Galileo's first telescopic observations led to the discovery of sunspots. However, their nature was unclear to the first observers. During total solar eclipses, prominences resembling fiery fountains were observed at the edge of the Sun.

The drawing depicts the view of the Sun according to the observations of A. Kircher and P. Scheiner in 1635, based on the drawing of the former. Sunspots were then considered to be breaks in the outer hot layer of the Sun, under which there are much cooler layers suitable for life. “Tailed luminaries” - comets - terrified superstitious people in ancient times and the Middle Ages.

Even people close to science depicted comets in the form of swords, following the assurances of churchmen that they were signs of God's wrath. Other images are more realistic. For the painting on the postcard, images of comets from the second half of the 15th century were used.

Stonehenge is a Bronze Age observatory. This structure made of giant stones with horizontal beams placed on vertical blocks is located in the south of England.
It has long attracted the attention of scientists. But only recently, using modern archeological methods, it was possible to prove that its construction began over 4000 years ago, on the border of the Stone and Bronze Ages. In plan, Stonehenge is a series of almost exact circles with a common center, along which huge stones are placed at regular intervals.

The outer row of stones has a diameter of about 100 meters. Their location is symmetrical to the direction to the point of sunrise on the day of the summer solstice, and some directions correspond to the directions to the points of sunrise and sunset on the days of the equinoxes and on some other days.

Undoubtedly, Stonehenge served both for astronomical observations and for performing some rituals of a cult nature, since in those distant eras the heavenly bodies were attributed divine significance. Similar structures have been found in many places in the British Isles, as well as in Brittany (northwest France) and the Orkney Islands.

Ideas about the world of the ancient Egyptians. In their ideas about the world around them, the ancient peoples proceeded, first of all, from the testimony of their senses: the Earth seemed flat to them, and the sky was a huge dome stretching over the Earth.

The picture shows how the vault of heaven rests on four high mountains located somewhere at the edge of the world! Egypt is in the center of the Earth. The heavenly bodies seem to be suspended on the vault.

In Ancient Egypt there was a cult of the sun god Ra, who circles the sky in his chariot. This drawing is on the wall inside one of the pyramids.

Ideas about the world of the peoples of Mesopotamia. The ideas of the Chaldeans, the peoples who inhabited Mesopotamia, starting from the 7th century BC, were also close to the ancient Egyptian ones. According to their views, the Universe was a closed world, in the center of which was the Earth, which rested on the surface of the world’s waters and was a huge mountain.

Between the Earth and the “dam of heaven” - a high impenetrable wall that surrounded the world - there was a sea that was considered forbidden. Anyone who tried to explore its distance was doomed to death. The Chaldeans considered the sky to be a large dome rising above the world and resting on " the dam of heaven." It is made of solid metal by the High Boron Marduk.

During the day, the sky reflected sunlight, and at night it served as a dark blue background for the play of the gods - the planets, the Moon and the stars.

The universe according to the ancient Greeks. Like many other peoples, they imagined the Earth to be flat. This opinion, for example, was shared by the ancient Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus. He explained all natural phenomena based on a single material principle, which he considered water. He considered the earth to be a flat disk surrounded by a sea inaccessible to humans, from which the stars rise and set every evening.

The sun god Helios rose every morning from the eastern sea in a golden chariot and made his way across the sky. Later, the Pythagoreans moved away from Thales' theory, suggesting that the earth was round. A. Samossky argued that the Earth, together with other planets, revolves around the sun. For this he was expelled.

System of the world according to Aristotle. The great Greek philosopher Aristotle understood that the Earth is spherical and gave one of the strongest evidence of this - the round shape of the Earth's shadow on the Moon during lunar eclipses. He also understood that the Moon is a dark ball, illuminated by the Sun and revolving around the Earth. But Aristotle considered the Earth to be the center of the world. He believed matter to consist of four elements, which form four spheres: earth, water, air and fire. Even further away are the spheres of the planets - seven luminaries moving between the stars.

Even further away is the sphere of fixed stars. Aristotle's teachings were progressive in terms of science, although his worldview was idealistic, since he recognized the divine principle. Later, all this was used by the church against the advanced ideas of supporters of the heliocentric system of the world structure. This is a water clock - the main device for measuring time in ancient times, along with a sundial.

Astronomical performances in India. The sacred books of the ancient Hindus reflect their ideas about the structure of the world, which have much in common with the views of the Egyptians. According to these ideas, a flat Earth with a huge mountain in the center is supported by 4 elephants, which stand on a huge turtle floating in the ocean.

In 400-650, a cycle of mathematical and astronomical works was created in India, the so-called SidHanta, written by different authors. In these works we already encounter a picture of the world with a spherical Earth in the center and circular orbits around it, close to Aristotle’s world system and slightly simplified compared to Ptolemy’s system.

The rotation of the Earth around its axis is mentioned several times. From India, astronomical knowledge began to spread to the west, primarily to the Arabs and the peoples of Central Asia. This is the sundial of the Delhi Observatory.

Observatories of the Ancient Mayans. In Central America in 250-900, the astronomy of the Mayan peoples, who inhabited the southern part of modern Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, reached a high level of development. The main Mayan structures have survived to this day. The picture shows a Mayan observatory (circa 900)

In shape, this structure reminds us of modern observatories, but the Mayan stone dome did not rotate around its axis and there were no telescopes at the bottom. Observations of celestial bodies were made with the naked eye using goniometric instruments.

