Gordon Brown wrote:
<< At the other end of the spectrum from Johnson we have the Robust
Formational Economy Principle which may be esthetically appealing to us
scientists because of our sense of what is beautiful, but is beauty a
valid basis for a theological doctrine? Characterizing episodic
creationism as God fixing what he didn't get right in the first place
doesn't accurately reflect the thinking of many such creationists who
assume that the Lord had a purpose in acting in this way even if they
can't say what that purpose was.
>>
Your comment about "esthetically appealing" reminds me a an article
in the "back pages" of the July issue of the American Physical
Society Newletter (APS News).
"Copernicus and the Aesthetic Impulse" by Owen Gingerich.
Let me remind you of what Galileo said nearly a
century later, when the mater was still far
from settled: "I cannot admire enough those
who accepted the heliocentric doctrine despite
the evidence of their senses." I believe that
Copernicus relied on aesthetic principles,
"ideas pleasing to the mind," and that such
concepts are exceedingly powerful but highly
treacherous in physical reasoning. Until
technology marches on to provide empirical
grounding, the aesthetic ideas must be regarded
as dangerously seductive, possibly sheer quicksand
for the unwary. I'll describe two aesthetic
principles that Copernicus endorsed, and I'll
show how our modern evaulation essentially
turns upside-down the initial reception of
Copernicus' "De revolutionibus", his life work
that was finally published in the year of his
death, 1543.
What Copernicus had to offer were two quite
independent aesthetic ideas. One was that
celestial motions should be described in
terms of uniform circular motions, or
combinations or thereof. The unending,
repeating motion in the cirle was compellingly
suitable for the heavenly movements, where
corruption and decay were never found.
There was something almost sacred about
this proposal, and it appealed strongly
to the sensitivities of the sixteenth century.
Unfortunately this beautiful idea was wrong,
dead wrong. It was not dumb --- it was in
fact the most intelligent way to start
approximating the motions of the heavens,
but in Renaissance celestial mechanics it
was destined to be a dead end.
Copernicus' other aesthetic idea is quite
independent of the aesthetic requirement
of circular and uniform motion. It is
the great idea that makes copies of the
first edition of De revolutionibus nowadays
estimated at auction at over half a million
dollars. This was, of course, the heliocentric
arrangement of the planets. But to the
sixteenth-century mind, this idea was highly
suspect. To begin with, it required new
physics. Building a new scaffolding to
replace the neatly dove-tailed Aristotelian
physics would require more than a generation
of inspired work. As Tycho Brahe said, "The
Copernican doctrine nowhere offends the principles
of mathematics" --- that is, aesthetic idea number
one in the fine --- "but it throws the earth, a
lazy, sluggish body unfit for motion into action
as swift as th aethereal torches."
. . .
The article goes on to point out that technology
(accurate and detailed observational data) needed
to be available before this idea could be firmly
accepted by the majority of astronomers of that
time period. After that, of course it was "obvious".
Anyway, your remark about "esthetically appealing"
prompted me to recall this. In many ways, the whole
issue of evolution is a rerun and it may be a very
long time before the Church forgives Charles Darwin. I
think it was about 1984 or so that the Catholic Church
finally forgave Galileo????
by Grace alone do we proceed,
Wayne
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