Astronomy and Cosmology in Stamps
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Description: Uses stamps picturing astronomers, telescopes, planets, and other space-related topics to illustrate a discussion of astronomy.
ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY IN STAMPS (from University of Buffalo Libraries, A reference to Aristotle is essential in a history of science, though impossible in a few sentences without being banal. This greatest of all Greek philosophers, who flourished in the 4th century BC, exerted an all-encompassing influence on the development of western thought. He introduced the systematic study of logic which he applied to his teachings. In his biological writings he presented a classification system of animals that was not fully replaced until the time of Linnaeus. All branches of knowledge were classified: physics, methaphysics, rhetoric, poetics. His picture of a perfect, unchanging, spherical universe centered on the earth placed a long-lasting damper on western understanding of the workings of the physical world, particularly the motions of the stars and planets. To the four supposed elements making up the universe, earth, water, air, and fire, he added a fifth, invisible element, the ether. This ether, made necessary because "nature abhorrs a vacuum", was an inpalpable fixture for over 2000 years until its existence was disproved by the Michelson-Morley experiment. His teachings, lost to western Europe during the dark ages, were reintroduced after contacts with the Arab world increased. The Scholastics reconciled Christian dogma with Aristotle's ideas, which virtually became dogma in secular learning. This discouraged independent scientific observation, inquiry, and experiment, even though Aristotle himself had been an interested observer of the natural world.
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| Page title: | Astronomy in Stamps |
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| IP-address: | 128.196.211.20 |
WHOIS Info
| NS | Name Servers: MAGGIE.TELCOM.ARIZONA.EDU 128.196.128.233 PENNY.UITS.ARIZONA.EDU 128.196.130.9 |
| WHOIS | |
| Date | activated: 23-Jan-1986 last updated: 08-Aug-2012 expires: 31-Jul-2014 |