scholarly journals Ghosts in the Celestial Machine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Regier
Keyword(s):  
Uniform Space ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Classical Physics ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Rotation Of The Earth ◽  
Late Renaissance

The brief reflection that follows is a discussion of how and why celestial bodies were seen as alive in the celestial physics of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. From Aristotle to the angelology of the Scholastics and through to the new astronomy of Johannes Kepler, vitalism of some kind played a part in the study of celestial bodies. Celestial vitalism probably reached its height in the late Renaissance, when it was strongly informed by medical ideas. Those living skies seemed to embody animal souls and their forces. William Gilbert, a doctor, described the rotation of the earth as a matter of health. Notably, the freedom attributed to the body’s interal circulations was passed on to celestial spaces. A universe open to the circulation of a generative pneuma, spiritus, or light, anticipated the uniform space of classical physics. The question of celestial embodiment during the Renaissance is thus essential to the wider history of physics and cosmology.

scholarly journals On the Interaction Between Tectonic Processes of the Earth and the Moon

1972 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 220-225
Author(s):  
N. A. Kozyrev
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relation ◽  
Direct Interaction ◽  
Tectonic Activity ◽  
Irreversible Processes ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Tidal Forces ◽  
Tectonic Processes ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Celestial Bodies

At present seismographs are operating on the Moon as well, installed there owing to the successful Apollo missions. However these data are insufficient for detailed statistic investigations. That is why in case of the Moon we are to use indirect indications of its activity, such as the data on transient light phenomena from the catalogues by Miss B. Middlehurst. Among the great number of earthquakes there were chosen only the strong earthquakes (magnitude 6.5) with focuses deeper than 70 km. According to these characteristics 630 earthquakes were selected from 1904 to 1967. In the Middlehurst catalogue during the same period about 370 transient events on the Moon are registrated. A distribution of lunar events on the days of an anomalistic month gives evidence of the influence of the Earth's tidal forces (the Middlehurst effect). It appears that the distribution of earthquakes gives a similar curve. Thus the tidal interaction of the Earth and the Moon establishes certain synchronism in tectonic activity of these planets. The further statistic analysis reveals some more causal relation between the processes of the Earth and the Moon. Strongly pronounced maximum of lunar events is observed with the interval of 2–3 days after the earthquakes and the maximum of earthquakes – with quite the same interval after the lunar events. The peaks of these maxima exceed the mean number of events by a factor 3. The Moon Earth system is the astronomical example of a direct interaction of the processes in the neighbouring celestial bodies.The corresponding experiments, made at the Pulkovo Observatory, confirm the possibility of immediate interactions of irreversible processes due to the change of physical properties of time. Thus we can form a chronology of orogenesis on the Moon judging from the data on the history of the Earth. Tectonic processes of the Earth and the Moon seem to be in such a close interaction as if the Moon were in direct contact with the Earth, i.e. in other words, were its seventh continent. These conclusions give evidence of the extreme importance of regular seismic observations on the Moon.

"Temple complexes" in the religious life of the trypillia community

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Ivanovich Zavalii
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Gold Jewelry ◽  
The People ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Rotation Of The Earth ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
The Temple

In the period 4800-3600 BC. in the eastern part of the Trypillia area arose "giant settlements" or "megasites" / "mega-settlements" (working term of modern archaeologists) with thousands of buildings. In the central parts of these living conglomerates, scientists found special buildings that were recognized as sanctuaries, sacred complexes or temples. In the late period of the Trypillia culture they disappeared. These religious buildings were built with a focus visible processes of celestial bodies and the laws of cyclic rotation of the Earth in space, and included in their internal filling usually cruciform altars, ritual utensils, troughs with graters for the preparation of ritual bread and numerous other ceremonial and religious artifacts. There were also unique finds, such as gold jewelry (an element of prestige) and a perforated clay disk with tockins to it from the space of the Nebelivka Temple. The interior and exterior walls of the Trypillia sacral centers were painted with natural colors with a predominance of red. The wood carving for decoration of elements of a skeleton of a construction was investigated also. The first Temples on the European continent show that even at that time there was a cult of architecture. In general, it is clear that such Trypillia objects of religious worship carried encoded astronomical information in symbolic form. The building itself was oriented with regard to worldsides and designed relative to visible celestial bodies. This indicates that the people of Trypillia had a fairly clear worldview, which allowed them to reach the level of understanding the structure and mechanisms of many natural cyclical processes on Earth. Trypillia cosmology united the celestial and terrestrial spheres, and the Temple was the point of contact of the earth with the visible Universe. In his work, the author traces the existing analogies in the structure of construction of Trypillia and sacred complexes of the ancient Middle East and biblical ideas about the Tabernacle and the House of the Lord in the ancient Jews, given the fact, that the Trypillia temple building is known from 4,000 years BC. and several thousand years older than the Middle Eastern counterparts. There are also significant parallels in the construction of temples in the context of Indo-European religious heritage. It is noted that the Temple was not only a metaphysical reflection of the annual cycle with a focus on the points of the equinoxes and solstices, but also had a higher religious function, which consisted in the combination of the terrestrial sphere with the celestial, the connection of man with the mystery of the cosmos.

