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“The telescope has made us humble, but it has also made us wonderful,”
says Dr Salman Hameed, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science and Humanities, Schools of Natural Science and Cognitive Sciences, Hampshire College, USA.
Who would have known that the discovery of the telescope could have such profound implications for human beings? Lecturing on how 400 years of telescopes have changed the way we look at ourselves, Dr Hameed took an audience at Aga Khan University, Karachi, on a journey to the planets, stars and galaxies. On the one hand, he forced the audience to realise the minuteness of human existence, but on the other, he helped them appreciate the expanse of the human mind and imagination.
Dr Hameed started the journey through the cosmos by describing the world before the invention of the telescope. Around 3,000 to 4,000 BC, humans invented “pictures” in the sky, what we now recognise as constellations. These were associated with gods and used to explain the aspects of life, such as the reasons for earthquakes, floods, drought and natural disasters, that are out of the control of people. Later, Aristotle and others brought forth the “earth-centred” view that humans were the centre of the universe. All heavenly things such as the sun, moon and stars followed a routine of circling around the planet, and they were considered perfect, while Earth was thought to be imperfect.
Monotheistic religions, such as Christianity, also adopted some of these Aristotelian concepts. However, when Dutch scientists Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Jansen invented the first telescope in 1608, it created the path for a world of new discoveries. The major one of these was by Galileo, who, according to Dr Hameed, did not invent the telescope but was among the first to study the sky with it. In his 1610 book, Starry Messenger, Galileo made four major discoveries: the four moons of Jupiter moved around the planet; the planet Venus changed form like the moon; the moon was not a perfect entity, as was promoted in the Aristotelian theory, but rather, that it had craters and mountains; and, the sun had spots, hence it too was not perfect.
Galileo’s discoveries dispelled the theory of the centrality of earth and it demystified the concept of heaven, implying that objects in the sky were as imperfect as those on earth, and the sky needed to be studied, just like the earth.
In 1781, William Herschel discovered Uranus – the first planet in the Solar System to be discovered by a telescope. However, its orbit was soon found to be slightly off from predicted values, and astronomers attributed this to the presence of another large planet. By mere mathematical calculations, scientists Urbaine Le Verrier and John Couch Adams determined the location of the other planet, leading to the discovery of Neptune in 1846. The fact that Neptune was discovered merely by mathematical calculations gave rise to the power of the natural sciences – calculations could now accurately help explain and discover phenomena beyond the human vision.
Meanwhile, in the early 20th century, Edwin Hubble measured the distance to Andromeda, the galaxy closest to our Milky Way galaxy, and found it to be two million light years away from Earth. To put that in real terms: light from Andromeda started its journey two million years ago to reach earth and be discovered! Today, astronomers estimate that there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Earth, which at one point was considered to be the centre of the universe, is not even at the heart of our own galaxy – being 30,000 light years away from the centre.
These discoveries, perhaps, limit our search for meaning by astronomical observations. They have also forced people to rethink the search of the origins of humanity – no longer centred around just the planet but rather, around galaxies and the entire universe, the true expanse of which is yet unknown.
In effect, said Dr Hameed, the telescope has forced human beings to “grow up,” and realise that in the larger scheme of things, we are minute. Yet one has to appreciate the fact that it is the human intelligence, imagination, curiosity and a sense of wonder, that has brought mankind far enough to comprehend this complexity and strive to discover even more.
Dr Hameed’s talk was an inaugural lecture, part of a series of lectures organised by the University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Humanities and Social Sciences group at the Medical College. The lecture series aims to encourage dialogue and stimulate intellectual discourse.
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