Image from “The future of the Orion constellation”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6v9G06Ks8
The Starry Messenger
Blessed with the good fortune to live in the North Country where celestial skies are not dimmed and diminished by city lights, I spend many a night hour sitting or lying at the peak of our hilltop hay field star gazing. On a clear night, the astronomical show playing across the curve of the sky swells my heart when I observe the wonders of this world and shrivels my mind when I contemplate the immense depth of this ocean of a Universe. Especially compared to the shallow pond of my mental ability to understand it.
North Country night skies are far surpassed by the magnificence of the starry dome over the Nebraska Sandhills, one of the least light-polluted expanses of sky in the world. Most years I am able to travel there and devote a few nights to staring in awe at the pitch-dark void of heavens that appear more “three dimensional,” each star and planet coursing bright and purposefully through its own strata of the fathomless deep. There, the glory of the Milky Way assures you, with certainty, the joy of witnessing the natural world makes your journey through this veil of tears worth all hardships, woes, and sadness.
It also makes me aware that I comprehend so little. I see the compositions written by “The Starry Messenger” in the heavens, but I cannot truly read them. Because I do not know the language of the stars that would help me interpret the message.
I long to embrace the science of this Universe as well as the mystery, but that would require a level of mathematical prowess I have not, and probably cannot acquire. I envy the astronomers, the astrophysicists with the mental powers to sense the Music of the Spheres, to “hear” the harmony of those fantastic displays as well as observe the light show.
Scientists (once known as natural philosophers, a more benevolent and less intimidating term, it seems to me) have heard arrangements of this music since the first measures were composed and published by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century. His magnum opus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi (Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs), he withheld from publication until the year of his death (1543), knowing it would explode the orderly Earth-and-man-centric Universe that was the basis of Western civilization’s religions, laws, customs, beliefs, and social order for nearly 2,000 years, since the time of Aristotle (384-322 BC) in ancient Greece.
Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of our system, the fixed point around which the Earth and other planets orbited, while rotating on their own axes. Hence the apparent movement of the stars through the night sky; they are not moving, we are. The mathematics used by Copernicus to prove his theorem are complicated, but not beyond my ability to intuit. I can read that music. Over the course of the succeeding 150 years, astronomy became an orchestral symphony.
Based on observations he made using a new instrument, the telescope, which he invented and constructed, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) wrote and published Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger) in 1610 and completely toppled the prevailing philosophy of the nature of the Universe. The book described his telescope, his observations of the Earth’s Moon, and his discovery of four moons orbiting the planet Jupiter. Galileo concluded the Copernican, not the Aristotelian, model of the Universe was correct, and he spent the rest or his life under house arrest and threat of death as reward for his achievements.
A more comprehensive understanding of the workings of the Universe, the harmonic movements and intricately weaving interplay of its music, required a whole new mathematical language, differential and integral calculus, created by the eccentric English mathematician-theologian Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and the almost clairvoyantly brilliant German philosopher-mathematician-lawyer-writer Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Bitter rivals, they were both deeply religious and intended their work in astronomy and mathematics would prove that a Christian god was the creator and all-controlling operator of a perfect and unchanging Universe.
In the course of that pursuit they arguably became the primary creators of the scientific system as we know it today, compelling philosophers of the natural sciences to alter the goals of investigation and inquiry; the main objective was no longer to describe “why” a law of nature functions, but “how” it functions. The ancient Greek view of the world ended and so, eventually, did the 2,000-year-old belief that a god or gods held the strings that manipulated the puppet show of the Universe.
Even now, 400 years after the dawn of the age of science, the acceptance of this new Universe, ordered but subject to continual change, is not complete. It is difficult for individuals, and even more difficult for entire societies, to forego certainty and accept the reality of a structured but random world. The human psyche craves stability and surety. That is why oligarchies and theocracies will abound for decades to come, perhaps centuries, tormenting civilization with the self-righteous evils they have always imposed upon freedom of thought and action.
I understand this fear of uncertainty, this clinging to a world of spiritual wonders rather than scientific analysis and reasoning since I am something of a skeptic about science myself. Not because I reject its premise and assumptions (there are natural causes for things the occur in the Universe, through observation and evidence we can deduce how and why those natural causes operate, there is consistency in the operation of natural causes), but because I cannot read the language, advanced mathematics, necessary to understand it satisfactorily. Geometry was easy to grasp, and I was able to master algebra, but calculus was beyond my ken. I suspect that holds for the vast majority of the people on this ever-more crowded and troubled planet. Science is valid, but it can be complicated and difficult. We prefer simple and easy explanations.
