Cosmos #7 the Backbone of Night
Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences,
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Cosmos #7 the Backbone of Night. Perhaps the weakest episode.
- Parallels between social and personal growth
- External exploration = self-discovery
- Stars are Suns - "a very big thought"
How did anyone figure it out?
- Stars should have planets/life - Why not?
- Everyone begins life with open mind and driving curiosity
Why do people love it?
- Early speculations on stars
!Kung - Milky Way = "Backbone of night"
- Heavenly beings gods
- Greek - milk of Hera (Greek milk Galaxy)
- Ionian "Awakening" 6th Cent BC
- Universe is knowable
- "First known conflict between science & mysticism"
- Outside frontiers of Empires
- Can explain nature w/o gods
- Did anyone ever explain nature this way?
- Ionian Tradition loses to Mysticism
- Pythagoras
Mathematical basis of nature
- Ironies and Contradictions
- Emphasis on pure logic
- Crisis in doctrine - SQRT 2 = irrational
- Discovery suppressed
Mathematics as Mystery cult
- Pythagoras Plato
"Ideas more real than natural world"
- Linkage to Kepler
"Rationale for corrupt social order"
- Why was science relegated to slaves?
- Why were "liberal arts" considered elite?
- Plato Christianity
"Long mystical sleep"
- Aristarchus - heliocentric astronomy
- Huygens' method of estimating distance to stars
- Sirus (8.8 l.y.)
- How to detect distant planets?
- Eclipse method
- Oscillation or perturbation method
- Why do people lose their sense of wonder?
- Galaxy - Greek for milk
- Conflict - natural laws vs supernatural
- Practical - Theoretical cooperation/tension
- Pythagorean cult
- Pythagoras - Plato - Christianity
- Mathematics - Pure thought
- Quintessence - Dodecahedron
Secret Knowledge - SQRT 2
- Plato - cave analogy
Slave economy
- How far are the stars?
- Do other stars have planets?
Return to Cosmos Index
Return to Professor Dutch's Home Page
Created 13 January 1998, Last Update 13 January 1998