If I tell you that the earth is round, the sun is a star, the moon is a satellite and our beloved earth is a planet of the solar system of the sun, how would you feel? Just like someone says Facebook is a social media or sparrow is a bird.
Science has advanced so much today that we have discovered many mysteries from Earth to space. We know why there is day and night on Earth, how the seasons change, and how time is calculated. How did life originate on Earth? Today we have answers to countless such questions. Now we are preparing to land on the moon. Chandrayaan 3 is on its way to the moon and is sending news every now and then.
But like the story of every journey, there is not just a destination. There is also a long road. Similarly, the story of this development journey of science is also not straightforward and easy.
There was a time when some people were put to death just for saying that the earth is round. In July of this year, the Catholic Church apologized to the whole world for the historical crimes that have stained the hands of the religion and the Church with blood.
To understand the modern achievements of science in its true sense and to underline its importance, it is necessary to go through that history once, which has witnessed many painful stories.
First story: Jardano burns Bruno alive in the middle of the city:
Date February 17, 1600. The city of Rome. That day there was a festive atmosphere in the city from the morning. He was imprisoned in a huge fortress built on the banks of the river Tiber in the middle of the city. After an 8-year-long trial, the Church ruled that his views, his writings were against the Bible and the Church.
His ideas can create mistrust in the church and spread chaos in society. The Church believed that his crime was so great that it could only be punished by death. And that death sentence was equally horrific, which was given to Jesus Christ 1600 years ago.
The church ordered him to be en masse burned alive in the middle of the city.
His name was Jardano Bruno. A child born in Nola, a small town in Naples, Italy in 1548, who was to be recorded in history as a great philosopher and astronomer.
And the idea for which the Church put him to death was that the center of space is not the Earth, but the Sun. Earth revolves around the Sun and Moon revolves around the Earth. The earth is not flat. The earth is round. All those basic premises of astronomy, which are the basis of our modern scientific achievements.
Second story: The book that was buried in the basement of the church for 100 years:
Nicolaus Copernicus said the same thing 75 years before Bruno. The interesting thing is that the observatories in which first Copernicus and then Giordano Bruno stayed up all night for many years to study the movements of space, sun, moon, planets, and stars, those observatories were built by the church itself. But the church had its own reason behind it.
The earliest method of calculating time in all civilizations of the world was to study the waxing and waning phases of the moon. It was written in the Bible that the earth is the center of space and the sun revolves around the earth.
The principle of the centrality of the earth was derived from the principle of the superiority of life on earth and of humans. The Church was not fundamentally an obstacle to knowledge, but it was equally a proponent of knowledge that did not challenge what was written in its scriptures.
The church needed observatories and calculations of the motions of the planets so that it could better estimate the time and give the exact date of Easter, but when Copernicus began to actually study and estimate, he realized that the truth was something else. was
Because Copernicus was on good terms with the church, he was not punished, but his book Commentariolus remained banned for the next hundred years. The Church did not allow new discoveries of space science to spread.
This book Commentariolus, hidden somewhere in the library of the church observatory, once fell into the hands of Giordano Bruno. Late at night, when everyone had gone to sleep and there was silence all around, he read the book of Bruno Copernicus by candlelight. From there curiosity was born, which led Giordano Bruno to scientifically prove the theories of Copernicus.
For years, Jardano Bruno sat on the roof of the observatory and examined the things written in the book of Copernicus with the help of his own telescope.
The results of the 20-year-long experiments furthered Copernicus’s ideas. A study of the Moon along with the Sun and the Earth proved that the waxing and waning of the Moon was not caused by the Earth but by the Sun. The moon revolves around the Earth. The earth revolves around the sun. And the motion of these two is changing the moon’s orbits.
James Joyce’s 1939 novel Finnegans Wake details Bruno’s trial and execution. As Joyce writes, to be honest, the Church had no problem with whether the center of space was the sun or the earth. The fear was that the things written in the Bible would be proved wrong.
The growing influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the northern part of the world As the people were to present the things written in the Bible as the first and last truth of the world, scientific discoveries were proving the Bible itself wrong. In order to maintain the monastic supremacy of the Church it was necessary that these things should not reach the common people.
Third Story: Galileo Apologizes, Still Spends Life in Prison:
After Giordano Bruno, another astronomer, Galileo Galilei, who pursued the same scientific discoveries, also became a victim of the wrath and terror of the Church. Galileo read the books of Bruno and Copernicus. Common sense and logic are used to say that these things are true. Everything in nature is dynamic with the principle of relativity. (This was not Einstein’s theory of relativity.) Think of it as everything affecting everything else.
The motion of planets to time, time to weather, weather to earth, earth to life, life to all motions around. All of them are connected by such a wire that even a slight movement in one part can change the direction and effect of other parts.
Galileo said that the language of God is mathematics because every addition-multiplication-part in mathematics changes the final result.
Galileo built a telescope with his own hands and used it to study the celestial bodies for three decades. This study led Galileo to the same conclusion that Copernicus and Bruno had reached. The church prosecuted him for many years. He was 63 years old when the church said it would forgive him if he apologized publicly.
After many years of suffering in prison, Galileo had no strength left. He decided to apologize. The Church gave Galileo a complete script of what he had to say in public. That their scientific theories are wrong. Earth is the center of space. Everything written in the Bible is true and they are ashamed of their every doctrine.
Galileo apologized, but the Church still did not abandon him. He spent the rest of his life in prison.
Fourth Story: World’s First Woman Astronomer Murdered, Library Burned:
Just one last mention of Hypatia by the way. The world’s first female philosopher and astronomer was born in Alexandria in 350 AD, 1200 years before Copernicus. Mathematician father’s daughter. Hypatia also said that the center of space is not the sun, but the earth.
Alexandria, once known for its knowledge, cultural heritage, and the world’s largest library, was once visited by Julius Caesar and also by the Roman Catholic Church. Library burned, Hypatia killed. The inheritance was destroyed.
But knowledge is like that phoenix bird, which is born again and again even after dying. For those who were once burnt, killed, or given mechanisms, today memorials have been built them. Books have been written in memory of his sacrifices, in honor of his genius. His name and his work are alive today even after thousands of years. He is immortal in history.
How does it feel to sit through these stories in the year 2023? This is the age of the internet and AI. Now let’s talk about facts and science. As much as mankind has developed in these 600 years, the basis of everything is science, scientific thinking, and thinking.
The laptop in which this article is being written and the smartphone in which you are reading it, everything is the gift of science. Today there is no corner of life that is untouched by science.
But it is important to know that today when a man has reached the moon, discovered water on Mars and right now when our Chandrayaan-3 is on its way to space, the entire humanity is indebted to the great scientists of history. . Those people, who showed courage to stand up to authority. Gave sacrifices for truth.
And this is the most basic lesson of life – what remains after all is lost is truth, that is science. That is our humanity.
