Newtonian Physics

Taken as a philosophy – a scientific word which we take the liberty to use once the New Testament is “teaching” – the four Gospels of the New Testament, reflect an idea totally opposed to the usual scientific philosophy. And we daresay it is the only one challenging that of science head on. So if it is that there should be a hope that the science will come out from under the spell of technology, this cannot come but from such a philosophy. This statement has indeed deep roots in the philosophy that started the modern science. For that philosophy had as explicit criterion of truth the human body, just like the four Gospels.

It is commonly accepted – and with good reasons for that matter – that the modern science starts with Newton. However, seeing what Newton has followed in his Principia and, most of all, the way in which he has built and followed his working philosophy, it is only fair to start not with him but with Copernicus. What urged Copernicus to replace the old world system of Ptolemy? The answer can be found in many sections of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, because Copernicus follows the very same idea everywhere, like every man who has one. But this answer is nowhere quite as explicit as in his letter of dedication to pope Paul III: the lack of harmony of the world system of Ptolemy. The astrometry performed from Earth does not allow a unitary scale of measuring the distances of the planets in the Ptolemaic system. This common scale can be achieved only if we refer the distances to the only source of light in the Universe – the Sun – so it is just natural to think that the Sun is located in the center of the Universe. And so Copernicus did. The general philosophy at the basis of this whole thinking is the harmony as reflected by human body. Quoting:

 However, Your Holiness will perhaps not be greatly surprised that I have dared to publish my studies after devoting so much effort to working them out that I did not hesitate to put down my thoughts about the earth’s motion in written form too. But you are rather waiting to hear from me how it occurred to me to venture to conceive any motion of the earth, against the traditional opinion of astronomers and almost against common sense. I have accordingly no desire to from Your Holiness that I was impelled to consider a different system of deducing the motions of the universe’s spheres for no other reason than the realization that astronomers do not agree among themselves in their investigations of this subject. For, in the first place, they are so uncertain about the motion of the sun and moon that they cannot establish and observe a constant length even for the tropical year. Secondly, in determining the motions not only of these bodies but also of the other five planets, they do not use the same principles, assumptions, and explanations of the apparent revolutions and motions. For while some employ only homocentrics, others utilize eccentrics and epicycles, and yet they do not quite reach their goal. For although those who put their faith in homocentrics showed that some nonuniform motions could be compounded in this way, nevertheless by this means they were unable to obtain any incontrovertible result in absolute agreement with the phenomena. On the other hand, those who devised the eccentrics seem thereby in large measure to have solved the problem of the apparent motions with appropriate calculations. But meanwhile they introduced a good many ideas which apparently contradict the first principles of uniform motion. Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts. On the contrary, their experience was just like some one taking from various places hands, feet, a head, and other pieces, very well depicted, it may be, but not for the representation of a single person; since these fragments would not belong to one another at all, a monster rather than a man would be put together from them. Hence in the process of demonstration or “method”, as it is called, those who employed eccentrics are found either to have omitted something essential or to have admitted something extraneous and wholly irrelevant. This would not have happened to them, had they followed sound principles. For if the hypotheses assumed by them were not false, everything which follows from their hypotheses would be confirmed beyond any doubt. Even though what I am now saying may be obscure, it will nevertheless become clearer in the proper place (our Italics).

The heliocentric system was not new in the times of Copernicus. As a matter of fact it had a history of almost two millennia if we refer it to Aristarchos of Samos. But as far as religion goes, the classical Greek religion was populated with scores of monsters, that offered to the human spirit a liberty that it is always ready to take. No one, therefore could think to make from the human body a criterion of harmony. This could only be a criterion of Judaeo-Christian origin. For according to the second of the ten commandments of the Bible:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus, 20: 4 – 6)

 However, the human body is nether graven image nor likeness with any thing, because it was created by God himself, according to the Book of Genesis. And it is the only thing the man had at his disposal in order to create the society. In this the human body discovered its atitudes as a response to external or internal solicitations as represented by force. And the force is the basis of the whole modern science. Now here comes the New Testament. Here the human body is holy, and as such it is the ground of everything, as it should indeed be by its creation and achievements: it is the Temple and the men should consider it as such!

 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. (John, 2: 18 – 21)

As Temple, the human body is the embodiment of harmony of the world, and this is how Copernicus took it. As the foundation of society it is the the mean of knowledge of the force, and this is how the science took it in the first place. Here the science comes at odds with the New Testament, inasmuch as the New Testament teaches us that it is not the force the principle, but the harmony in the way of Copernicus. Fact is that the modern science was founded by Newton based on this very idea of harmony. Indeed, the forces invented by Newton are by and large the expression of harmony, a principle totally lost today in the details of technology. And if we are to give the science a hope that can only be found in the New Testament.