Unearthing a 13th-century metaverse

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/04/cosmology

by feelthepain • 12 years ago

42 23 12 years ago

feelthepain3• 12 years ago

Fascinating effort to formalize a medieval treatise - De Luce (“On Light”, written around 1225) - about the origins of the universe into modern mathematics. What the researchers discovered and why they did this is explained at The Ordered Universe Project. http://ordered-universe.com/ Their paper on this was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society but can be found on arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.0769

T-A• 12 years ago

So the Economist's point is that a "research" project exploring an idea about the universe which has been known to be incorrect for centuries somehow proves the value of the humanities? Really?

feelthepain3• 12 years ago

I think their point is that you can gain some fascinating insights about science in history when different disciplines work together. Hardly a radical insight though I agree. But that's not why I posted the article, which is mostly describing the cool research rather well.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

If there's anything that characterizes the editorial line of the Economist philosophically, it's begging the question.

dang3• 12 years ago

Please let's keep to the intellectually substantive topic, not the shortest path from there to a flamewar.

The substantive topic is the historical material, and history is welcome on Hacker News. In fact, it's a protected species—we don't have nearly enough of it.

Uhhrrr• 12 years ago

Yeah, but the creation of more is pretty much a given.

141133• 12 years ago

Yes. It provides a lot of information about the history of science. Most importantly, Grosseteste was one of the first to use what we now think of as the scientific method, and (I believe) the first to suggest a 'big bang like' start to the universe.

He's essential in the history of science for introducing aristotalean traditions and ideas, to the scientific discourse at the time, as well as being one of the early founders of science. For that reason at least he's well worth studying, and especially his ideas, which are very close to what we have now. What the science researchers are doing is helping the historians formalise his ideas in todays language and notations so that their similarities can be seen with todays ideas.

Source: I worked on this project over last summer as a computer science student visualising his explanation for the start of the universe.

frozenport• 12 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656535

feelthepain3• 12 years ago

Got to agree with the points made about phys.org I'm afraid. The Economist article at least links to the research article and the researchers' website.

dang3• 12 years ago

Given that that discussion was mostly complaining about phys.org, and that HN is always in the market for interesting historical material, I'd say the current post is fine.

king_magic2• 12 years ago

Just to be clear, the actual title of the article is "Unearthing a 13th-century metaverse". Might not seem like a big deal, but it feels a bit link-baity to change a key part of the title when posting to HN (and no, I do not mean link-baity on the part of The Economist - but rather on the part of the OP).

rm445• 12 years ago

1. Quoting from the article: 'Grosseteste, then, had created a medieval “multiverse”. ' Article writers don't write headlines and in this case I believe the headline is in error.

2. Metaverse will be well-understood on Hacker News to mean a virtual reality shared space (pace Snow Crash), rather than anything else.

king_magic2• 12 years ago

I somewhat agree, and very well may be an error - but frankly, let's face it - when faced with a choice of clicking on a link that includes "multiverse" vs. "metaverse", it's pretty obvious (to me, at least) which one the HN crowd is going to be drawn to.

Again, the direct title on The Economist is "metaverse" (no single quotes), not "multiverse" (in single quotes). I get what your saying, it just feels like the OP changed the title to make it seem cooler. At least that's my take.

dang3• 12 years ago

Yes. We reverted the title. Both "multiverse" and "metaverse" are arguably misleading, and are obviously linkbait, so if anyone wants to suggest a better title, feel free.

dodders• 12 years ago

A scientist, philosopher, mathematician, theologian and at one point Bishop of Lincoln, he was one of the first thinkers in northern Europe to read both Aristotle and the various Islamic commentators on the Greek philosopher’s work, all of which were newly translated into Latin.

I'm always amazed by how productive the pre TV/internet/facebook scholars sound. Who would have time for all that reading and thinking today with a day job as a Bishop?

ddt3• 12 years ago

Partly, it has to do with the role of the church pre-enlightenment. The modern secular university didn't exist in the 13th Century. The concept of a teaching body that granted degrees, certifications, and did research was barely off the ground with things like the University of Paris and the Thing Which Would Become Oxford University. The scientific method didn't exist as any formal process. If you wanted to spend your life thinking, you didn't have too many vocational options outside of the church.

As to his role as a "scientist, philosopher, mathematician, theologian", that's more a projection of modern concepts onto a historical figure. There wasn't nearly as much siloing of various intellectual pursuits. There were just secrets of Nature to be discovered, and people looking to discover them.

pizza• 12 years ago

Do you know of any good books about this "projection of modern concepts onto a historical figure" thing? It's something I've been thinking about for a while.

suprgeek• 12 years ago

After reading the paper that the researchers have come out with - this is really the key passage.

"..that they could be re-expressed using modern mathematical and computing techniques—as the medieval scholar might have done if he had been able to use such methods."

Basically physicists reinterpreted the ideas sketched out using some passages that have phrases such as lux & lumen by substituting concepts that we know now and then correcting the theory to match present understanding.

While this is a fun read, there is some kind of nonsensical "Humanities" spin given to a few physicists working out a Cosmological theory developed over multiple decades by Other physicists in the wordings of a (admittedly) smart man by wholesale reinterpretations.

yxhuvud• 12 years ago

Another fun example of scientists retrofitting physics to a setting where it doesn't apply is

http://titaniumphysicists.brachiolopemedia.com/wp-content/up...

141133• 12 years ago

Well technically it's more like the humanities people asked the physicists to help them interpret his ideas using todays scientific language. If you read Grossetestes original writings, even when translated into english, they read very differently to how any modern scientific theory or description would. So really, the scientists are helping the humanities people examine his ideas through the lens of modern notation and prose.

Source: Worked on this project over last summer as one of the scientists, developing 3d visualisation of De Luce.

141133• 12 years ago

For anyone interested in more information on this topic the project has it's own website: http://ordered-universe.com/

I actually worked on this project over last summer, as an intern in the computer science department, trying to visualise some of his ideas for inclusion in a 3d film.

There is some context that I think a lot of people in this thread are missing in regards to grossetestes work. Most importantly, he was one of the earliest practitioners of what we would now call the scientific method, and the one of the first to try and actually link his theories with actual observations.

On top of this, he also attempted to link ancient greek philosophical traditions, which posited an unending constant universe, with (then) contemporary christian ones, which believed in a fixed moment of creation. This led to him being one of the earliest people to put forward the idea of an expanding universe, and propose a scientific explanation to the start to the universe.

Finally, Durham university is one of the best in europe for studying astronomy, and Professor Tom McLeish and the department he's in one of the best. I only mention this as it seems like there are number of comments accusing the researchers of being hacks who are trying to twist science to fit outdated ideas. In reality, what they're doing is assisting historians in analysing how early scientists thought and conceived of ideas in the hope of providing more context to the history of science.

ddt3• 12 years ago

I love this. Do you happen to know of any good reading materials on pre-Enlightenment or even pre-printing press scientific history? It gets boring hearing that there was no academic advancement from the fall of the Roman Empire until Galileo.

Unearthing a 13th-century metaverse

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