A Scientific Revolution
People usually associate revolutions with politics rather than science. Yet scientists often talk about the Copernican Revolution.
Nicholas Copernicus was a sixteenth century Polish astronomer who challenged the accepted idea that the sun and the planets revolved around the earth. Ever since the second century when the great Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy had put forward his theory that the earth was the fixed centre of the universe, people had remained convinced, for philosophical and religious reasons, that this was the correct view of the universe.
Although a fan of Ptolemy, Copernicus couldn’t ignore the failures in his so called geocentric model. These flaws became obvious when he tried to explain the observed behaviour of the planets. Copernicus worked to find a model of the universe that would allow for more accurate predictions. But he still wanted to fit in his religious belief that the sun, as light giver, must be closer to perfection and to God than the earth.
The stakes were high, for if Copernicus was right in suggesting that the earth and planets all revolved around the sun, then people’s beliefs about the heavens, held since the time of Aristotle, were wrong. It truly was a revolution in science, when we recognized that our theories about the universe had to both explain and predict real observations.
So next time you get the feeling the world revolves around you, think Copernicus, and re-adjust your perspective.
People often think that science unfolds in a gradual and linear pattern. We discover this new knowledge or material, or develop this new theory, which then nudges us to undertake new explorations or applications. C builds upon B which builds upon A.
In the last century, there have been some significant new theories which address this common assumption about science. The name most associated with theorizing about the nature and history of scientific developments is Thomas Kuhn. He believed that science doesn’t unfold in the way we’ve taken for granted. In fact, he thought that science progresses in a fashion not unlike political revolutions or even religious conversions. He even coined the term Scientific Revolution to describe the utter upheaval in the way we look at the evidence and package it.
Any given scientific paradigm establishes the reigning assumptions and rules upon which scientists agree and within which they work. It is only when irregularities (anomalies) within the system occur that strike at the heart of, or are too numerous or too resistant to solving that the paradigm is thrown into crisis. Members of the scientific community lose confidence in the paradigm and if they cannot solve the puzzle in relation to the old system, they will become open to considering and formulating alternate theories which will be incompatible with the old way.
We’ve been discussing scientific revolutions - the type evidenced in the change from Ptolemy to Copernicus, from Aristotle to Newton, from Newton to Einstein. These upheavals have changed the way we’ve understood the world to be.
Similarly, we could identify political revolutions, when there has been a change in ideology, governance and leadership. We speak of the Socialist or Communist revolution of the last century.
Religious conversion sometimes happens in such a discontinuous way. Suddenly we are thrown into a crisis in which our old ways of understanding and believing are no longer sufficient. We try to solve the puzzle in relation to our old successful way of doing. Perhaps our religious system is satisfactory to respond to the demands, perhaps it is laid bare as inadequate to the task at hand. We then become open to considering alternate systems of belief which more closely correspond to reality. Perhaps we even experience a conversion. We see things which we heretofore hidden from us. We understand the world in a new way and fix our beliefs accordingly.
Today, consider your own system of religious beliefs. Are you experiencing a period of stability or crisis? If the latter, how do you go about your search for a more adequate paradigm?
David Humphreys and Debbie Hughes
© August 2004
