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Owen Gingerich, Astronomer Who Saw God in the Cosmos, Dies at 93 (nytimes.com) 135

Owen Gingerich, a renowned astronomer and historian of science, has passed away at the age of 93. Gingerich dedicated years to tracking down 600 copies of Nicolaus Copernicus's influential book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri Sex" and was known for his passion for astronomy, often dressing up as a 16th-century scholar for lectures. He believed in the compatibility of religion and science and explored this theme in his books "God's Universe" and "God's Planet." The New York Times reports: Professor Gingerich, who lived in Cambridge, Mass., and taught at Harvard for many years, was a lively lecturer and writer. During his decades of teaching astronomy and the history of science, he would sometimes dress as a 16th-century Latin-speaking scholar for his classroom presentations, or convey a point of physics with a memorable demonstration; for instance, The Boston Globe related in 2004, he "routinely shot himself out of the room on the power of a fire extinguisher to prove one of Newton's laws." He was nothing if not enthusiastic about the sciences, especially astronomy. One year at Harvard, when his signature course, "The Astronomical Perspective," wasn't filling up as fast as he would have liked, he hired a plane to fly a banner over the campus that read: "Sci A-17. M, W, F. Try it!"

Professor Gingerich's doggedness was on full display in his long pursuit of copies of Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium Libri Sex" ("Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), first published in 1543, the year Copernicus died. That book laid out the thesis that Earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way around, a profound challenge to scientific knowledge and religious belief in that era. The writer Arthur Koestler had contended in 1959 that the Copernicus book was not read in its time, and Professor Gingerich set out to determine whether that was true. In 1970 he happened on a copy of "De Revolutionibus" that was heavily annotated in the library of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, suggesting that at least one person had read it closely. A quest was born. Thirty years and hundreds of thousands of miles later, Professor Gingerich had examined some 600 Renaissance-era copies of "De Revolutionibus" all over the world and had developed a detailed picture not only of how thoroughly the work was read in its time, but also of how word of its theories spread and evolved. He documented all this in "The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus" (2004). John Noble Wilford, reviewing it in The New York Times, called "The Book Nobody Read" "a fascinating story of a scholar as sleuth."

Professor Gingerich was raised a Mennonite and was a student at Goshen College, a Mennonite institution in Indiana, studying chemistry but thinking of astronomy, when, he later recalled, a professor there gave him pivotal advice: "If you feel a calling to pursue astronomy, you should go for it. We can't let the atheists take over any field." He took the counsel, and throughout his career he often wrote or spoke about his belief that religion and science need not be at odds. He explored that theme in the books "God's Universe" (2006) and "God's Planet" (2014). He was not a biblical literalist; he had no use for those who ignored science and proclaimed the Bible's creation story historical fact. Yet, as he put it in "God's Universe," he was "personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos." [...] Professor Gingerich, who was senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, wrote countless articles over his career in addition to his books. In one for Science and Technology News in 2005, he talked about the divide between theories of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution. "Frankly it lies beyond science to prove the matter one way or the other," he wrote. "Science will not collapse if some practitioners are convinced that occasionally there has been creative input in the long chain of being."
In 2006, Gingerich was mentioned in a Slashdot story about geologists' reacting to the new definition of "Pluton." He was quoted as saying that he was only peripherally aware of the definition, and because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important."

"Gingerich lead a committee of the International Astronomical Union charged with recommending whether Pluto should remain a planet," notes the New York Times. "His panel recommended that it should, but the full membership rejected that idea and instead made Pluto a 'dwarf planet.' That decision left Professor Gingerich somehwat dismayed."
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Owen Gingerich, Astronomer Who Saw God in the Cosmos, Dies at 93

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  • by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @02:15AM (#63597592)

    May you find peace but never too much.

  • I was so impressed that I named my dog the word God in reverse that day.

  • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @02:34AM (#63597630) Journal

    One of the pivotal figures in cosmology was a Jesuit, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    There is, I am told, a verse in the Quran that instructs people to reflect on the wonders of creation. That was Abdus Salam's inspiration for practicing physics. His reflections went so deep he shared a Nobel Prize.

    I think they're a minority, but their existence is interesting.

