Neil deGrasse Tyson - continue the quest for knowledge

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God's handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.

But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.

Let's start at the top. Isaac Newton was one of the greatest intellects the world has ever seen. His laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation, conceived in the mid-seventeenth century, account for cosmic phenomena that had eluded philosophers for millennia. Through those laws, one could understand the gravitational attraction of bodies in a system, and thus come to understand orbits.

Newton's law of gravity enables you to calculate the force of attraction between any two objects. If you introduce a third object, then each one attracts the other two, and the orbits they trace become much harder to compute. Add another object, and another, and another, and soon you have the planets in our solar system. Earth and the Sun pull on each other, but Jupiter also pulls on Earth, Saturn pulls on Earth, Mars pulls on Earth, Jupiter pulls on Saturn, Saturn pulls on Mars, and on and on.

Newton feared that all this pulling would render the orbits in the solar system unstable. His equations indicated that the planets should long ago have either fallen into the Sun or flown the coop—leaving the Sun, in either case, devoid of planets. Yet the solar system, as well as the larger cosmos, appeared to be the very model of order and durability. So Newton, in his greatest work, the Principia, concludes that God must occasionally step in and make things right: The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. . . . But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. . . . This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

In the Principia, Newton distinguishes between hypotheses and experimental philosophy, and declares, "Hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy." What he wants is data, "inferr'd from the phænomena." But in the absence of data, at the border between what he could explain and what he could only honor—the causes he could identify and those he could not—Newton rapturously invokes God: Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient; . . . he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. . . . We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion.

A century later, the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace confronted Newton's dilemma of unstable orbits head-on. Rather than view the mysterious stability of the solar system as the unknowable work of God, Laplace declared it a scientific challenge. In his multipart masterpiece, Mécanique Céleste, the first volume of which appeared in 1798, Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over periods of time longer than Newton could predict. To do so, Laplace pioneered a new kind of mathematics called perturbation theory, which enabled him to examine the cumulative effects of many small forces. According to an oft-repeated but probably embellished account, when Laplace gave a copy of Mécanique Céleste to his physics-literate friend Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon asked him what role God played in the construction and regulation of the heavens. "Sire," Laplace replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• The
• Perimeter
• of
• Ignorance
• Neil
• Degrasse
• Tyson
• neil
• degrasse
• tyson
• speech
• lecture
• universe
• intelligent
• design
• space
• nasa
• physics
• einstein
• newton
• science
• education
• richard
• dawkins
• creation
• stephen
• hawking
• god
• evolution
• ken
• miller
• biology
• grand
• French
• astronomer
• and
• mathematician
• Pierre-Simon
• de
• Laplace
• darwin
• christianity
• debate
• discussion
• inspirational
• commentary
• religion
• perimeter
• ignorance
• essay
• creationism
• atheist
• agnostic

[hellasow]

For fun i just youtube search Neil deGrasse Tyson

[ViperXMambo]

I love this dude! Brilliant and funny at the same time!

[chinamanspeakenlis]

@hymnofashes ermmm ..not really. when you say "well ofcourse" you are actually submitting yourself to ignorance. you r giving up to bunch of ignorants who have stopped thinking or investigating beyond their limit of knowledge. well, you can use this line diplomatically to keep all the parties happy but you r also perpetuating the belief system based on no evidence. it is the same belief system who has held us back for so long. "god did it"?who created the "god" in the first place??

[franktastikart]

Respond to this video...An explanation for an observation or series of observations that is substantiated by a considerable body of evidence 

[franktastikart]

Respond to this video..A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles or causes of something known or observed. (Oxford English Dictionary, 1961; [emphasis added])

[franktastikart]

Respond to this video...  The abstract principles of a science as distinguished from basic or applied science. A reasonable explanation or assumption advanced to explain a natural phenomenon but lacking confirming proof . [NB: I don't like this one but I include it to show you that even in "Science dictionaries" there is variation in definitions which leads to confusion].

[franktastikart]

Respond to this video... THEORY, The grandest synthesis of a large and important body of information about some related group of natural phenomena A body of knowledge and explanatory concepts that seek to increase our understanding ("explain") a major phenomenon of nature A scientifically accepted general principle supported by a substantial body of evidence offered to provide an explanation of observed facts and as a basis for future discussion or investigation.....

[franktastikart]

@TacticusPrime LAW , empirical generalization; a statement of a biological principle that appears to be without exception at the time it is made, by repeated successful testing; A theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by a statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present A set of observed regularities expressed in a concise verbal or mathematical statement.

[TacticusPrime]

@hymnofashes When you agree that God did it, then you could just say it was a miracle. Violates the laws of science, so we'll never know. That's why ID is so dangerous.

[k9a2g6]

One of my favorite quote is from the President of "Nature Conservancy" in which he stated " We Destroy what we don't understand " . We are destroying nature and it's inhabitants ", and as Susan Jacoby wrote : " The Age of Unreason ", "Knowledge and Information is the Currency for a good Democracy"~Thomas Jefferson. So,we must not let these Religious Idiots destroy our Knowledge, KEEP on TRUCKIN'