Not surprisingly this blog about space, our place in the universe, complex emotions, and morality would come to this cross road of the human hubris. As a species that has now come to find itself at the top of every food chain, curing diseases, creating weapons of mass destruction, and pondering the nurturing nature of god/gods. It is not surprising to understand why we once assumed that the sun revolved around us in a geocentric pattern, that the world ended past the developed world somewhere in the atlantic ocean, or that distant stars were some form of ornamentation created for the ascetic pleasing of humans. It wasn't until the 16th century when Nicholaus Copernicus published "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium"or "On the revolution of heavenly spheres" in which we as a people questioned whether our place within the center of the heavens. Copernicus calculated with great accuracy the orbits of the planets and their path taken around the sun. This was by far one of the greatest jabs taken at the ego of humans for no longer was the solar system created for us but rather they we are apart of the universe. Copernicus was not motivated to make people feel less of themselves, but rather the strict curiosity that most astronomers come to ponder.
Soon after (by about a hundred years) a child would come to change the very nature of how our human hubris viewed the natural world and it's relevance to the cosmos. His name was Johannes Kepler, whose name would soon come to be bore on the first planetary man hunt for a new earth. Kepler was the first person to incorporate the basis of integral calculus to calculate with better accuracy than his predecessors the orbits of the planets and the sun's axial tilt in space. Kepler as well founded celestial mechanics as apparent in his publication "Stereometrica Doliorum" and the first natural laws of space that were both verifiable, but also testable to a distinctly fine degree. Kepler elevated the minds of the human species to where prior Copernicus made the observation to define the Helio-Centric, but Johannes Kepler made the claim testable to all people only imploring our place in the universe all the more compelling.
At the pinnacle of this human enlightenment a baby was born on Christmas day whom would come to gain millions of followers and his message of the very existence of human nature to echo on for eons. His work would eventually come to be redrafted for the new age of people, but his message all the more pure. Sir Isaac Newton one of the greatest men to have ever come to existence, his work would come define modern physics and the foundations of science. Sir Isaac Newton in his pondering of planetary orbits was poised with the question "Why are the orbits of the planets elliptical" to which Newton would take a couple months to work out, he then returned to his peers and responded "The orbits are actually quite conic in nature" "Sir to how did you come to this conclusion?" To which one of the greatest replies ever uttered was profused "I would have to explain integrential and indifferntial calculus to you all". Sir Isaac Newton within those months created these branches of calculus in order to explain these orbits soon after he turned 26. Newton is on the greatest men to ever live.
I can explain to you all of the greatest men in history and their works, but i believe that it is monumental for any one of us to come to the overwhelming conclusion that there is no one looking after us, that purpose is not pre-decided, that our destinies are a by product of our own personal journey and decisions. Our hubris is destructive. Yes at times we use it to justify actions, but these actions are typical of the most heinous acts provided by humans. When we as a people decided to put this confidence behind us and approach every situation with equal consciousness and endearment i know that we will begin to look towards the cosmos and not the dirt. It's a bit difficult for me to romanticize the negatives of human hubris because i don't know i can't describe this predisposition that i have towards it for i am a victim to the same principles. In our obscurity, we attempt to understand existence and lend to it ideas engulfed in fear. We make myths and legends that terrify us, that provide ego, that motivate us to harm one another, but Science. Science is the inspiration to which we understand our place in an objective way. This form of understanding is empowering. It doesn't leave room to interpretation and rather than concede that "we" it's designers are the gods of understanding, it underscores our responsibility to treat one another fairly. Science puts us in our place without any subjective reasoning to it.
Our idea of this endeared place in the universe is challenged everyday as our knowledge expands.
This picture was taken by Carolyn Porco and her imaging team at NASA on the Casini Saturn mission of "The pale blue dot". This image reminds us that we are a small planet in a distant universe in a local group in the virgo super cluster in an ever expanding universe. Help is not coming. So we must decide to help ourselves.
Love, Evil, Hope, Kindness, Science.
We are all humans under the void.
No comments:
Post a Comment