    • There is, I am told, a verse in the Quran that instructs people to reflect on the wonders of creation. That was Abdus Salam's inspiration for practicing physics.

      Common sense, really. It is sad that humanity works so hard to destroy it, but still we're living in a wonderful world.

      Stars and clouds in the sky. Flowers in a field. Bees that visit them. A dolphin in the sea. Snow-peaked mountains. Waves crashing into a beach. A friendly person that crosses your path. A tree with its root system beneath your feet, grown from nothing but a small seed, water, air, minerals & sunlight. A spider spinning its web. Ants building their nest. Etc etc etc, enough to fill a li

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      Let's not forget Isaac Newton. Widely regarded by his peers as a religious nutter, he was still immensely respected.
      You'd don't have to be perfectly rational to be a good scientist.

  • by devlp0 ( 897273 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @04:09AM (#63597730) Journal
    ... magic isn't real.
    • Well, sure... but your lack of understanding makes it appear magical until you do understand. By denying magic, you deny the unknown. Don't do that; rather, not let the unknown dictate your behaviors. Living in constant fear is ... a biblical Hell.

  • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @04:55AM (#63597796)
    Religion and science is fundamentally incompatible, but that doesn’t deter people from believing in hocus pocus anyway.
    • Re:Hocus pocus (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @05:26AM (#63597830)

      Indeed. And it is always easy to just not think things through that could otherwise result in uncomfortable insights.

      Just to elaborate: Science finds the question of the existence of a god is "open". No, this does not mean it is expected to be answered with a "yes" eventually. This does mean there is no evidence either way. Same as for countless crackpot theories. This state does confuse a lot of people. Add that a lot of people confuse "possible" and "likely" and you end up with the usually observable mess that religious people make of their argumentation.

      Because there is a second aspect: The existence of a god would clearly be an extraordinary claim, and hence extraordinary evidence would be needed to give it validity. As there is not even simple evidence, the scientific state of-the-art is that there is very likely (almost sure) no god and that the default assumption is "no god" unless said extraordinary evidence becomes available. And unless simple evidence becomes available, it does not even make sense to seriously debate the idea.

      The reason why religion is incompatible with that is because religion assumes the converse. It assumes there is a god without scientifically sound evidence and requires proof that there is no god as counter argument. That approach does not even fulfill basic scientific standards as Science requires every claim to be supported by scientifically sound evidence in order to be recognized as true or likely true.

      Of course, what religion uses is both the the "Big Lie" technique (hammer them with an extreme but unsubstantiated claim until they believe it) and a fundamental denial of logic. There is a really simple counter argument to any one religion claiming their model of reality is true: There are a lot of religions and all have the same evidence basis (none). At the same time most of them are incompatible with each other in what they claim. As "number of followers" is irrelevant to the validity of a claim made, all religions, cults, quasi-religious philosophical beliefs, etc. compete here and only one could, as a maximum, have the truth. Note that this includes religions with no followers. Now, because none have evidence, there is no way to identify which one could be the one with truth. At the same time, they are all generally similar enough (being of type "religion") that it is not plausible that one of them should be fundamentally true and all other not. And hence Science tells us to discount every religion as model of reality, unless extraordinary evidence becomes available. If that evidence becomes available, fine. But until then the only sane view is that the claims of any religion are bullshit and serve entirely different purposes than explaining reality.

      • by Jamu ( 852752 )

        Just to elaborate: Science finds the question of the existence of a god is "open".

        Not true for the disproven ones (the god of the bible for example), but I otherwise agree with you. I think that based on the infinite number of possibilities for an unprovable god, god is non-existent. Proven gods aren't considered gods, and unproven gods are guaranteed the same fate.

      • The fact that (almost?!) all religions believe in the existence of God is the extraordinary proof. That numerous different cultures, with no contact with each other, came to the same, basic conclusion is the extraordinary evidence you're seeking. Yes, there are differences in how different cultures and religions perceived God, but the fundamental premise that God exists is not in doubt by any serious theologian.

        It would be akin to saying that climate science is a big lie because some say warming will b

        • Re:Hocus pocus (Score:4, Insightful)

          by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @11:33AM (#63598804)

          Monotheism is not anywhere near universal.