The Mayans had a cult of Venus, which was reflected in their calendar, built on the synodic period of Venus (the period of changing configurations of Venus relative to the Sun), equal to 584 days. After 900, the Mayan culture began to decline, and then ceased to exist altogether. Their cultural heritage was destroyed by conquerors and monks. On the back is the head of the ancient Mayan sun god.

Ideas about the world in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, under the influence of the Catholic Church, there was a return to the primitive ideas of antiquity about a flat Earth and the hemispheres of the sky resting on it. It depicts observations of the sky with the primitive instruments of 13th century astronomers.

The great Uzbek astronomer Ulugbek. One of the remarkable astronomers of the Middle Ages is Muhammad Taragbaiblin Ulugbekblin, the grandson of the famous conqueror Timurablin. Having been appointed by his father Shahrukhomblin as the ruler of Samarblinkard, Ulugbekblin built an observatory there, where a giant quadrant with a radius of 40 meters was installed, which had no equal among the goniometric objects of that time.

The catalog of positions of 1018 stars compiled by Ulugbekblin surpassed others in accuracy and was reprinted many times in Europe until the 17th century. Ulugbekblin determined the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, the constant of the annual procession, and he also compiled tables of the movements of the planets. Ulugbekblin's educational activities and his disdain for religion aroused the wrath of the Muslim church. He was treacherously killed. Shown here is the Ulugbekblin quadrant plate with degree divisions.

Determining position on the high seas using a sextant. The successes of navigation and the era of great geographical discoveries required a new development of astronomy, since the position of a ship in the ocean could only be determined by astronomical means. The drawing, made from an original by I. Strada-nus and an engraving by I. Galle (1520), depicts a ship captain determining the height of the Sun above the horizon using a sextant - a device that allows, by rotating a flat mirror, to combine the image of the Sun with the horizon and according to a reading on the scale determine the angle of elevation of the Sun above the horizon.

Latitude and longitude were determined graphically from the map. To determine latitudes and longitudes, until the 1111th century, an astrolabe was also used - a goniometric device with which it was possible to measure both azimuths and zenith distances of luminaries. The back of the postcard shows the astrolabe of the German astronomer of the second half of the 15th century, I. Regiomontanus, made in 1468.

Celestial globe. The location of constellations and stars in the sky was conveniently depicted on its reduced model - a celestial globe. The first celestial globes in Europe began to be produced in the middle of the 16th century in Germany. However, in the East such globes appeared much earlier - in the second half of the 13th century.

The celestial globe made at the observatory in Marat under the guidance of the remarkable Azerbaijani astronomer Nasi-reddin Tuya by master Muhammad ben Muyid el Ordi in 1279 has been preserved. The painting depicts a celestial globe from 1584. described and probably used by the 16th century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The celestial equator, ecliptic, declination circles and latitude circles are marked on it, converging to the celestial pole and the ecliptic pole, respectively. The horizontal ring enclosing the globe signifies the horizon plane.

A vertical circle with divisions in the plane of the drawing is the celestial meridian. The globe depicts the symbolic outlines of the constellations and the stars visible to the naked eye (except for the faintest ones).

An astronomer's office from the early 16th century. The painting is based on a modern drawing by I. Stradanus, engraved by I. Galle around 1520. We see an early 16th century astronomer, a contemporary of Copernicus. Using a compass, he measures the position of the star on the planisphere (the image of a sphere on a plane). Nearby, on his desk, is a celestial globe, an hourglass, a square, tables with which he compares his measurements.

On another table we see an armillary sphere (a model of the main circles of the celestial sphere), an eclimeter, books, and other instruments. In the foreground is a model of the Universe with the solid Earth in the center, the orbits of the planets around it are visible. In the background is a model of a ship from that era. The main task of astronomers of that time was to determine as accurately as possible the positions of the stars and the Moon, from which longitude was determined. In addition, astronomers of that era tried to improve the theory of planetary motion, based on the Ptolemaic world system.

Portrait of Copernicus. The great Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) revolutionized the worldview by proving that the Earth is not at the center of the world, but is an ordinary planet revolving around the Sun. The son of a merchant, Copernicus received an excellent education, first at the University of Krakow, and then at universities in Italy. In addition to astronomy, he studied law and medicine.

Having become familiar with the Ptolemaic system of the world, Copernicus was convinced of its inconsistency and, already in his youth, began to develop a heliocentric system of the world. In the course of this work, Copernicus compiled an accurate catalog of the positions of the stars and systematically observed the positions of the planets. Only after being convinced of the validity of his theory, Copernicus sent his work “On the Conversion of the Celestial Spheres” to print. The book was published on the eve of Copernicus' death.

System of the world according to Copernicus. According to the heliocentric system of the world, the center of our planetary system is the Sun. The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit around it (in order of distance from the Sun). The only celestial body that orbits the Earth is the Moon. The importance of Copernicus's work is difficult to overestimate. F. Engels wrote about this: “The revolutionary act by which the study of nature declared its independence... was the publication of an immortal creation in which Copernicus challenged - albeit timidly and, so to speak, only on his deathbed - a challenge to church authority in matters of nature "

Copernicus' theory was further developed in the works of I. Kepler and I. Newton, of whom the first discovered the kinematic laws of planetary motion, and the second discovered the force that controls these movements - the force of universal gravitation. Of great importance for confirming the Copernican system were the telescopic discoveries of Galileo and the propaganda of this world system by Giordano Bruno in the second half of the 16th - early 17th centuries.