Star-gazing on a summer night, I see The Starry Messenger and want not only to be enthralled by the enormity and magnificence of the heavens but also to understand the intricate clockwork of the Universe. Near the end of his life, Sir Isaac Newton wrote: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
If Newton, the greatest mind in the Western world’s history of natural philosophy and science, thought himself incapable of discovering the great truths of the Universe, what chance do I have of understanding even the most basic natural laws that govern it? I watch the stars and planets wheel through the heavens, and although I accept the science I surrender to the wonder.
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More stories about life in the North Country are published in my five collections of essays and two novels, all available through Amazon.com at Jerry Johnson Author Page
Dispatches from a Northern Town 
My, that was lovely. All of this because of someone waxing ineloquently about the world of quantum phonons and there relationship to heat? You don’t need the mathematics to grok the magnificence of how the universe is tied together. You already get it… The math is there to nitpick the details. We should talk someday about entanglement….
their, not there. Sorry.
Thanks. Don’t remember which great physicist said it, Freeman Dyson, I think, but when asked how he had achieved such incredible powers of observation, analysis, insight, logic, and conjecture, he replied something like, “The question is not why I have the intelligence to comprehend these things, but why other people do not.” I’m one of those “other people.”
Great piece, Jerry. But you left out one of my favorites, Johannes Kepler.
If Newton is the father of calculus, Kepler is the father of astronomy. I neglected Christiaan Huygens and Tycho Brahe, too. The 17th century brought forth dozens of great minds that contributed to the development of science. The 21st century seems to be bringing forth dozens of small minds that want to bring back the Aristotelian philosophy of the world and the Ptolemaic system of the heavens — enforced by fundamentalist christians to whom god has gifted the AR-15. We’ll see if the inquisition is really over.
In your short essay, you have captured the great incongruity of life, as Uncle Arlo would have put it, “In a nutshell”. The more we learn, the more we believe we understand, the more we agonizingly realize the depth of our ignorance…and so persevere in discovering more…and the cycle continues.
Thanks. Bob. I am amazed, daily, by the depth of my ignorance. And technology helps me be stupid at a much faster pace.
My Grampa Bond started his teaching career in the Sand Hills and never lost his love for the region. From 2nd grade on, he took me on an annual spring trip to witness the great migration along the Platte and on to his beloved Sand Hills…all if this AND I got a week out of school…although both he and Gramma…also a teacher…learned me good. How many kids from eastern Iowa had stood in the wagon ruts of the Pioneers and could identify the oh so unique call of sandhill cranes in the early 60s?
I live in LA and have always wanted to see a meteor shower. However, when you go outside at night in LA, you see the moon, maybe a star or two, and thats it. So one year I took the whole family to Palm Desert, Ca to watch the Pleides meteor shower. Palm Desert prides itself on being one of the darkest cities in the world after the sun goes down. No billboards, no streetlights. In the desert, so usually no clouds, and the air is crisp and clean. I woke people up at midnight and we went outside and sat by a pool on lounge chairs and watched meteors streak across the sky for hours. What was even more interesting – one of the guys brought a UV flashlight that he said would light up scorpions after dark. We didnt see any scorpions, but for grins we tried it in the living room. Jesus. There must have been some kind of mass murder in there sometime in the past. I mean, fun’s fun, but that was a little spooky. Youre probably thinking at this point – get your own goddamn blog.
Sat on the deck with friends at their southeast Nebraska rural home several years ago and watched the sun set and enjoyed the nighttime sky show. A crystal clear night night sky of incredible beauty as the Music of the Spheres passed overhead. Finally, someone yawned and asked, “What time is it?” 3 a.m. Star gazing can stop time.
What a lovely post, Jerry. And in the case of your blog, I enjoy the intelligence level of people who respond to what you write!
Glad you enjoyed “The Starry Messenger” essay, Nikki. I am fortunate to have thoughtful people following my blog.
I like the iPhone app, Star Chart when stargazing.
Check this out. Supposedly it’s the lava glow from Haleakala. https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/35192686_10216142925825053_7373374698702241792_o.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=28ca1c053bd1a7eaebdcb37c9967c2ba&oe=5BB5A49C