measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured,’ said the Italian Galileo
Galilei, who was one of the most important scientists of the seventeenth century. He
also said that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.”
“And all these experiments and measurements made new inventions possible.”
“The first phase was a new scientific method. This made the technical
revolution itself possible, and the technical breakthrough opened the way for every
invention since. You could say that man had begun to break away from his natural
condition. Nature was no longer something man was simply a part of. ‘Knowledge is
power,’ said the English philosopher Francis Bacon, thereby underlining the practical
value of knowledge— and this was indeed new. Man was seriously starting to
intervene in nature and beginning to control it.”
“But not only in a good way?”
“No, this is what I was referring to before when I spoke of the good and the evil
threads that are constantly intertwined in everything we do. The technical revolution
that began in the Renaissance led to the spinning jenny and to unemployment, to
medicines and new diseases, to the improved efficiency of agriculture and the
impoverishment of the environment, to practical appliances such as the washing
machine and the refrigerator and pollution and industrial waste. The serious threat to
the environment we are facing today has made many people see the technical
revolution itself as a perilous maladjustment to natural conditions. It has been pointed
out that we have started something we can no longer control. More optimistic spirits
think we are still living in the cradle of technology, and that although the scientific
age has certainly had its teething troubles, we will gradually learn to control nature
without at the same time threatening its very existence and thus our own.”
“Which do you think?”
“I think perhaps there may be some truth in both views. In some areas we must
stop interfering with nature, but in others we can succeed. One thing is certain: There
is no way back to the Middle Ages. Ever since the Renaissance, mankind has been
more than just part of creation. Man has begun to intervene in nature and form it after
his own image. In truth, ‘what a piece of work is man!’ “
“We have already been to the moon. What medieval person would have
believed such a thing possible?”
“No, that’s for sure. Which brings us to the new world view. All through the
Middle Ages people had stood beneath the sky and gazed up at the sun, the moon, the
stars, and the planets. But nobody had doubted that the earth was the center of the
universe. No observations had sown any doubt that the earth remained still while the
‘heavenly bodies’ traveled in their orbits around it. We call this the geocentric world
picture, or in other words, the belief that everything revolves around the earth. The
Christian belief that God ruled from on high, up above all the heavenly bodies, also
contributed to maintaining this world picture.”
“I wish it were that simple!”
“But in 1543 a little book was published entitled On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Spheres. It was written by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who
died on the day the book was published. Copernicus claimed that it was not the sun
that moved round the earth, it was vice versa. He thought this was completely possible
from the observations of the heavenly bodies that existed. The reason people had
always believed that the sun went round the earth was that the earth turns on its own
axis, he said. He pointed out that all observations of heavenly bodies were far easier
to understand if one assumed that both the earth and the other planets circle around
the sun. We call this the heliocentric world picture, which means that everything