People began to think about what the Universe is in ancient times, before the advent of writing and more or less scientific methods of understanding the world around us. Ancient man in his ideas proceeded from the limited knowledge that he could obtain through observations of the nature among which he lived.


Modern science has borrowed an approximate understanding of the most ancient cosmogonic theories from the worldviews of the peoples of Africa and Northern Siberia, whose culture for a long time did not come into contact with the common human culture.

Representations of prehistoric peoples

Prehistoric people considered the world around them to be a single living being, huge and incomprehensible. Thus, until recently, one of the Siberian tribes had the idea of ​​the world as a huge deer grazing among the stars. Her wool is endless forests, and animals, birds and people are just fleas living in her wool. When they are too annoying, the doe tries to get rid of them by swimming in the river (rainy autumn) or lying in the snow (winter). The Sun and Moon are also giant animals grazing next to the deer-Earth.

Ancient Egyptians and Greeks

Peoples whose level of development was higher received the opportunity to travel to distant countries and saw that there are not only mountains, or steppes, or forests in the world. They imagined the Earth as a flat disk or a high mountain, surrounded on all sides by an endless sea. The vault of heaven in the form of a huge overturned bowl sank its edges into this sea, closing the small Universe of the ancient world.


Such ideas existed among the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. According to their cosmogonic version, the Sun deity rolled across the firmament in a fiery chariot every day, illuminating the plane of the Earth.

Wisdom of Ancient India

The ancient Indians had a legend that the plane of the Earth does not just float in the sky or float in the oceans, but rests on the backs of three giant elephants, which, in turn, stand on the shell of a turtle. Considering that the turtle, in turn, rested on a coiled snake, which personified the vault of heaven, we can assume that the animals described are nothing more than symbols of powerful natural phenomena.

Ancient China and world harmony

In ancient China, they believed that the Universe was like an egg split in half. The upper part of the egg forms the vault of heaven and is the focus of everything pure, light and bright. The lower part of the egg is the Earth, floating in the world's oceans and having a square shape.


Earthly manifestations are accompanied by darkness, heaviness and dirt. The combination of two opposite principles forms our entire world in its richness and diversity.

Aztecs, Incas, Mayans

In the ideas of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent, time and space were a single whole and were designated by the same word “pacha”. For them, time was a ring, on one side of which there was the present and the visible past, i.e. what was stored in memory. The future was in the invisible part of the ring and at some point merged with the deep past.

Scientific thought of Ancient Greece

More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Greek mathematicians Pythagoras, followed by Aristotle, developed the theory of a spherical Earth, which, in their opinion, was the center of the Universe. The Sun, Moon and numerous stars revolved around, mounted on several crystal celestial spheres nested within one another.

Aristotle's universe, developed and supplemented by another ancient scientist - Ptolemy - lasted for one and a half millennia, satisfying the intellectual needs of the majority of the learned minds of antiquity.


These ideas formed the basis for the research of the great mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, who, based on his observations and calculations, compiled his own heliocentric picture of the world. Its center was occupied by the Sun, around which were seven planets, surrounded by a fixed celestial sphere with stars placed on it. The teachings of Copernicus gave impetus to modern astronomy, the emergence of such scientists as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and others.

Ideas about the Universe in ancient times

Ancient myths about the Earth and the Universe

People have been observing the sky since ancient times. In that distant era, when people were completely powerless before nature, a belief arose in powerful forces that supposedly created the world and govern it; for many centuries the Moon, Sun, and planets were deified. We learn about this from the myths of all the peoples of the world.

This is how ancient people imagined “the dwelling of God in heaven”

The first ideas about the universe were very naive; they were closely intertwined with religious beliefs, which were based on the division of the world into two parts - earthly and heavenly. If now everyone knows that the Earth itself is a celestial body, then previously the “earthly” was opposed to the “heavenly”. They thought that there was a “firmament of heaven” to which the stars were attached, and the Earth was taken as the fixed center of the universe.

Different peoples did not develop a correct idea of ​​the Earth and its shape immediately and not at the same time. However, where exactly, when, and among which people it was most correct is difficult to establish. Very few reliable ancient documents and material monuments have been preserved about this.

According to legend, the ancient Indians imagined the Earth as a plane lying on the backs of elephants. We have reached valuable historical information about how the ancient peoples who lived in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the Nile Delta and along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea - in Asia Minor and Southern Europe - imagined the Earth. For example, written documents from ancient Babylonia dating back about 6 thousand years have been preserved. The inhabitants of Babylon, who inherited their culture from even more ancient peoples, imagined the Earth in the form of a mountain, on the western slope of which Babylonia is located. They knew that to the south of Babylon there was a sea, and to the east there were mountains that they did not dare cross. That’s why it seemed to them that Babylonia was located on the western slope of the “world” mountain. This mountain is surrounded by the sea, and on the sea, like an overturned bowl, rests the solid sky - the heavenly world, where, like on Earth, there is land, water and air. The celestial land is the belt of the 12 constellations of the Zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. The Sun appears in each constellation for about a month each year. The Sun, Moon and five planets move along this belt of land (since Babylonian times, people have been able to distinguish planets from stars: firstly, planets, unlike stars, do not twinkle, and secondly, the location of the planets relative to the familiar pattern of constellations is constantly changing) . Under the Earth there is an abyss - hell, where the souls of the dead descend. At night, the Sun passes through this underground from the western edge of the Earth to the eastern, so that in the morning it will again begin its daily journey across the sky. Watching the Sun set over the sea horizon, people thought that it went into the sea and also rose from the sea. Thus, the ancient Babylonians’ ideas about the Earth were based on observations of natural phenomena, but limited knowledge did not allow them to be correctly explained.

