In Module 2, we concentrated on the question “What is science?”, along with other related questions like “How did the scientific method develop?”, “What are its aims?”, and “What is science not capable of achieving?” We found answers to these questions through an analysis of the earliest stages of the astronomy of planets, ending with a discussion of the sophisticated scientific model of Ptolemy—which turned out to be completely wrong.
In this module, we moved on from “What is science?” to focus on the subsequent questions, “How has science been done?” and “How has our understanding of the world transformed as a result?” We moved from Copernicus’ struggle to find a beautiful description that would succeed the Ptolemaic “monstrosity”, to Kepler’s attempts to verify wild hypotheses, to Tycho’s and Galileo’s experimental approaches, to Newton’s great synthesis, and finally to Einstein’s fundamental revision of Newton’s theory of gravity.
Now, knowing what science is and how it has been done, we’ll move on in the rest of the course to discuss, first, the process and methodology of collecting astronomical data, and then all that we have subsequently learned about the Solar System as a result. In Module 4, we will begin this process by introducing the concept of light as information from space before moving on to discuss in more detail how light collection by telescopes works. In module 5, we will then discuss the modern theory of light in more depth, examining how modern physics tells us light and matter interact, and exploring how the observation of light in different energy ranges can be used to derive detailed descriptions of the astronomical objects we observe. Afterward, we will be well prepared to move on in the second half of the course to discuss what we know about our Solar System.
cosmiCave.org 