JF Ptak Science Books Post 2787
In the long history of finding the Center of Things is the subset (or overset) of finding the center of the galaxy (which until the 1920’s was the universe) or of creation. The center changes over the dozens of centuries, not the least of which was the flower of creation blossoming outward from Jerusalem.
- Image source: Greenwich Observatory29x23cm http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/263846.html (This is a depiction of the center of the universe, the Central Sun, as hypothesized by William Herschel and later by Johann Henirich von Maedler (1794-1874), who published his observational results in Die Central Sonne, Doprat, 1846.) This legend to this image is very legible once expanded.
Where is the center?
Where is the center of the Earth, of religion, of the United States, of the universe, of art, of consciousness, of seriousness, of complexity?
The center of stuff throughout history has been an almost entirely shifting matrix, a collection of vortices coming from Jupiter’s strongbox–a three dimensional representation of the location of their shifting centers over time would make an interesting Fibonacci-like display, I think.\The question may seem meaningless at first, but people have long asked it of nearly everything within their experience, trying to find the center of their world and universe, of their selves, of their religion, of their country, of politics, of art and music, and on through the Encyclopedia of Things that Could Have a Center.
Take for example the questions of where the center of the Earth, or solar system, or galaxy, or universe might be? There have been answers to these question more often than not over time, though the answers have been shifting. The center of the Earth has certainly stayed more-or-less constant over thousands of years, though the stuff in the center has been swarming with change, from being hollow, to being filled with magma, to being a solid magnetic core, to being occupied by Mole Men, to housing the seat of the Inferno, or to be simply located on the surface of the sphere at Jerusalem (as the old T-maps have shown for hundreds of years), and on and on. Working backwards, the center of the universe has drastically changed over time–for thousands of years, it was assumed that the Earth was the center of all things, until it wasn’t (that beginning mostly with Copernicus, and then challenged with Galileo’s use of the telescope and his discovery of an order of magnitude more stars, etc.). And then William Herschel beautifully represented the shape of the galaxy in 1782, placing our solar system in a far from central location. The center of the universe’s fate changed along with that of the Earth, incredibly so beginning with the Big Bang and then with the possibilities of their being a universe without boundaries. And then of course there’s multiple universe theories, and worm holes, and the space time continuum, which complicates things even further, making the discussion of a “center” pretty much nonsensical.
Simpler things can be as complicated–where is the center of the United States? If we measure the center for the lower 48 states, it will be different than if we included the two far-flung states, or protectorates like Puerto Rico. The geographical center is one thing; another might be where the population center might be–that has made a beautiful map published over time by the U.S. Census Bureau (Department of Commerce), showing the star of the center moving not-so-slowly westward into Ohio over the last 20 censuses or so. And where is the heart of the country? Where is the heart of the West? Better yet, where is the center of the West (or North, or South, or Mid-West)? To answer where the center of these places might be you’ve got to first locate where those geographical ideas begin and end, which for many is a tricky subject, making it a matter of opinion as to where the center of these places might be.
The center in art had been a findable thing for some time, though more recently people like the Impressionists and Kandinsky have shown that the center might not exist, and it might not exist along with anything that is recognizable as a form of nature, representation and the center falling away completely. Perhaps this is like finding the center of a decade or year or month, or week or day or second. The parameters keep getting both smaller and larger, the ability to measure halves of things or the center of a second growing almost incalculably small, small enough to reveal that in this Zeno-paradoxical way, that there is no center because there are no boundaries; getting half-way to something into infinity doesn’t actually get you there.
Now, getting back to today’s image: this lovely illustration shows what is supposed to be the center of the galaxy, which at the time also meant the center of the universe. The model was based on the observations and hypothesis of William Herschel, and then later more firmly put forward by Johann Henirich von Maedler (1794-1874), who published his results in Die Central Sonne, Doprat, 1846. The Central Sun was supposed to be the star Alcyone in the constellation of the Pleiades. Alcyone (or Eta Tauri, “the Central One”), who in legend threw herself into the sea in deep grief after an encounter with the disguised Morpheus; the gods though took pity or exhibited compassion and changed her into a bird, the Kingfisher. The Kingfisher is a bird which lays its eggs around the time of the equinox in December, the gods showing more mercy by introducing a period of non-stormy weather for seven days, and so introducing the (H)alcyone Days of winter. (I just missed being able to post this during that period by about a week.) The Pleiades, (“the Seven Sisters”), were the seven daughters of Atlas, who (long story fractured) were turned into stars to ease the worry of the father who was busy doing others things, saving them from their instant pursuers once their protector was otherwise engaged. Orion, however, still pursues them across the sky.
Here’s the concept of the Central Sun, explained for the kids of 1872:
This is a short, dismissive, stabbing review of a book by a theological and long-established scholar and administrator, William F. Warren (1833-1929). I remember his name from his interesting work on ancient cosmologies (1882), illustrated with examples of the history of all things according to various belief systems and religions. This quick-and-dead arrow of a review (which appeared in Nature on 14 May 1885 p, 28), was directed at his new work Paradise Found, the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole..., which as you can guess tries to establish the origin of humans at the North Pole, along with the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. And, for that matter, also establishes the Pole as the home of Mt. Maru, the Arthurian Avallon, and so on. There’s a lot that can be said but not by me—there is an attraction to hunting up other mythologies placing some part of great importance to the North Pole as the Navel of the Earth, but I just don’t have the time or inclination. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t known about this work by Warren, and I doubt I’ll know much more than what I am communicating right now—one thing the reviewer doesn’t mention is that the book runs about 500 pages, which is just too much of an investment for yours truly.