The ancient Jews imagined the Earth differently. They lived on a plain, and the Earth seemed to them to be a plain, with mountains rising here and there. Jews assigned a special place in the universe to the winds, which bring with them either rain or drought. The abode of the winds, in their opinion, was located in the lower zone of the sky and separated the Earth from the celestial waters: snow, rain and hail. Under the Earth there are waters, from which canals run up, feeding seas and rivers. The ancient Jews apparently had no idea about the shape of the entire Earth.

Ideas about the “firmament” in Abrahamic religions

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians had a similar concept of the cycle of day and night. The Egyptians believed that there was a celestial river flowing from east to west over the Earth, and there was an underground river flowing from east to west. During the day, the Sun god named Ra travels along the celestial river from east to west, and we see him as the Sun, and at night he returns back along the underground river. The ancient Greek myth differed from the Egyptian one only in that the Greek god of the Sun named Helios did not float across the sky on a river, but rode a chariot.

However, already in ancient times, such primitive myths ceased to suit thinking people. Already in the poems of the ancient Greek poet Homer “Iliad” and “Odyssey” the Earth is spoken of as a slightly convex disk, reminiscent of a warrior’s shield. The land is washed on all sides by the Ocean River. A copper firmament stretches above the Earth, along which the Sun moves, rising daily from the waters of the Ocean in the east and plunging into them in the west.

People watched the luminaries not only out of curiosity, but also because observing the movement of celestial bodies helped in planning agricultural work. For example, the agriculture of Ancient Egypt depended on the Nile floods, which recurred annually. And it turned out that periods of Nile floods are preceded by the appearance in the sky of one of the brightest stars - Sirius, which, as a result of the annual rotation of celestial sulfur, becomes visible annually starting from a certain date. Later, when humanity settled in places where weather changes are noticeable with the changing seasons, observation of the movement of celestial bodies served to create the first calendars.

Ancient ideas about space and religion . The ancient farmer, tied to his piece of land, could not have had a large circle of observation and experience. He judged the world only on the basis of what he directly felt and saw with his own eyes. He believed that the world was divided into two completely different parts - the Earth and the sky. The earth seemed small and flat to him, above which, like the roof of a house, rose the crystal “firmament of heaven.” Above the “firmament” there are supposedly “upper waters”, which sometimes pour out through holes in the sky, by the will of God, onto the Earth in the form of rain. The Sun, Moon and other celestial bodies move across the sky around the Earth.

With such ideas, it was easy to come to the conclusion that everything in the world was created for man, that man is the “crown of creation,” that the Sun, Moon and stars shed their light on the Earth only for people. Moreover, every ancient people not only considered the Earth to be the center of the entire universe, but was inclined to believe that the very place where they lived was the center of the world. For example, the Chinese still call their country the Middle Kingdom; The Incas of Peru said that the center of the world is in the temple of Kutsko, whose name means “navel.”

In one form or another, we find this view among all the peoples of the ancient world - the Egyptians, Greeks, etc. Even Babylonian astronomy, despite its rather high development, still did not come to a new, more correct view of the sky and Earth, on structure of the universe. In the oldest Babylonian writings we read that the Earth has the appearance of a convex island surrounded by the ocean, and the sky is simply a solid dome resting on the earth's surface. The celestial bodies are attached to this dome, and it separates the waters “below” (the ocean flowing around an island on earth) from the waters “above” (rainwater). The sun rises in the morning, leaving the heavenly gate, and in the evening, when setting, it passes through the western gate and moves somewhere underground at night.

This primitive view of the structure of the entire world was not subject to any change in Babylon, despite the continued development of the science of the sky. But this will not surprise us if we remember that Babylonian (like Egyptian, etc.) astronomy was the science of the priests. It was only an auxiliary tool for compiling a calendar and developing a cult ritual and remained entirely captive of religious ideas inextricably linked with the anthropogeocentric worldview.

The Babylonian view of the universe influenced the biblical description of the world. In European-Christian sacred books, the view is everywhere held that the Earth plays an exceptional role in the whole world, which was created and exists only for man. About the heavens in the Bible, for example, it is said that they are “solid as a cast mirror” (Book of Job, XXXVII, 18) and that they are established on columns - “the earth shook, the foundations of the heavens trembled and moved” (Second Book of Kings, XXII, 8 ), “the pillars of heaven tremble” (book of Job, XXVI, 41). As for the question of what the Earth rests on, the same “sacred” in different places gives contradictory ideas: the Earth is established on some basis - “where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth”, “on what are its foundations established” and who laid the cornerstone" (XXXIX, 4, 6), then a different view emerges - "he spread the north over the void, hung the Earth on nothing" (XXVI, 7).

The idea of ​​the exceptional position of the Earth in the world underlay not only every religion, but also astrology, which believed that by the movement of the planets and their position among the zodiacal constellations one can predict the future of nations, the fate of individuals, etc.

