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Vatican Scientist Explains Cosmological History in Start of Lecture Series

February 2, 2011-- 

When Consolmagno, a Jesuit brother since 1989 works at the Vatican’s observatory as an astronomer and meteorite curator, stepped onto the stage at Centennial Hall at the University of Arizona on Tuesday night, he did so to a standing room only audience. 

            Consolmagno is not just a Jesuit, he went to MIT for his bachelor’s and master’s and to the University of Arizona for his doctorate all in planetary sciences.  He has taught at Harvard and MIT, and after taking his vows he was assign to the Vatican’s observatory.

            His lecture, the first in a series on cosmological origins, was about how culture and science play integral and often complementary parts in deciding the cosmology of the day.  “Cosmology is the sum of all the assumptions about how the universe works,” said Consolmagno.

            Consolmagno started the lecture reading from the Apostle Paul’s letters to the new Christians.  This was not religious rhetoric, but a clever introduction to the cosmology of that day pointing out key phrases like “Ruler of the air” which don’t make sense to a modern audience.

            These phrases are references to the cosmology of the day, which led people to believe the universe was made in spheres and each sphere was inhabited by one of the four elements.  Consolmagno explained that Paul was trying to convince early Christians in his letters of his cosmology, and how God fit in. 

            Paul had to do this because when told about Christianity other cultures just put it on top of their own cosmologies.  The cultures Paul was writing to thought there were already intermediaries between themselves and God, Paul was telling them there was only one and, on top of that, the world worked differently than they thought.  All of his references are lost on a modern audience who lack a similar cosmology and thus speak about it differently.

            The next Western cosmological transition came when Ptolemy proved mathematically that the planets, the sun and the stars move around the Earth.  This of course we know to be wrong because now we know that the earth is not the center of the solar system, but the math worked and it fit their assumptions so back then it was fact. 

            In reaction Saint Augustus changed the church’s view of how the universe works by arguing that the bible should not be taken literally when it runs in the face of obvious fallacies.  This was in reaction to Ptolemy’s work being reintroduced to Europeans from the Middle East in the medieval ages. 

            During the medieval ages the prevailing view was “The idea of the physical universe being a mirror of the metaphysical universe,” said Consolmagno.  This meant that they assumed God moved in perfect circles, so the stars moved in circles out of love for God, they caused the inner spheres to spin and on down the line till the spinning of the Earth.

            Consolmagno argued that all of these theories are now known to be wrong, but during their day these theories made sense because they came from previous assumptions of how the world worked.  We can even see the remnants of these assumptions in Western mythologies. “Tolkein was a scholar reflecting the medieval view of the universe,” said Consolmagno.

            In contrast to working off false assumptions in Western culture, Aryabhata, a late 6^th century Indian astronomer, assumed as the Hindus do that the universe is cyclical.  So when Aryabhata looked at the astronomical charts from the Greeks and Babylonians, he looked for how long planets’ cycles were.

            Aryabhata’s calculations for the orbital periods of Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn were accurate to the fourth decimal place, even though he had the same data as the Europeans.  Consolmagno said this was a direct result of the assumption that there were cycles to be found.  Thus the cosmology of the Hindus was actually more accurate according to modern day theories.

            A large problem with medieval cosmology was the reconciliation between the eternal universe of Aristotle, which had been mathematically proven, and the religious view of a beginning of time.  Thomas Aquinas was able to reconcile this so well for his time that people began to see Aristotle as a Christian who didn’t even know it.  This is an example application of facts onto a culture’s cosmology.

            Consolmagno went on to say “Religions that have survived a change in cosmology, grow as a result, get wiser as a result,” and that sometimes you have to realize your worldview isn’t the best, and there are other, better ways to think about things.

            This came to the Catholic Church with Newton’s treatment of the heavenly objects in the same way as earthly ones, all of a sudden “There is no privileged place in the universe,” said Consolmagno.  This reduced God to a force just like all the other natural forces out there.  There was no place in the universe where God could be sitting.

            When Kant then came up with idea that there may be other worlds besides ours, and that the stars are just other suns he upset the idea of how the entire universe worked.  Before that a mentioning of another world brought to mind the idea of a parallel universe complete with goatees and evil beings.  After Kant the idea brought to mind aliens on another planet.

            This lead up to Einstein, who deduced that space and time warp around each other.  His equations proved his, but they hit a snag when the idea of the Aristotle’s eternal universe was applied to it.  So Einstein had to adjust his numbers and add a cosmological constant.  He was adding a number to correct for an assumption made thousands of years before his time.

            This led to the Big Bang theory and the debate over that.  A priest named Georges Lemaitre provided proof of expansion of the universe, which had been proposed by a man named Richard Feynman. 

The scientific community mocked Lemaitre for two years because his model showed a beginning to the universe and Fred Hoyle, an English astronomer and was opposed to Lemaitre’s idea, mocked the idea coining the term “Big Bang Theory.”  When Hubble discovered in 1929 that galaxies further away were moving away faster than closer galaxies.

During the debate Pope Pius XII commented saying “Isn’t it interesting that modern cosmology is considering a beginning point. Cute.” Consolmagno said.  The idea of the beginning had been abandoned during the medieval ages and was now being brought back, a previous assumption which had been turned aside was now proven correct.

Consolmagno ended his lecture synopsizing it by saying in reference to modern cosmology “Half of the things we know today are wrong, we just don’t know which half.” 

 Consolmagno ended with a word of advice on the subject of accepting new cosmologies saying “Allow yourself to be entertained by new ideas, but don’t sell your soul to them,” adding that it takes about a generation for a shift to occur.

Prior Thwaits, a retired electrical engineer, said he had been coming to the lectures series for years, and “I though it was excellent historical bases for the transient notion of cosmologies.”  Adding he thought Consolmagno was a great speaker.

While he was expecting something different Tom Folkers, the operations manager for the UA radio telescope, said it was a good way to lay the groundwork for the rest of the series.
  During a question and answer session after his lecture Guy Consolmagno was asked how we would know when a new cosmology is rising.  He said that it is hard for the layperson to tell because science news is half wrong, but only because the scientists didn’t know which half would turn out to be wrong. 

Aaron The Bike Fox