Gaia's Gift

Earth, Ourselves and God after Copernicus

Anne Primavesi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134442645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Gaia's Gift, the second of Anne Primavesi's explorations of human relationships with the earth, asks that we complete the ideological revolution set in motion by Copernicus and Darwin concerning human importancene. They challenged the notion of our God-given centrality within the universe and within earth's evolutionary history. Yet as our continuing exploitation of earth's resources and species demonstrates, we remain wedded to the theological assumption that these are there for our sole use and benefit. Now James Lovelock's scientific understanding of the existential reality of Gaia's gift of life again raises the question of our proper place within the universe. It turns us decisively towards an understanding of ourselves as dependent on, rather than in control of, the whole earth community.

1 The astronomical revolution

The year 1543 saw the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and the death of its author, Nicholas Copernicus. He received the first printed copy of the work on his death-bed. For some historians this work marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. However, in his study of the period, The Astronomical Revolution, Alexander Koyré wonders if we ought not to go further and say that the break caused by the work of Copernicus lies between us and, not only the Middle Ages, but classical antiquity too. For, he says, ‘only since the time of Copernicus has man ceased to be the centre of the Universe, and the Cosmos ceased to be regulated around him’ (Koyré 1973: 15f.).

If this de-centring of man had indeed pervaded European consciousness, and if all that follows from it had become an accomplished fact, as Koyré seems to imply, this book would be unnecessary. But on the contrary we now live in an even more homocentric, that is, man-centred universe than the pre-Copernican one.¹ Certainly our impact on the earth itself, and indeed on our solar system, is far, far greater. For our reach now encompasses not only most of the earth's surface but extends to the earth's atmosphere, and beyond that even to the moon. Beyond that again a three-year mission to investigate the nature of solar emissions is now underway. The theoretical, astronomical Copernican revolution that put the sun at the centre of our universe has, it is true, largely been completed so that we may routinely distinguish between the sun's apparent motion around us (apparent, that is, to us) and the real motion of the earth. But the difference between our apparent supremacy on earth and our real place there has made hardly any impression on our consciousness or on the scope of our activities, despite the best efforts of environmentalists and groups committed to raising awareness of their effects.

There are many reasons for this failure of consciousness, some of which can be discerned in the reactions to the original astronomical Copernican revolution. They now appear predictable, given the social, religious and scientific context in which Copernicus lived and worked. However, in spite of the fact that we appear to have moved far beyond them in many ways, they are still recognizably present in our own time. To judge both our distance from him and from his context, and at the same time see the continuity between that period and our own, we need to look at his context in rather more detail.

For a start, this means forgetting the intellectual development of the centuries after Copernicus and imagining that we, and everyone else, believe, with absolute confidence based on the shared evidence of our senses, that the Earth does not move. However, the sun and other planets apparently do move – around the Earth. Everything in the universe revolves around our planet and so around us. We, as the predecessors of Copernicus, see that we live in a geocentric and a homocentric universe created as such by God.

It is here, in this milieu, that Copernicus proposes, on the sole basis of mathematical calculations necessarily understood by very few, that the Earth moves. And that it moves around the sun.

Even those who could understand why he said this found it almost impossible to accept its implications. It involved, says Koyré, the destruction of a worldview that science (in the person of Ptolemy), philosophy (in the person of Aristotle) and religion (Jewish, Christian and Islamic) represented as being centred on man and created for him.

Personal background

Unless we attempt this imaginative leap into Copernicus's world, however, it is impossible for us to realize the magnitude of his achievement or the challenge it posed to his contemporaries. Or why acceptance of its implications in regard to ourselves has been so long delayed. We must also take into account the fact that certain aspects of Copernicus's own life set him almost as far apart from the mass of his contemporaries as he is from us. In these days of electronic networks, for instance, it is hard for us to grasp the relative isolation of scholars from each other at a time when the fastest means of communication equalled the speed of the fastest horse. His scholarly circle was necessarily confined to the very few astronomers cited in Koyré's extensive notes who knew him or could understand his work. For his outstanding abilities marked him out from them at the same time as those abilities enabled him, on the evidence presented to him by his own observations and astronomical tables, to overcome the evidence of his senses and rethink the real, as opposed to the apparent, motion of the heavenly bodies.

The greatness of Copernicus, observes Koyré, does not depend on his contribution of new facts but on the conception and development of a new theory based on those available to him (Koyré 1973: 23). Very few others could, or would, understand or follow it to its unwelcome conclusions about ourselves and our place in the universe. Indeed it is probably true to say that he himself shirked facing the radical nature of those conclusions, preferring to stress the continuity of his work with that of Ptolemy. He was in fact hailed as ‘the new Ptolemy’.

Which brings us to the second point to be made about him. In that period, one devoted to tradition and respect for authority, the desire for change was seen as a great sin. Any step forward had to be presented as a movement backwards, as a return to origins. So his pupil, Georg Rheticus, in the first account of Copernicus's work, insisted that in spite of his break with Ptolemy in respect to geocentrism, Copernicus had no desire to make changes. This is borne out by the fact that Kepler later reproached Copernicus with having followed Ptolemy too closely (Koyré 1973: 15f.). This respect for tradition and authority went far beyond his scientific work. It was, after all, integral to his main vocation as a Roman Catholic canon. As such, he belonged to the greatest conservative (some would say retrograde) force in Europe at that time.

