Nobody in history had ever seen a moon other than our own moon. Galileo was on the verge of even greater discoveries with his telescope: next, Galileo saw four stars loitering around Jupiter-yet a closer look through the telescope revealed these weren’t stars at all, but moons-Jovian moons. In the 1500s, Nicholas Copernicus, who was born in what is today Poland, spent 30 years carrying out astronomical research, studying the motion of the planets, and forged a sun-centered (or heliocentric, helio referring to the sun) model of the cosmos, an extraordinarily revolutionary model for its time, even as it was not experimentally confirmed through observations. Aristotle’s theories, including his geo-centric theory of the universe, shaped-better yet, dominated-“natural philosophy” (the physical science of nature before modern science) from the 3rd century BC until…the period around Galileo and his telescope. Aristotle, who came 500 years before Ptolemy, was a pioneering scientist and philosopher.
Geocentrism-the earth as the center of the universe (“geo,” referring to the Earth)-was part of the Catholic scripture, and Biblical dogma. Until this historical moment, for fifteen hundred years, the increasingly complex Earth-centered model of the universe forged by Ptolemy, a Greek mathematician and astronomer, held sway. This model became increasingly convoluted to be consistent with actual astronomical observations of the planets’ motions.
I was struck by the realities of that time in history-including similarities among the “liberals and progressives” of that time (especially scholars, academics and scientists), specifically with regard to earth-changing scientific breakthroughs. Journeying back from 2,500 years ago to today’s urgent situation for humanity, inspired by Bob Avakian's challenge at this historic moment, I stopped off at 500 years ago, during the time of Galileo Galilei, a scientist who lived in the 1500s, and was “a brilliant theorist, a master experimentalist, a meticulous observer and a skilled inventor." 2 Many have heard of Galileo, he and the times he lived in ushered in the era of modern science. Or, failing that, acknowledge that it is true that we need an actual revolution to overthrow this whole system, and bring a radically different and much better system and world into being.” 1 The renewed challenge: an invitation by BA to READ and seriously confront the reality of the world, including as captured in the works of BA… then “try to.make the case that this is a great country and great system, and see if you can explain why this system should be preserved, in any form.
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