Tomorrow’s Miracles
(continued)It was stated in any early Sanskrit treatise that the world is round. Thales, Homer, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Ptolemy and others conceived various evidences which demonstrated that the earth was a sphere. In 250 B.C., Erathosthanes computed the earth’s circumference, missing it only by one hundred miles (and he had no mechanical aids or "higher" mathematics).
Of course, these gentlemen made errors in their hypotheses. Ptolemy, 140 A.D., conceived of seven crystalline spheres to account for planetary motion. To counter for this, long before (in the sixth century, B.C.) Pythagoras taught that the earth went around the sun but erred in supposing the sun to be the center of the universe. Aristarchus, in the third century B.C., and Capella in the fifth century, A.D., also taught that the earth revolved itself around the sun. Copernicus, in the sixteenth century, gave the world the system which is now used.
Now the point we wish to make is this, down through the ages, men have conceived various hypotheses with regard to astronomy. Concurrently, instruments were invented and other discoveries made and into the hands of investigators was placed a complete idea, plus the means of examining it. There has been considerable lag, naturally, between widespread belief and philosophic location of new truths. We are fond of thinking in terms of tomorrow. But, the future is written with the pen of the present in the ink of the past.
We are fond of believing that that which we now possess is infallible and not subject to any great change. And, when we begin to localize certain fields for investigation, science feeds wholly upon the statements of predecessors. Should a man put forth a new theory (there hasn’t been one since the nineteenth century), then he is no longer a scientist but a philosopher.
Let us remember our Voltaire and his admonition to define our terms. What is science? What is philosophy? Further, by knowing, what can we hope to gain by it? Will we benefit enough to talk about it? The answer to the last two is definitely yes.
To quote Spencer, "Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge; science is partially-unified knowledge; philosophy is completely-unified knowledge." (First Principles, p. 103.)
Philosophy is not the muttering of epigrams nor is the true philosopher merely one who can quote at random from various great works.
Consider an explorer, casting away, all too often, his greatest securities, even his life, to stride forward into the outer dark, throwing up his star shells to view what lies in the unknown. He lacks a vocabulary suitable to record his findings because the words have yet to be invented. He lacks instruments to measure what he thinks he sees because the words have yet to be invented. He lacks instruments to measure what he thinks he sees because no instruments for such are yet in existence. He stumbles and trips, pushing ever outward on this lonely track, farther and farther from the milestoned roads where statements are safe and conversants many. He is so far out, that those in their safe, warm homes of "proved through" cannot recognize the distance he has traversed when he first covers it.
His is the task of stabbing deeper into the Unknown and the dangers he runs are those of ridicule. He knows, in his heart of hearts, what his fate will most likely be. He may come back with some great idea only to find that men laugh. He may point a road which will be a thoroughfare within a century but men, having but little vision, see only a tangle of undergrowth and blackness beyond and push but timidly where the first to go pushed forward with such courage.