The enormous, comprehensive influence of the Sun on all processes occurring on Earth, on the life of plants and animals, was noticed very early by people. It was also found long ago that the time of year can be determined by the position of the stars in the sky, and therefore it seemed that, for example, the harvest depended on the stars, and not just on the Sun. All this ultimately led to the idea that all earthly events depend on the occurrence of certain celestial phenomena and that, therefore, all events in human life can be predicted from the celestial bodies. Therefore, in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria and other ancient countries, astrology was very popular. Astrologer-priests made observations of the heavenly bodies not only for the calendar, but also for astrological fortune-telling.

The Christian Church in the first centuries was unfriendly to it as a “pagan teaching” that recognized predestination and, therefore, contradicted the idea of ​​free will and responsibility for sins. However, during the Renaissance, astrology became widespread in Western Europe and even became a compulsory subject of teaching in a number of universities, which was in complete harmony with the anthropogeocentric worldview.

If the Earth, as the abode of the “crown of creation” - man, occupies a special position in the universe, and the heavenly bodies are created only for the Earth and its inhabitants, then, according to astrologers, it can be assumed that the planets (astrologers also included the Sun and Moon among the planets) influence everything that happens on Earth and the fate of individual people. Therefore, under kings, generals, etc., there was a special position of an astrologer who compiled horoscopes, i.e., predictions of future events based on the location of the planets among the constellations at the time of a person’s birth and at other important moments in his life. Astrology and astronomy were closely related at that time, with astrology being the source of livelihood for astronomers. Moreover, both were based on the same anthropogeocentric idea of ​​the world.

This naive idea fully satisfied the needs of ancient agriculture, hunting, fishing and navigation, while people's experience was limited.

The Birth of the Scientific Approach . Already in ancient times, man was faced with the question: where does the Sun go after setting in the west? As we have seen, the Babylonians, who saw the sky as a solid hemisphere, believed that the Sun rose in the morning through the eastern “heavenly gate” and set in the evening through the western one. Thales, Anaximander and other Greek thinkers who lived between 600-500. until hr. era in the Ionian cities on the shores of Asia Minor, were no longer limited to the old question: what is above us and around us? They took a new path, posing another question: what is beneath us?

From the observation that some stars do not set, but describe a complete circle above the horizon, while others plunge below it and rise again, they broke away from visible impressions and came to the conclusion that the sky is spherical. But if this is so, if in addition to one dome-shaped “ceiling” above the Earth there is also a hemisphere below it, that is, if the sky has the shape of a complete sphere, then there is nothing to talk about “heavenly gates”. From this point of view, it is necessary that the spherical, spherical sky rotate around an axis, due to which the rising and setting of the luminaries occurs. It followed that the Earth does not lie on anything, but is isolated on all sides in space, and when the Sun; sets in the west, it describes the second half of its circular path on the invisible part of the celestial sphere.

However, the view continued to exist that the Earth was flat, that it was a disk or a thin cylinder, on the upper surface of which people lived. Anaximander (610-547 BC) made a very important amendment to this idea: he mentally increased the size of the celestial sphere and decreased the size of the Earth, so that the naive, primitive idea of ​​the Earth being limited by the sky disappeared. It thus turned out that the flat Earth, surrounded by an air shell, hangs freely in space, that equally distant from every point of the celestial sphere of almost infinite dimensions, it cannot fall either up or down and therefore remains in “equilibrium” in the center of the whole world . Of course, for a long time this idea of ​​Anaximander seemed dizzying, since it broke with the usual ideas.

After the whole world began to appear as a sphere, a further step was taken: ideas appeared that the Earth was not a flat disk or a cylinder, but a sphere. After all, if the Earth is flat, then the horizon should be the same in all places, and as a result of this, the view of the starry sky should be the same everywhere, while earthly objects from any point should be visible entirely from top to bottom. Meanwhile, Greek navigators noticed that the stars rising above the southern part of the horizon off the coast of Africa were not visible at all off the coast of the Black Sea, that is, in more northern countries; this indicated that the Earth has a curved surface and that the position of the horizon is different in different places. At the same time, the Greeks living on the islands and sailing the seas could not help but pay attention to the fact that when approaching the shore, the tops of high objects (mountains, ships, buildings, etc.) are first visible, then the middle ones and finally the lower ones; this led to the idea that the Earth should have some kind of convexity, shielding the lower parts of objects from us.

When people began to travel far, evidence gradually began to accumulate that the Earth was not flat, but convex. So, moving south, travelers noticed that in the southern side of the sky the stars rose above the horizon in proportion to the distance traveled and new stars appeared above the Earth that were not visible before. And in the northern side of the sky, on the contrary, the stars descend down to the horizon and then completely disappear behind it. The bulge of the Earth was also confirmed by observations of receding ships. The ship gradually disappears over the horizon. The hull of the ship has already disappeared and only the masts are visible above the surface of the sea. Then they disappear too. On this basis, people began to assume that the Earth was spherical.

The founder of the doctrine that the Earth is a ball hanging freely in space is considered to be Pythagoras, a philosopher and mathematician of the 6th century BC. In terms of its significance and boldness, this idea can be placed on a par with the doctrine of the movement of the Earth or with the discovery of the law of universal attraction. In any case, it is one of the greatest achievements of scientific thought of antiquity in general.

The famous ancient Greek scientist Aristotle (IV century BC) was the first to use observations of lunar eclipses to prove the sphericity of the Earth: the shadow from the Earth falling on the full Moon is always round. During eclipses, the Earth is turned to the Moon in different directions. But only the ball always casts a round shadow.

