places across the country, it will become dark as the moon blocks sunlight from reaching Earth. Most excitingly, this eclipse will pass DIRECTLY THROUGH NASHVILLE! As a result, everyone will need to be ready for these magical few minutes. The last time a total solar eclipse took place in the United States was in 1991! Needless to say, this is a big deal folks.

Precession. The change in the orientation of the earth’s rotational axis. Technically, it applies to any astronomical body. What we’ve been referring to in class as precession is the axial sort, the Earth’s axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees from the ecliptic plane (where the orbits of the plants are in the same plane as the Sun).

Precession is caused by the torque from the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon on the Earth, which is trying to pull the Earth’s axis perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. If the Earth were a perfect, uniform sphere, there would be no precession!

To learn more:

Axial Precession

Precession of Equinoxes