Set against this cultural and personal background, something of the magnitude of his proposal (that the earth moves around the sun) begins to emerge. Its religious implications in particular, although not drawn out by him, were such that, when Galileo's use of the telescope supplied some of the empirical evidence needed to support it, the Roman Catholic Church reacted forcefully. In 1616, some seventy-three years after his death, it solemnly condemned Copernicus's work.

Few personal details are known about this extraordinary man, apart from his academic achievements. Born in 1473, he was a Polish Roman Catholic who studied at Cracow University and went on from there to study law at the University of Bologna. This was a requirement for his becoming a canon at Frauenberg Cathedral where his uncle was bishop. In 1500 he went to Rome where he lectured for a short time in mathematics (which Koyré says undoubtedly means astronomy) before returning to Frauenberg to be officially installed in his canonry. He then asked for leave of absence and returned to Italy where, in 1503, in Padua, he received his doctorate in canon law. This extensive education also included medicine (another discipline required of a canon) and the usual subjects of a humanities course. It meant that when he did return to his canonry he led a very busy life: as secretary and assistant to his uncle, the bishop; and as a university lecturer where Georg Rheticus, his most famous pupil in astronomy, was also his chronicler (Koyré 1973: 19–23).

Given the amount of activity involved in his work as a canon, astronomy could be seen almost as a hobby. Through it, however, as a result of his own observations and mathematical calculations, he became convinced, against the prevailing wisdom, of two very important things about the shape of the world (forma mundi) and its inner workings (ratio motuum machi-nae mundi). The first was that the sun (not the earth) is at the centre of the universe. The second was that the earth has a twofold rotation: a daily rotation on its axis and an annual rotation, or revolution, around the sun. His chief work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, was not, as we saw, published until 1543, the year of his death. He delayed publishing it because, even though it was dedicated to Pope Paul III, he rightly feared ecclesiastical censure.

So he was careful to explain in his dedication that he was not the first to believe that the earth revolves around the sun. He reminded the Pope that both Cicero and Plutarch recorded the fact that followers of Pythagoras had held that the earth moved, and that in the third century BCE a Greek astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos, thought that all the planets, including the earth, go around the sun in circles (Copernicus 1992: 3–6). Aristarchus too had advanced this view rather tentatively, since, according to Plutarch, it could have led to his indictment on the charge of impiety. Copernicus's own fear of offending religious prejudice by even proposing a heliocentric universe was, as we saw, well-founded.

The full import of his theory, as I said, became apparent only in 1610 when Galileo published an account of the discoveries he had made about Jupiter's satellites through the use of a telescope. This had a far more dramatic impact on his peers than Copernicus's mathematical speculations. Kepler's immediate response was an enthusiastic letter to Galileo saying that he longed for a telescope so that he might anticipate Galileo in discovering the satellites around Mars. Galileo's colleagues at Padua University, however, did not share Kepler's enthusiasm or eagerness to see for themselves. They refused Galileo's offer of a look through his telescope for they knew, they said, that Jupiter could not have satellites as there could not be more than seven heavenly bodies. The universe demonstrated again and again, they argued, the importance God had assigned to the number seven (see this characteristic feature in the biblical narrative at the end of the Introduction) – and if the number of planets were increased, this whole universal system would fall to the ground. It is also the case, they said, that as these satellites were invisible to the naked eye, they could not exercise any influence on the earth.

In this intellectual climate, influenced, it seems, more by astrology than by astronomy, Galileo went to Rome in 1615 to campaign for his view. However, instead of winning over the Church authorities he merely consolidated their opposition. His view was condemned as ‘absurd in philosophy and formally heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture’. It was in this situation that in 1616 Copernicus's book was formally suspended by the Roman Church until it could be ‘corrected’ (Jones 1969: 98–102). Whether this meant its being rewritten or being falsified is open to conjecture, but the latter seems more likely as it remained on the Index of forbidden books until 1822.

It would be a mistake, however, to see religious prejudice as the only factor in the negative reactions to Copernicus or Galileo. While biblical authority was invoked by both Protestant and Roman Catholic clerics to oppose heliocentric theory and prevented its general acceptance until the beginning of the eighteenth century, it would be wrong to regard it as the only, or even chief obstacle. In fact at the time of Copernicus, and down to that of Descartes and Galileo, the entrenched position of Aristotelian philosophy and physics, opposed to his calculations, constituted an equally, if not more powerful obstacle (Koyré 1973: 72; Blumenberg 1987: 142–145). It was also the case that there were mathematical weaknesses and obscurities inherent in the Copernican system which had to be corrected by Kepler and Newton (Hallyn 1997: 89–103). Medieval church historian Heiko Oberman points out (Oberman 1986: 188) that even if there had been no religious scruples whatever against the Copernican astronomy, sensible men all over Europe, especially the most empirically minded (such as Galileo's colleagues), would have pronounced it ‘a wild appeal to accept the premature fruits of an uncontrolled imagination, in preference to the solid inductions, built up gradually through the ages, of man's confirmed sense experience’ (Oberman 1986: 188; Dillenberger 1988: 21f.).