          However, the ubiquity of belief in some kind of spirits or gods is pretty much ubiquitous. That says nothing about reality at all, except what it says about the human mind, which (a) is always searching for explanations and (b) which just can't believe that its own consciousness can just come to an end.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Well, (a) is very strong in most people and they just cannot deal with the unknown. Hence if they cannot simply ignore it, they make up some story, any story as how that is or, more often, eat up stories made by others. As to (b) we do not actually know that. What we do know is cessation of communication possibilities with a specifically identified person and that people have no verifiable memories of a previous existence. That this means the end of that consciousness (and also its start) is a possibility,

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Nope. Belief does in no way constitute proof. It is, in fact, an indicator of the absence of proof. Numbers do not matter. For example, the reality of Covid does not depend on the number of deniers and believers. It depends on the established facts.

          This bullshit argument gets pushed all the time by the religiously deranged though. It boils down to is the "safety in numbers" fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_in_numbers) with a not very subtle threat of "you do not want to be different, do you?"

          • We know that Europeans had no contact with Native Americans prior to the Vikings because when that contact was first established, the diseases carried by the Europeans destroyed entire tribes.

            Belief is not an indicator of the absence of proof - if that were the case, we could safely dismiss climate change. Belief is just that - belief.

            But here's the problem with your argument: people don't believe something they know to be false. At worst, they are merely mistaken. Your position relies on an assumpti

  • by ToTellTheTruth ( 10159599 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @06:03AM (#63597876)
    What's missing from this piece is what led to the widespread and unfettered distribution of Copernicus' truly revolutionary (excuse the pun) heliocentric work, when Galileo some 90 years later met such severe opposition from Catholic church authorities. The church philosophers were steeped in Aristotle's geocentric view at the time, accepted as dogma ever since one of its seminal theologians, Thomas Acquinas, had used the arguments of Aristotle as proofs for the existence of the Christian God to counter the Muslim theologians who were doing the same for Allah at the time. I contend it was the forward to de Revolutionibus, written anonymously by a Protestant theologian by the name of Andreas Osiander, much to the chagrin of Copernicus. Osiander was tasked by a student of Copernicus to get the work published at Copernicus' behest, who by then was nearing death. Osiander realized how such a revolutionary viewpoint of the universe would be taken by Catholic church authorities. So he decided, without Copernicus’ approval, to pen a forward defending the endeavor, in which he took a more pragmatic rather than idealistic perspective, stating in essence that the theory may or may not be true, but that the reader should at least consider it as a way to make a more accurate calendar which was a key focus at the time (the Gregorian calendar, still in use today, was adopted some 18 years after Copernicus' death). Understandably, Copernicus was livid when he found out about the forward, but I believe it actually saved his hide and legacy. For it led to the widespread and largely unopposed dissemination of his work such that Galileo was able to use it and his telescope to prove the sun was at the center of the solar system, in direct contradiction to what philosophers had believed for almost 2,000 years. That spelled the end of philosophy as the dominant source of truth in universities and the rise of science (inductive reasoning) to replace it, despite the mathematician/philosopher René Descartes' vain attempt to re-establish the deductive reasoning of philosophy on a more firm foundation. Such pragmatism is the reason engineering and technology play such a vital role in society today. I'll have to admit I'm a bit biased. I'm an engineer and a descendent of Andreas Osiander. Andreas married Barbara Häyland. Their fifth-generation great-granddaughter Christina Barbara Osiander Epting emigrated to Newberry, SC, USA in the 1700's.
  • The God in the gaps between knowledge has ruined otherwise smart men since the beginning of time. As we fill in the gaps, the gymnastics necessary to slip between them get more entertaining to other scientists, and more incomprehensible to the layman. Among the masses, the word "Quantum" gets misused as something mystical more often than it's used appropriately.

    • I suspect no more than despair at nihilism has ruined otherwise smart men and women. Talking yourself into feeling the divine spirit does make it easier to accept the world and move forward, while having children along the way.

      Normies need no reason, but smart people look for them.

      • PS. that is of course assuming there is something to ruin ... my Christian upbringing showing through in my rather arbitrary value system there :p

  • A 93 year testament to the durability of childhood religious inculcation.

  • LOL. So you're just fucking with us, huh?
  • "Where knowledge ends, religion BEGINS" - Benjamin Disraeli (b. 1804)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

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