Finally, the outstanding astronomer of the ancient world, Aristarchus of Samos (late 4th - first half of the 3rd century BC) expressed the idea that it is not the Sun together with the planets that moves around the Earth, but the Earth and all the planets revolve around the Sun. However, he had very little evidence at his disposal. And about 1,700 years passed before the Polish scientist Copernicus managed to prove this.

Gradually, ideas about the Earth began to be based not on a speculative interpretation of individual phenomena, but on precise calculations and measurements.

Then the question arose about the size of the spherical Earth. This question was first solved, and in an amazingly simple manner, by the Greek scientist Eratosthenes (276-196 BC). Eratosthenes established that on the day of the summer solstice in Alexandria, at noon, the Sun was 7.2° from the zenith (from the highest point of the sky), i.e., one fiftieth of a circle. On the same day, to the south, in Siena (now here is the city of Assouan), lying on the same meridian with Alexandria, the Sun illuminated the bottom of the wells, i.e. there the Sun was exactly at the zenith, directly overhead. These two cities are 5,000 stadia apart. Therefore, Eratosthenes believed that if this distance is one fiftieth of the circumference of the globe, then its entire circumference is 250,000 stadia.

Eratosthenes' calculation scheme

Having put forward the idea of ​​the spherical shape of the firmament, the Ionian philosophical school, represented by Anaximander, took the first step along the path of renunciation of direct impressions. By the way, one of the representatives of this school, Anaximenes (VI century BC), considered the celestial sphere to be solid and transparent, and therefore invisible. According to this philosopher, which dominated the minds of people for a very long time, the heavenly “firmament” rotates around an axis, and the stars are driven into it like golden nails. However, one of the most remarkable representatives of the Ionian school, Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), completely rejected the idea of ​​\u200b\u200battaching the celestial bodies to a solid, crystalline vault of heaven. He considered the stars to consist of the same matter as the Earth, namely rocky masses, some of which are incandescent and luminous, while others are cold and dark. In connection with this idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe unity of earthly and celestial matter, Anaxagoras said that the Sun consists of molten substance similar to terrestrial matter. To support this, Anaxagoras cited meteorites falling from the sky as an example. He described one “heavenly stone” that fell in his time in Thrace and was equal in size to a millstone. He believed that this piece of iron, which fell to the Earth in daylight, originated from the Sun. This allegedly proves that our daylight consists of red-hot iron.

Anaxagoras, further, argued that the Sun is many times larger in size than the entire Peloponnese, and the Moon is approximately equal to the Peloponnese. The moon is so large that mountains and valleys fit on it, and - like the Earth - it is the habitat of living beings; This dark body receives its light from the Sun; it is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow cast by the Earth. It is characteristic that the question: if celestial bodies, like terrestrial bodies, are heavy, then why do they not fall to Earth? - Anaxagoras replied that the reason for this was their circular motion around the Earth. This means, from the point of view of this thinker, celestial bodies do not fall to Earth because their circular motion outweighs the force of the fall, which pulls the bodies down. In this regard, he compared the movement of the Moon around the Earth with the movement of a stone in a sling, the rapid rotation of which destroys the desire of the stone to fall to the Earth (this is probably the oldest concept of centrifugal force that has come down to us).

For a long time, Anaxagoras hid these views of his or expressed them only to his closest students. When these views became known thanks to the dissemination of his essay “On Nature” (only a few excerpts from it have reached us), he became a victim of obscurantism - he was imprisoned as an atheist and sentenced to death. Only thanks to the urgent efforts of his powerful student and friend Pericles, the death penalty for Anaxagoras was replaced by exile from his native country: he was released with the obligation to leave Athens forever.

This idea of ​​matter undoubtedly influenced the great ancient Greek materialist Democritus (460-370 or 360 BC), who developed the atomic theory of the world, which played a colossal role in the development of natural science and philosophy.

According to this theory of Democritus, the universe is beginningless and was never created by anyone; everything that was, is and will be is determined by necessity, depends on certain reasons, and not on the whim of some supernatural, divine beings. The Universe consists of indivisible, qualitatively identical smallest particles - atoms, which are in continuous motion from eternity. Atoms, differing in shape, change their relative positions, and for this to be possible, space must be completely empty. Any modification is caused by a change in the relative position of atoms, so that the variety of things depends on the number, shape and combination of atoms. The number of atoms is infinitely large and their shapes are infinitely different, but qualitatively these particles are completely identical. When moving in infinite space, they collide, and this causes vortices from which celestial bodies and various worlds are formed. Democritus taught that in infinite space an infinite number of combinations of atoms can form an infinite number of worlds.

In general, Democritus painted the following picture of the universe: the universe is infinite, its matter is eternal, and the number of worlds is countless, some of the worlds are similar to each other, others are completely different. These bodies are not permanent; they arise and disappear, we see them in various stages of development. Democritus took the whitish shimmering stripe in the sky, since ancient times called the Milky Way, for the accumulation of a colossal number of very closely spaced stars. He called the stars very distant suns; He said about the Moon that it is similar to the Earth, has mountains, valleys, etc.

The views of Democritus were clearly atheistic, and therefore they were considered “dangerous” for the masses. To prevent their spread, aristocrats and reactionaries did not hesitate in their means. For example, Plato and his students bought up the works of Democritus and destroyed them (only minor excerpts from them have reached us). As a result, the bold materialistic ideas of Democritus had only a minor influence in the era in which they arose.