Pre-Copernican worldview

It is still the case, as reactions to Lovelock's Gaia theory from some scientists show, that any worldview which is commonly held and is reasonably workable can be and will be adhered to, even against compelling evidence, as this involves no expenditure of energy or need to abandon cherished theories or ways of working. And in Copernicus's lifetime just such a view of the universe, built around the Ptolemaic system, was firmly in place. Ptolemy, an astronomer, geographer and mathematician, had lived and worked in Alexandria in the mid-second century CE. From the mathematical point of view, observes Koyré, his system is one of the finest and most outstanding works of the human mind. More importantly, it had been reconciled with the biblical picture of the world. The general outlines were clear. At the centre of the universe was the immovable planet, Earth, and beyond it a series of spheres containing the planets, including the sun and moon. The planets moved in epicycles forming a perfect circular form around the fixed earth. Hell was at the centre of the earth and spatially farthest removed from the pure Empyrean, heaven, situated beyond the spheres. This was the incorruptible dwelling place of God and the eventual abode of the redeemed.

Such a worldview could be visualized and its meaning discerned. Space and destiny coincided in it, as everything had its place and purpose. The whole universe was seen as ministering to the earth (or rather, to man). Christian doctrine developed the notion that the significance of earth's location at the centre of the universe was central to human significance as it was the place of man's dramatic redemption from Hell by Christ. This picture of the world, developed and refined through the centuries, was so integral to the perceived ends and purposes of human life that it commanded universal acceptance and could not easily be abandoned (Koyré 1973: 23f.; Dillenberger 1988: 22–24).

A graphic presentation of this worldview (which can also be seen as a later episode in the story of an idea about ourselves and God) is found in Botticelli's magnificent depiction of Dante's Divine Comedy. Botticelli's illustrations, drawn between 1480 and 1495 (in Copernicus's lifetime), depict the trajectory of Dante's journey from the depths of hell upward through the spheres to the Empyrean, beyond which lives the radiance of God: ‘the love which moves the sun and the other stars.’ In the illustration for the second canto of Dante's Paradiso, Botticelli includes a Ptolemaic/Aristotelian model of the cosmos: in the centre is the earth (‘tera’), around it the atmosphere (‘aria’) and the zone of fire (‘fuocho’); then the seven planetary spheres, with the sun and moon identified by symbols. Outside and beyond them is the sphere of the fixed stars, and outside that again, the Primum Mobile or crystalline heaven. To indicate the primacy of contemplation over visualization, the Empyrean is not shown. For who has seen God? The Ptolemaic diagram of the cosmos (although not referred to by Dante) is used by Botticelli as the appropriate topographical model for this third and final section of the Comedy in which Dante finally leaves all earthly spheres to be united with God (Altcappenberg 2000: 220–221).

At the centre of this cosmos was the earth. But that earth was the place of man's sins, punished eternally in Hell at earth's centre. It was the place where, through repentance during one's life, time spent in Purgatory (where the punishment for sin imposed by God is no less harrowing than it is in Hell) is not eternal. Souls in Purgatory can and do eventually progress from earth: to a Paradise far above it.

The idea of earth which rules this imaginary landscape is one in which, as in the Noah episode, our planet is merely the stage upon which God metes out punishment for sin and rewards for repentance. In Dante's scenario it functions conspicuously as the place where eternal life is to be earned and present life endured. As we shall see, Aristotelian cosmology played a role in this downgrading of earth itself. For in that cosmology, immobility was seen as a property of inert, corrupt matter (Blumenberg 1987: 138–139).

The geocentricity of the universe was not, therefore, an indication of earth's importance but of man's importance. In Dante's Christian cosmography, the most recalcitrant sinners are buried in a Hell placed at the centre of earth. Their punishment effectively is to remain on earth, or rather in earth, forever. This Christian version takes us from a Noah figure instrumental in saving a representative sample of all creatures, to a time when Christ earns Christians (alone) the power to repent and so avert punishment by God. We can, then, see it as courageous, if not audacious of Dante to make the pre-Christian Virgil his guide through Purgatory and Cato its guardian, even though he must leave them behind to ascend to the earthly Paradise under the guidance of his Christian love, Beatrice.

Botticelli includes recognizably beautiful earthly plants and flowers as living elements in the earthly Paradise, reflecting an interesting and rather ambivalent attitude towards earth. It was important not only as the place where man (literally) worked out his redemption but it was also potentially redeemable. Redeemable from what? From the conditions attached to its position in the universe. So the early Christian reformers taught (in continuity with what Dante had been taught) that as heaven epitomized a totally God-centred universe, life there could only be conceived of as being diametrical...