Chapter one of A Brief History of Time summarizes the history of our idea of what the universe looks like. It opens up with a few paragraphs describing a confrontation between a scientist (believed to be Bertrand Russell) and an outspoken older woman. Russell described how the earth orbits the sun and how the sun orbits around a collection of stars called our 'galaxy'. The older woman contradicts him by stating that "the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." Although this may seem pretty outrageous and maybe a little bit humorous to us, we must keep in mind that people didn't understand the ways of the universe at that time. They made guesses (most often without supporting evidence) at how the universe exists.
Hawking also explains the ideas of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Nicholas Copernicus (a Polish priest), Kepler, and many many others. He makes the connections between each philosopher's ideas and theories and compares them to the two basic partial theories we understand now: quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity.With his in depth explanations, Hawking helps the reader to easily understand the theories of the universe and the galaxy. He allows the reader to dip their toes into the "water of time" to prepare them for what's about to come.
The older woman's theory of "the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise" is outrageous and elementary in a sense; although, like you said they didn't understand the ways the universe worked at the time. Its awesome to be able to compare our differences between now and then, thinking of the universe. I mean, we are privileged with great scientific advancements and technology these days that they didn't have, and were not even thought about. Hope you are liking the book so far!
ReplyDelete