“Father of the Church” Hippolytus (about 220 AD), in his work “Refutation of All Heresies,” sets out Democritus’s idea of ​​the universe as follows: “The worlds (according to Democritus) are countless and varied in size. In some of them there is neither sun nor moon, in others the sun and moon are larger in size than ours, and in some there are a greater number of them. The distances between the worlds are not equal, between some they are large, between others they are smaller, and some worlds are still growing, others are already in bloom, others are collapsing, and at the same time, worlds arise in some places and are destroyed in others. They die from each other, colliding with each other. Some worlds have no animals and plants and are completely devoid of moisture... Our world is in its prime, no longer able to accept anything from the outside.”

These ideas were used and developed by the outstanding thinker Epicurus (341-270 BC) - one of the pillars of ancient materialism. This philosopher defended the doctrine of the innumerability of worlds and clearly showed that from this doctrine the idea of ​​the spatial infinity of the universe necessarily follows.

Epicurus deduced the infinity of the universe from the fact that “universe” means “all-containing,” so that outside of it there is nothing and cannot be. He argued: “The Universe is infinite, space has neither bottom nor top, nor any end; the universe is infinite because everything limited has something outside itself; the external, after all, presupposes another next to itself, with which it could be compared, but precisely such another is not next to the universe and therefore cannot be compared with anything. Thus, there is nothing external, and therefore the universe has no boundaries - therefore it is infinite and unlimited."

The great Roman poet Lucretius Carus (99-55 BC), an ardent follower of Epicurus, approached this issue in the same way, who in his philosophical poem “On the Nature of Things” outlined the basic ideas of ancient materialism. In this atheistic work, Lucretius says: “If we must admit that there is nothing beyond the universe, it has no edges and no end or limit. And it doesn’t matter what part of the universe you are in: wherever you are, everywhere, from the place you occupy, it remains infinite in all directions.” By the way, Lucretius correctly emphasized the fact that from the idea of ​​​​the infinity of world space, the denial of the idea of ​​​​the central position of the Earth or any other point in the universe logically follows. He wrote: “... do not believe the statement that everything rushes towards some center of the universe,” because “... the universe has no center anywhere, since it has no end.”

If ancient natural philosophy put forward the doctrine of the innumerability of worlds and the spatial infinity of the universe, then ancient astronomy, on the contrary, tried to further establish geocentrism and, therefore, supported the doctrine of the spatial finitude of the universe. In connection with this contradiction, natural philosophers-materialists and practical astronomers usually simply completely ignored each other, without even trying to reconcile their different points of view. The losers, however, were the materialists, although their ideas were never completely forgotten in the ancient world. But these ideas, which refuted the religious worldview, could not achieve such a spread as the idealistic philosophy developed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. These philosophers had a huge influence on the subsequent development of thought, but they did not contribute to the progress of our knowledge of the universe, since they set certain limits for science. For example, Socrates (469 - 399 BC) strictly commanded his students not to deal with questions about the movement of the heavenly bodies, their distances from the Earth, their origin, etc., considering these questions unsolvable. According to him Xenophon’s favorite student, he assured that “all this will forever remain a mystery to a mortal, and, of course, the gods themselves are saddened to see man’s efforts to unravel what they wanted to forever hide from him with an impenetrable veil.”

From the point of view of the progress of the natural scientific worldview, the ancient Greek idealistic philosophy, which reached its highest development in the teachings of Aristotle, was undoubtedly a step back in comparison with the teachings of Democritus. This philosophy, by its very essence, served as a justification for a religious worldview. It was clothed with a thick shell of animism, extreme anthropomorphism, naive teleology and other attributes of priesthood (which is why it was used by Christian theologians).

Questions and assignments?

1. How did the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks imagine the Earth and the Universe?

2. How is the structure of the world described in the Bible? Do these descriptions match the science?

3. why did people start studying the movement of celestial bodies?

4. How and when did people realize that the Earth is spherical?

5. Which of the ancient scientists came up with materialistic ideas? Why did religion and the church criticize them? Who was right in their disputes?

As soon as a person acquired intelligence, he began to be interested in how everything works. Why doesn't the water overflow over the edge of the world? Does the Sun revolve around the Earth? What's inside black holes?

Socrates' "I know that I know nothing" means that we are aware of the amount of still unknown in this world. We have come from myths to quantum physics, but there are still more questions than answers, and they are only becoming more complex.

Cosmogonic myths

Myth is the first way with which people explained the origin and structure of everything around them and their own existence. Cosmogonic myths tell how the world emerged from chaos or nothingness. In myth, the creation of the universe is carried out by deities. Depending on the specific culture, the resulting cosmology (idea about the structure of the world) varies. For example, the firmament could seem like a lid, the shell of a world egg, the flap of a giant shell, or the skull of a giant.

As a rule, in all these stories there is a division of the original chaos into heaven and earth (up and down), the creation of an axis (the core of the universe), the creation of natural objects and living beings. Basic concepts common to different peoples are called archetypes.

Physicist Alexander Ivanchik talks about the early stages of the evolution of the Universe and the origin of chemical elements in his lecture “Postscience”.

The world is like a body

Ancient man explored the world with the help of his body, measured distances with steps and elbows, and worked a lot with his hands. This is reflected in the personification of nature (thunder is the result of the blows of God's hammer, wind is the deity blowing). The world was also associated with a large body.

