"The reason that I want to know how these people understood God is because it matters to me. Because when I am lost in the labyrinth of suffering, there's only one way I know to get out, and that is to rely on God. And if I don't know who God is, if I have no functioning way to define His existence and understand how that definition relates to me, then the labyrinth has won, and I have no way to come to terms with those rotten lots in life that I get.
"Ultimately, I know how heavily I rely on my understanding of God and my relationship to Him, and so it's almost impossible for me to comprehend the magnitude of something like Copernicus coming along and bringing that understanding into question. I just can't fathom what that would be like, or how I would cope with it because it would be an intense test of my faith."
Why Does Anybody Even Care?
http://krclondon2012.blogspot.com/2012/04/learning-journal-26-42.html
Defining the Divine:
Changing Perceptions of God as a Result of the Copernican Revolution
BYU Field Study, England/U.K.
Spring/Summer 2012
Let's start with some
"With a sigh, he ... wrote on the blackboard: How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? ... [And then said, "E]verybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget ... I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to understand how people have answered that question and the questions each of you posed...—how different traditions have come to terms with ... 'people's rotten lots in life.'"
- John Green
background information
Medieval & Renaissance Cosmology
The medieval cosmological system was "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organisation of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe."
- C.S. Lewis
So what am I going to do?
The Primum Mobile
0. Earth at the center, stationary
1. The Moon
2. Mercury
3. Venus
4. The Sun
5. Mars
6. Jupiter
7. Saturn
8. Zodiac/Sphere of Fixed Stars
9-11. The Primum Mobile
How did perceptions of God change as a result of the Copernican Revolution?
"This, since it carries no luminous body, gives no evidence of itself to our senses; its existence was inferred to account for the motion of all the others. ...
"All power, movement, and efficacy descend from God to the Primum Mobile and cause it to rotate; ...
The Primum Mobile is moved by its love for God, and, being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe. ...
"This all implies that each sphere, or something resident in each sphere, is a conscious and intellectual being, moved by 'intellectual love' of God."
- C.S. Lewis
- Literature (British Library, Bodleian LIbrary)
- Art (National Gallery, Museum of the City of London, British Museum)
- Science (Science Museum, Royal Observatory)
- Architecture (Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, etc.)
... and then Copernicus messed it all up.
Copernican Cosmology
It was pretty much the same, but with the Sun at the center instead of the Earth—heliocentric, rather than geocentric.
It took 200 years for the system to be generally accepted.
SO WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?!
"To describe the innovation initiated by Copernicus as the simple interchange of the position of the earth and sun is to make a molehill out of a promontory in the development of human thought. If Copernicus' proposal had had no consequences outside astronomy, it would have been neither so long delayed nor so strenuously resisted." - Thomas Kuhn
OTHER CONCEPTS THAT EMERGED AS A RESULT OF THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Plurality: the idea that there are infinite worlds like ours existing beyond ours which could cover an infinite amount of space
“To expand the mundane universe in the sixteenth century was to encroach upon the infinite realm which the age assigned to Deity; to remove its boundary was also to remove the barrier which set apart this universe and the celestial world of God; to remove the boundary and to expand indefinitely the eighth sphere was to bring together in one cosmos both the mundane and heavenly worlds.”
- Grant McColley
The realm of God was being encroached upon, which drove God further from the earth. The barrier that separated God from “the mundane” was dissolved, which tainted the purity of Deity.
“The Copernican Revolution was not so much a revolution
in astronomy as it was a revolution in theology."
- George Grinnell