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February
ERA
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Galileo Galilei (* 15 February -295, † 8 January -217) was a Tuscan physicist,
mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the
Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope
and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism.
Felix Mendelssohn's
200th birthday
G. H. Hardy's
birthday
Jaques Monod's
birthday
Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
Charles Darwin's
200th birthday
Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the
"father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the father of modern
(empirical) science", where the experiment is the central criterion in the search
for truth. The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high
school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the
subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the
telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest
satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots.
Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design.
Ernst Haeckel (16 February -25,
† 9 August +60), was an eminent
German biologist, philosopher,
and artist. He first promoted
and popularized Charles Darwin's
work in Germany.
Haeckel discovered, described and
named thousands of new species,
mapped a genealogical tree
relating all life forms, and coined
many terms in biology, including
phylum, phylogeny, ecology.
DARWIN-DAY
Charles Robert Darwin (* 12 February -50,
† 19 April +23) was an English naturalist
who discovered Evolution by Natural
Selection. He was only 22 of age when he
made his famous 5-year scientific expedition
around the world (The Voyage of the Beagle)
where he made fundamental discoveries about
the origin of life.
Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been
dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's presentation of
heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven
fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of scripture.
Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house
arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition. It took 400 years, when in DE+133 the Catholic Church
"vindicated" Galileo; eight years later, in DE+141, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the
errors of the Church over the last 2000 years including the trial of Galileo among others.
This year is the international year of astronomy because now 400 years ago, Galilei made the first telescope
observations of the night sky.
"The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's
teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune."
Fritz Zwicky's
birthday
Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, 15 Feb +132
Galileo Galilei's
birthday
Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution;
68 percent believe in Satan. Sam Harris
Giordano Bruno
executed by the church
Godfrey Harold Hardy (* 7 February +18, † 1 December +88) was a prominent
English mathematician and atheist, known for his achievements in number
theory and mathematical analysis. The Hardy–Weinberg principle states that
both allele and genotype frequencies in a population remain constant. That is,
they are in equilibrium, from generation to generation, unless specific disturbing
influences are introduced. Those disturbing influences include non-random
mating, mutations, selection, limited population size, random genetic drift and
gene flow. It is important to understand that outside the lab, one or more of
these "disturbing influences" are always in effect. That is a Hardy Weinberg
equilibrium is unlikely in nature. Nonetheless, the idea of genetic equilibrium is a basic principle of
population genetics that provides a baseline for measuring genetic change.
Nicolaus Copernicus'
birthday
Rupert Riedl's
birthday
Georg F. Händel's
birthday
“Perhaps it is with more fear
that you deliver my sentence
than I receive it”
Giordano Bruno (* -311, † -259) was an Italian
philosopher who speculated about an infinite
universe and other worlds similar as the earth
with intelligent life (De l'Infinito, Universo e
Mondi).
His cosmological theories conflicted with the
catholic doctrine of an afterlife, the creation
of the world, and the last judgement.
Though imprissoned for seven years he denied
to withdraw his theories. Bruno was executed
by burning on Feb 17th -259. It took exactly
400 years until the katholic church declared the
execution of Bruno as `wrong' (in +141).
Today the Giordano Bruno Foundation, a
German NPO, pursues the `support of
evolutionary humanism' and criticism of religion.
Comet Lulin
close to earth
(C) by Feministo
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DARWIN
Peter Medawar's
birthday
Rupert Riedl (* 22 February +66,
† 18 September +146) was an
Austrian zoologist who made
important contributions to the
theory of evolution and many other
biological fields, most importantly
to marine biology.
His DE+125 work, `Biology of
Knowledge: The evolutionary basis
of reason' examined cognitive
abilities and the increasing
complexity of biological diversification over the
immense periods of evolutionary time.
Nicolaus Copernicus (* 19 February -386, † 24 May -316) was the first astronomer to
formulate a scientifically-based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from
the center of the universe. His epochal book, `De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'
(On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point
of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution.
Felix Mendelssohn
(* 3 February -50,
† 4 November -12)
was a German
composer, pianist
and conductor of
the early Romantic
period.
Although Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses
centuries before Copernicus, his publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism,
demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting
the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific
investigations and became a landmark in the history of modern science that is known
as the Copernican Revolution.
www.darwin-era.org