How Scientific Threats Improve Religion

When Copernicus shocked, and elevated, the spiritual world.

A threat to religion

Nicolaus Copernicus’s birthday just passed on February 19th. Born 550 years ago, Copernicus changed how we see the universe. His theory, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe, was deemed a threat to religion. It was. And that is why it was the best possible thing for religion. His empiricism began the long process of ridding Christianity of superstition, a process engaging us to this day.

Before Copernicus, humans understood the universe as revolving around us. But, of course, it did; after all, the sun rose in the east and set in the west, as did the moon and the fixed star, only to do it again the very next day, every day. Our eyes showed us that everything we could see in the sky was moving around us. This seemed the most straightforward empirical fact, but one that called out for a larger theory to explain it. And that is where the anthropocentric superstition began to creep in.

One thousand eight hundred years earlier, Aristotle argued that all celestial bodies are made of an element more perfect than those found near the Earth, aether. Because it was perfect, its natural motion would partake of that perfection, and the perfect shape—the most symmetrical—is the circle. Hence, everything made of aether (the sun, the moon, the stars) would move in perfect circles. The final cause of this perfect motion, he argued, is the love of the First Cause, the unmoved mover, the perfect consciousness. It is obvious why later commentators in the monotheistic era understood that First Cause to be God.

Aristotle’s mistake

But there was a problem with Aristotle’s theory. Yes, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west every day, which gives us the idea of a circular trajectory, but each morning, the sun rises at a different spot on the horizon. In fact, the spot where the sun is first visible moves in one direction and then stops and moves in the other direction. Back and forth it goes, taking a year to return to a given spot.

This could be explained if we made use of two different circular motions: one east to west around the world and another north to south circle perpendicular to the first. This circle on a circle was termed an epicycle. Aristotle tried to figure out how many of these nested spheres he would need to account for all the heavenly motions we see and came up with the number fifty-five.

The project of fixing Aristotelian astronomy so that it exactly matched the data was finished in the 2nd century B.C.E. by Claudius Ptolemy in Alexandria, set out in his masterwork, The Almagest or The Great Book. Using a combination of circles on circles, offset centers of circles, and slight squishing of circles, Ptolemy constructed an account of the universe in perfect accordance with observation.

Surely, correctly predicting all astronomical observations showed that his underlying complex picture was correct. And, being based on Aristotle, puts our home at the midpoint of everything. We are literally the center of the universe, and everything revolves around us.

A perfect universe

There was a problem. A perfect God would create a perfect universe. Aristotle was right that circles are elegant, but Ptolemy’s need to corrupt them with multiple embedded circles, off-center circles and imperfect squished circles seemed to make the world imperfect. Could a prettier version be developed?

That is what Copernicus did. In his magnum opus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus was able to give a much cleaner universe with fewer epicycles and without the other tricks. It was not only much easier to use with fewer and simpler calculations, but it was better designed, more like something a perfect God would think of.

The problem, of course, was that it required one significant change. The sun, not the Earth, was now at the center. The universe no longer revolved around us. We were no longer astronomically unique. We were just some random things in some random place. Humans and our home were no longer special.

This aroused ire in the religious community, and when Copernicus’ book was posthumously published 480 years ago this year, a preface from German theologian Andreas Osiander was added. Osiander warned readers not to take the contents of Copernicus’ book seriously. They were useful, certainly, helpful in making astronomical computations more tractable, enabling one to know the exact time for a holiday instead of working with approximations. However, do not think that this means that the contained theory is true—that it corresponds to reality.

It’s not all about us

Like Charles Darwin would again in the 19th century, Copernicus was positing a scientific theory that diminished humanity’s place in the grand narrative. In describing the wonder of the working of the world, people were no longer playing a leading role. When Copernicus thought about what the stars could show, we were no longer the stars of that show.

The old way of identifying us as playing the lead in the great cosmic drama turned out to be superstition. That was a problem for historical institutions, whose power rested in identifying what was true and false. Such institutions, for example, the Church, responded violently, demanding that it be all about us. Our universe. Our religion. Our God.

Decentering us is an act of the greatest heresy. The First Commandment was long misinterpreted as “Humans are the Lord our God. Thou shalt put no other God before humans.” What Copernicus did, in seeking to see the universe as it was at its most beautiful, at its most Divine, was to look at it as it is and not at it as a reflection of us.

The Greek myth of Narcissus tells of a person so vain that he fell in love with his own reflection, unable to tear himself away from admiring his beauty. As a result, he became unable to live. Narcissus was no longer an active part of the world. He was incapable of seeing the beauty outside himself, the beauty of the rest of the world.

Humans are amazing beings, but we are too easily seduced by our beauty. The lure of our narcissism can often corrupt our spirit, dirtying our religions and coloring us with superstitions. The universe becomes a reflection of us, and, like Narcissus, we can only see ourselves in it.

Copernicus and Darwin threw rocks in the pool, creating ripples that distort our image, making us look strange. The angles of the waves reflect back to our eyes parts of the world we usually do not see, forcing us to look beyond our image. Does science challenge superstitious religious views? Yes. And that is necessary to keep them healthy, to keep us awed by that which is beyond ourselves. The universe is a magisterial place, and we need the discomfort that comes from those like Copernicus to force us to see it.