The importance of tidal friction for the early history of the Moon

1967 ◽  
Vol 296 (1446) ◽  
pp. 293-297 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Tidal Friction ◽  
Moon System ◽  
Two Body Problem ◽  
Dissipation Of Energy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rotation Of The Earth

About ten years ago I began to investigate tidal friction and its influence on the evolution of the Earth-Moon system, and I first describe the model used. Following the ideas of G. H. Darwin, I treated the system as a two-body problem. The Moon raises tides on the Earth and the two bulges of the tidal ellipsoid, because of the rotation of the Earth, revolve twice daily. The line joining them forms an angle ψ with the line joining their centres; this is a measure of the dissipation of energy. The Moon, considered as a point mass, exerts a retarding couple on the deviated tidal ellipsoid. Contrary to Darwin, I have limited myself to the case of small angles ψ , but I have allowed for arbitrary changes of the other parameters of the orbit, for example, changes of the obliquity ∊ between the earth’s axis and the pole of the orbit as well as changes of the eccentricity.

Introduction

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Kennel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Distinct Region ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Scientific Interest ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Roman Antiquity

In the year 1600, the the man about to become physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England published a long treatise summarizing his two decades of experimentation on magnetism. After disposing of such issues as whether garlic causes magnets to “lose their virtue” William Gilbert recounted his observations upon moving a compass over the surface of a permanent magnet that had been specially fashioned in the form of a sphere (Gilbert, 1893, 1958). The similarity between the compass readings on the surface of his magnet and those recorded in mariners’ charts led Gilbert to conclude that his magnet was a terrella, a little earth, and that our big earth is (among other things) a giant magnet. Gilbert’s little earth organized the pattern of compass readings not only on its surface but also in the space surrounding it. From this, he boldly asserted that the big earth’s magnetic influence continues far into empty space, where no mariner of his day could ever go. The profundity of this remark was not lost on Gilbert’s younger contemporary, Johannes Kepler, who found in it an explanation of the earth’s annual motion around the sun. Kepler reasoned more or less as follows (in modern language): Since the earth and the sun are both celestial bodies, they both should rotate, and they both should have magnetic fields surrounding them in space. Their two rotating fields interact somehow, somewhere, in the space between them, communicating the sun’s rotational motion to the earth and pushing the earth around its orbit. In this curious way, Kepler might have been the first to perceive that the sun acts upon terrestrial magnetism. He was not the last. In 1580, Kepler’s teacher, Michael Maestlin, had recorded an observation of a distinct region of oscillating luminosity in the northern sky, an aurora. The aurora had been a topic of scientific interest since Graeco-Roman antiquity [of particular importance was Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.) discussion of it in his Meteorology], but it had become an object of superstition in the European Middle Ages, and scientific interest in it only began to re-emerge in the second half of the 16th century (Link, 1957).

Growth Rhythms and the History of the Earth's Rotation and The Rotation of the Earth: A Geophysical Discussion

Physics Today ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 55-56
Author(s):  
G. D. Rosenberg ◽  
S. K. Runcorn ◽  
W. H. Munk ◽  
G. J. F. MacDonald ◽  
William M. Kaula
Keyword(s):  
Earth’S Rotation ◽  
Earth's Rotation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rotation Of The Earth

George Hoggart Toulmin: politics and geology

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-481
Author(s):  
ROY PORTER
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
History Of

The physician George Hoggart Toulmin (1754–1817) propounded his theory of the Earth in a number of works beginning with The antiquity and duration of the world (1780) and ending with his The eternity of the universe (1789). It bore many resemblances to James Hutton's "Theory of the Earth" (1788) in stressing the uniformity of Nature, the gradual destruction and recreation of the continents and the unfathomable age of the Earth. In Toulmin's view, the progress of the proper theory of the Earth and of political advancement were inseparable from each other. For he analysed the commonly accepted geological ideas of his day (which postulated that the Earth had been created at no great distance of time by God; that God had intervened in Earth history on occasions like the Deluge to punish man; and that all Nature had been fabricated by God to serve man) and argued they were symptomatic of a society trapped in ignorance and superstition, and held down by priestcraft and political tyranny. In this respect he shared the outlook of the more radical figures of the French Enlightenment such as Helvétius and the Baron d'Holbach. He believed that the advance of freedom and knowledge would bring about improved understanding of the history and nature of the Earth, as a consequence of which Man would better understand the terms of his own existence, and learn to live in peace, harmony and civilization. Yet Toulmin's hopes were tempered by his naturalistic view of the history of the Earth and of Man. For Time destroyed everything — continents and civilizations. The fundamental law of things was cyclicality not progress. This latent political conservatism and pessimism became explicit in Toulmin's volume of verse, Illustration of affection, published posthumously in 1819. In those poems he signalled his disapproval of the French Revolution and of Napoleonic imperialism. He now argued that all was for the best in the social order, and he abandoned his own earlier atheistic religious radicalism, now subscribing to a more Christian view of God. Toulmin's earlier geological views had run into considerable opposition from orthodox religious elements. They were largely ignored by the geological community in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain, but were revived and reprinted by lower class radicals such as Richard Carlile. This paper is to be published in the American journal, The Journal for the History of Ideas in 1978 (in press).

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