Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe . . ., it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created . . . So we must realize that there are other worlds in other parts of the universe, with races of different men and different animals.

Class Discussion: What does the above passage mean? When do you think it was written?

And what of the following?

• "Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of gods"

On the Nature of Things.... No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow Until we know and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know. The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, Not lost but disunited. Life lives on. It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.

There are clear indications that things that pass for solid are in fact porous. Even in rocks a trickle of water seeps through into caves, and copious drops ooze from every surface. Food percolates to every part of an animal's body. Trees grow and bring forth their fruit in season, because their food is distributed throughout their length from the tips of the roots through the trunk and along every branch. Noises pass through walls and fly into closed buildings. Freezing cold penetrates to the bones.

Our mystery person is really quite amazing when it comes to significantly pre-dating "modern scientific thinking".

• To remove the fear of the gods, "L" relies on physics and a sort of primitive evolutionary biology and anthropology

• He builds upon and expands the work of Epicurus who fought against religion and the fears it caused in men, who abandoned superstitious explanations of the origins of the world and human society, myths of life after death and divine punishment, and probed into how the physical world really works.

• According to Epicurus, the universe was originally composed of a wide variety of atoms which, falling vertically, on occasion swerved, collided and began to form matter

• Thus due to these indeterminate swerves there arises an infinite plurality of worlds, in which everything can come into being, including the gods. The swerve, because it makes the universe less determinate, allows for human free will, which allows us to choose our attitudes toward circumstances.

• All things are ultimately systems of moving atoms, separated by greater or smaller intervals of void, which cohere more or less according to their shapes. All systems are divisible and therefore perishable and all change is explainable in terms of the addition, subtraction, or rearrangement of changeless atoms.

So from these writings, which were lost initially, possible recovered in the 8th to 9th century, but definitely printed in 1473 we have expressions of

1. A developed atomic theory
2. clearly spelled out law of conservation of matter and energy (this will become important later)
3. evolutionary biology
4. definite non-uniquness about the Earth and Nature the universe is random

Skipping forward a few centuries to Nicholas of Cusa (1401 - 1464):

What is so profound and important about the following idea?

Reason (meaning abstractive and discursive knowledge) is the faculty which abstracts universal concepts; it never arrives at perfect unity. The knowledge of reason, moreover, is deficient because it represents reality in an improper manner, for it is only founded on individual beings. Hence it follows that concepts result from contradictory notes, for instance, unity and multiplicity, being and non-being. The principle of contradiction, the basis of Aristotelian Scholastic logic, is good within the limits of reason, but it gives us an improper knowledge of reality.

Concerning Measurement:

you will recognize that the art of calculating lacks precision, since it presupposes that the motion of all the other planets can be measured by reference to the motion of the sun. Even the ordering of the heavens --with respect to whatever kind of place or with respect to the risings and settings of the constellations or to the elevation of a pole and to things having to do with these-- it is not precisely knowable. Since no two places agree precisely in time and setting, it is evident that judgments about the stars are, in their specificity, far from precise

Major Accomplishments of Cusa:

• posited that the nearly spherical earth revolves on its axis about the sun the earth was not stationary.

• posited that the stars are other worlds

• dicussed the concept of the infinitesimal which contributs to modern relativity theory

• argued that every direction is relative and that the universe has its center everywhere this means there can be no unique place in the Universe! ("God is like an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.")

• "Wherever on stands in the Universe, the same pattern of stars will be strewn out before them" What is the significance of this statement?

The suggestion by Nicholas de Cusa (c.1430) that the Earth might not be stationary, was supported by Leonardo da Vinci (c1490), who amongst many (!) other things also suggested the Earths moves (rather than the Sun).

He also wrote:

"To people elsewhere, the Earth would appear to them as a noble star" Clearly at serious odds with the dominant Ptolemaic cosmological ideas.

And further suggested:

• The universe has no beginning or end (so is infinite in time, not necessarily in space).

• a theory of everything is not possible since the universe is infinitely complex. There is no absolute truth -- knowledge can only be a series of (hopefully better) approximations to reality.

Life, as it exists on Earth, in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose, in a higher form in the solar and stellar regions. . . . Of the inhabitants then of worlds other than our own we can know less, having no standards by which to appraise them. It may be conjectured that in the Sun there exist solar beings, bright and enlightened denizens, and by nature, more spiritual than such as may inhabit the Moon - who are possibly lunatics .

And Copernicus is now just 50 years away ...