In the context of the human timeline, this may be one of the first times this difference has provided meaning to us. Therefore, rationing the importance of the metaphor, in the previously static context, I am urged to bring forth a question: why did our ancestors see it the opposite way? I predict that they may be pointing to an undercurrent that has not mattered, until this very post.
That’s an interesting thought. At least since the time of Plato, Western philosophy has been based around the idea that some things never change. Plato called them “forms” or “ideals”. Why would anyone think such a thing, though? How would we even come up with the idea that anything is truly immutable when everything that we see around us is always changing? It most likely originated from us observing the unfailing regularity in the position and motion of the sun and the moon and the stars. That was, I suspect, the source of the notion of (universal) objective truth.
Yeah, it does force one to wonder how that all squares. A thing is a thing is a thing… well you get the picture. Even things that aren’t things are things. Nothing is ever the same, but no thing ever changes? How do you rationalize a paradox like that if nothing truly ever demonstrates itself? And more deepities…
Your question/answer is a really good one. That notion seems to have been around before we could really describe/articulate it, and “the heavens” may well have been just that thing to help describe it.
For a long time western philosophy literally believed the stars to be encased in a single rigid sphere surrounding the Earth. In fact it was a really big deal in Aristotelic cosmology that the heavy, corruptible, changing things are low (and thus fall to the Earth) while the substance of the skies is higher and incorruptible, thus unchangeable. It’s why Copernican and Newtonian celestial mechanics were such a big deal. The mind-blowing part was that they suggested that everything everywhere followed the same laws, and the sky wasn’t special in any way.
That said, this is just the view that had become mainstream in medieval Europe. If you had asked Democritus back in ancient Greece, he’d likely have told you that the stars were just other suns like ours, with other planets like ours, moving through the void, because that was the atomist view.
In the context of the human timeline, this may be one of the first times this difference has provided meaning to us. Therefore, rationing the importance of the metaphor, in the previously static context, I am urged to bring forth a question: why did our ancestors see it the opposite way? I predict that they may be pointing to an undercurrent that has not mattered, until this very post.
Great post. Merry Christmas!
That’s an interesting thought. At least since the time of Plato, Western philosophy has been based around the idea that some things never change. Plato called them “forms” or “ideals”. Why would anyone think such a thing, though? How would we even come up with the idea that anything is truly immutable when everything that we see around us is always changing? It most likely originated from us observing the unfailing regularity in the position and motion of the sun and the moon and the stars. That was, I suspect, the source of the notion of (universal) objective truth.
Yeah, it does force one to wonder how that all squares. A thing is a thing is a thing… well you get the picture. Even things that aren’t things are things. Nothing is ever the same, but no thing ever changes? How do you rationalize a paradox like that if nothing truly ever demonstrates itself? And more deepities…
Your question/answer is a really good one. That notion seems to have been around before we could really describe/articulate it, and “the heavens” may well have been just that thing to help describe it.
For a long time western philosophy literally believed the stars to be encased in a single rigid sphere surrounding the Earth. In fact it was a really big deal in Aristotelic cosmology that the heavy, corruptible, changing things are low (and thus fall to the Earth) while the substance of the skies is higher and incorruptible, thus unchangeable. It’s why Copernican and Newtonian celestial mechanics were such a big deal. The mind-blowing part was that they suggested that everything everywhere followed the same laws, and the sky wasn’t special in any way.
That said, this is just the view that had become mainstream in medieval Europe. If you had asked Democritus back in ancient Greece, he’d likely have told you that the stars were just other suns like ours, with other planets like ours, moving through the void, because that was the atomist view.