Ptolemy and Me

“PTOLEMY’S CONCERN” is also from my early, college-days, poems. Again, man’s proven ability to believe in things that are not true, caused me to write this. One of Alexander the Great’s generals, Ptolemy, took control of Egypt after Alexander’s death. The Ptolemy family reigned over Egypt for many generations, thereafter. Cleopatra was of the Ptolemy clan. But, one of the early Ptolemaic rulers was also a mathematician. [A Pharaoh-Math, I guess.] He claimed he had worked out the mathematical proof that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Had the numbers to back up his assertion, he said. This became known as the “Ptolemaic” or “Earth-Centered Universe” Theory.

The early Catholic Church took Ptolemy at his word, and latched onto this claim as verification of their religious dogma, regarding Man’s exceptionalism and central place in God’s creation. During the times of the Inquisition, the Church declared it a sin to question the Ptolemaic cosmology or even dispute that the Earth was the center of the universe. The Vatican charged Galileo with heresy and put him under house arrest just for writing a story about a few men debating Copernicus’ “Sun-Centered” theory of astrophysics.

Knowing, now, the sun’s size and distance from Earth, imagine the speed at which our sun would have to travel to make a complete revolution of the Earth in 24 hours? Ptolemy, apparently, did not figure in that crucial part of the calculation. Of course, we now also accept that it is hard to make arithmetic confirm an untrue belief, though, many still make the attempt.

Even disregarding the mathematics all together, we humans seem to have a penchant to be the center of everything we encounter. In many ways I suppose we are, at least in self-perception. We only experience reality from a single point of view and that becomes our final measure of truth. Yet, with only one reference point, it is difficult to accurately triangulate one’s relative position in the “grand cosmic scheme”. It is easy to lose track of that position when distracted by the innumerable details of living. The shoelaces and corn flakes and nail clippers and utility bills that overpower circumspection. I have always been suspicious of any human beings who claim to have a superior understanding of “God”, his nature, his laws and what he expects of us. Why would a force that creates universes expect anything in particular of humans? It is the hubris of mankind to think “God” does. Back to poem.