Scientific Inertia: A Study of Resistence to Theoretical Change in the History of Cosmology

从中世纪关于公元1200年的思想开始到1687年，艾萨克·牛顿出版了他的不朽的原理，亚里士多德-托勒密的地心宇宙论主导了关于我们宇宙本质的智力辩论。格兰特教授正在研究亚里士多德体系是如何维持了近5000年的。理解这一现象就是理解所接受的观点的坚持能力，即使根据相互矛盾的证据也是如此。或者，更好的是，理解亚里士多德体系的持久性，就是理解科学理论如何适应新的观点，并理解推翻根深蒂固的观点有多么困难。因此，通过开展这项研究，格兰特教授阐明了科学研究中最重要的问题之一：科学是如何变化的--以及为什么它不会变化。格兰特教授发现，近500年的时间可以分为两个部分：1200-1500年，亚里士多德的观点占压倒性优势，没有可行的竞争对手。从1500年到1687年的第二个阶段，出现了许多相互竞争的宇宙论，从柏拉图的观点到赫尔墨斯·特里斯马吉斯特的封闭传统。他发现，即使哥白尼从来没有写过《革命论》，关于地球可能的轴向自转和轨道运动的重大辩论也会发生。然而，在1543年，哥白尼确实发表了他的革命性观点，亚里士多德宇宙学剩下的一个半世纪是试图使亚里士多德体系适应16世纪和17世纪出现的发现--从布拉赫对行星和恒星的新观测到伽利略的望远镜发现。格兰特教授的研究成果将成为亚里士多德宇宙学的一部巨著。这项研究将对关注科学变革中心问题的科学史和科学哲学的研究具有重大意义。

From the very beginnings of medieval thought about the year 1200 until 1687, the year Isaac Newton published his monumental Principia, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology dominated intellectual debate about the nature of our universe. Professor Grant is examining how the Aristotelian system managed to persist for nearly half a millennium. To understand this phenomenon is to understand the ability of received views to persist, even in the light of contradictory evidence. Or, better, to understand the persistence of the Aristotelian system is to understand how a scientific theory can adapt to accommodate new views and to understand how extraordinarily difficult it is to overthrow entrenched views. By undertaking this study, Professor Grant is thus shedding light on one of the most important issues in science studies: how science changes--and why it does not change. Professor Grant has found that the nearly 500 year period can be divided into two parts: 1200-1500 when the Aristotelian view was overwhelmingly dominant and had no viable rivals. The second phase from 1500-1687 was one in which a number of rival cosmologies appeared ranging from the Platonic views to those of the hermetic tradition of Hermes Trismagistus. He has found that, even if Copernicus had never written De revolutionibus, a significant debate about the earth's possible axial rotation and orbital motion would have occurred. Yet in 1543, Copernicus did publish his revolutionary views and the remaining century and a half of Aristotelian cosmology was one of trying to accommodate the Aristotelian system to the discoveries which emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries--from Brahe's new observations of the planets and stars to Galileo's telescopic discoveries. The results of Professor Grant's study will be a massive history of Aristotelian cosmology. This study will have major importance for studies in the history and the philosophy of science which are concerned with the central issues of scientific change.