Modeling the Cosmos

 

My father showed me a comet through his binoculars after dinner one day when I was six.  I saw it suspended in space, hung among the stars of the Big Dipper, a white, ghostly wisp from somewhere 

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Years later, when I was a middle school student in Florida, our school librarian displayed a copy of Newton’s Principia prominently on a stand in the library.  It was laid open to some pages of intriguing, complex-looking geometrical drawings, including a dramatic illustration of a comet.  I had no real comprehension of the strange book’s contents, but was drawn to flipping through its pages every time I passed by it.  In there, I had been told, was the first real explanation of how things in the sky moved.  I later learned how the riches in that book, first published in the late 1680s, really did open the door to understanding celestial phenomena.  It was a revelation to discover that things I saw in the sky could be known in a completely new way, through the language of mathematics.

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the mathematics of its motion are also fascinating and beautiful, and last well beyond the actual experience.  The motions of the bodies in our solar system are a phenomenon of a more abstract kind, most accessible through the figures and operations of mathematics.  One can try to describe the movements of the celestial bodies in language, and many have written wonderfully poetic descriptions of heavenly phenomena.  But to begin to understand how it all actually works, one must get to know at least some of the language of mathematics.  It is not widely appreciated that with modest familiarity with the tools of high-school mathematics, one may gain surprisingly clear insight into the mysteries of celestial motions.  It is a deep and rich world of sublime, subtle relationships.  Some of them, like Kepler’s Harmonic Law, are especially beautiful, echoing the harmonies in the physical world.  With the tools of mathematics, one can more deeply appreciate the workings of creation in a way unknown to those who do not take the trouble to learn it.  After a while, the relatively few key equations become as familiar as old friends. And one does not have to take anyone else’s word for how it all fits together: you can see for yourself. It is the next best thing to being there!

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