For example, in Scandinavian mythology, the world was created from the body of the giant Ymir, whose eyes became ponds and his hair became forests. In Hindu mythology, this function was assumed by Purusha, in Chinese mythology by Pangu. In all cases, the structure of the visible world is associated with the body of an anthropomorphic creature, a great ancestor or deity, sacrificing himself so that the world appears. At the same time, man himself is a microcosm, a universe in miniature.

Great Tree

Another archetypal plot that often appears among different nations is the axis mundi, the world mountain or the world tree. For example, the Yggdrasil ash tree among the Scandinavians. Images of a tree with a human figurine in the center were also found among the Mayans and Aztecs. In the Hindu Vedas, the sacred tree was called Ashwattha, in Turkic mythology - Baiterek. The world tree connects the lower, middle and upper worlds, its roots are in the underground regions, and the crown goes to the heavens.

Take me for a ride, big turtle!

The mythology of a world turtle swimming in the vast ocean, on whose back the Earth rests, is found among the peoples of Ancient India and Ancient China, and in the legends of the indigenous population of North America. Variations of the myth of giant "support animals" include an elephant, a snake, and a whale.

Cosmological ideas of the Greeks

Greek philosophers laid down the astronomical concepts that we still use today. Different philosophers of their school had their own point of view on the model of the universe. For the most part, they adhered to the geocentric system of the world.

The concept assumed that at the center of the world there was a stationary Earth, around which the Sun, Moon and stars revolved. In this case, the planets revolve around the Earth, forming the “Earth system”. Tycho Brahe also denied the daily rotation of the Earth.

Scientific Revolution of the Enlightenment

Geographical discoveries, sea voyages, and the development of mechanics and optics made the picture of the world more complex and complete. Since the 17th century, the “telescopic era” began: observation of celestial bodies at a new level became available to man and the path to a deeper study of space opened up. From a philosophical point of view, the world was thought of as objectively knowable and mechanistic.

Johannes Kepler and the orbits of celestial bodies

Tycho Brahe's student Johannes Kepler, who adhered to the Copernican theory, discovered the laws of motion of celestial bodies. The Universe, according to his theory, is a ball within which the Solar system is located. Having formulated three laws, which are now called “Kepler’s laws,” he described the movement of planets around the Sun in orbits and replaced circular orbits with ellipses.

Discoveries of Galileo Galilei

Galileo defended Copernicanism, adhering to the heliocentric system of the world, and also insisted that the Earth has a daily rotation (spinning around its axis). This led him to famous disagreements with the Roman Church, which did not support Copernicus' theory.

Galileo built his own telescope, discovered the moons of Jupiter and explained the glow of the Moon by sunlight reflected by the Earth.

All this was evidence that the Earth has the same nature as other celestial bodies, which also have “moons” and move. Even the Sun turned out to be not ideal, which refuted the Greek ideas about the perfection of the heavenly world - Galileo saw spots on it.

Newton's model of the universe

Isaac Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation, developed a unified system of terrestrial and celestial mechanics and formulated the laws of dynamics - these discoveries formed the basis of classical physics. Newton proved Kepler's laws from the position of gravity, declared that the Universe is infinite and formulated his ideas about matter and density.

His work “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” in 1687 summarized the results of the research of his predecessors and laid down a method for creating a model of the Universe using mathematical analysis.

20th century: everything is relative

A qualitative breakthrough in man’s understanding of the world in the twentieth century was the following: general theory of relativity (GTR), which were developed in 1916 by Albert Einstein. According to Einstein's theory, space is not immutable, time has a beginning and an end and can flow differently in different conditions.

General Relativity is still the most influential theory of space, time, motion and gravity - that is, everything that constitutes physical reality and the principles of the world. The theory of relativity states that space must either expand or contract. It turned out that the Universe is dynamic, not stationary.

American astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that our Milky Way galaxy, in which the Solar System is located, is only one of hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the Universe. Studying distant galaxies, he concluded that they were scattering, moving away from each other, and suggested that the Universe was expanding.

If we proceed from the concept of constant expansion of the Universe, it turns out that it was once in a compressed state. The event that caused the transition from a very dense state of matter to expansion was called Big Bang.

XXI century: dark matter and the Multiverse

Today we know that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate: this is facilitated by the pressure of “dark energy”, which fights the force of gravity. “Dark energy,” the nature of which is still not clear, makes up the bulk of the Universe. Black holes are “gravitational graves” in which matter and radiation disappear, and into which dead stars presumably turn.

The age of the Universe (the time since the expansion began) is supposedly estimated at 13-15 billion years.

We realized that we are not unique - after all, there are so many stars and planets around. Therefore, modern scientists consider the question of the origin of life on Earth in the context of why the Universe arose in the first place, where this became possible.

Galaxies, stars and planets revolving around them, and even the atoms themselves, exist only because the push of dark energy at the moment of the Big Bang was sufficient to prevent the Universe from collapsing again, and at the same time so that space did not fly apart too much. The probability of this is very small, so some modern theoretical physicists suggest that there are many parallel Universes.

Theoretical physicists believe that some universes may have 17 dimensions, others may contain stars and planets like ours, and some may consist of little more than an amorphous field.

Alan Lightmanphysicist

However, it is impossible to refute this using experiment, so other scientists believe that the concept of the Multiverse should be considered rather philosophical.

Today's ideas about the Universe are largely related to unsolved problems of modern physics. Quantum mechanics, the constructions of which differ significantly from what classical mechanics says, physical paradoxes and new theories assure us that the world is much more diverse than it seems, and the results of observations largely depend on the observer.

You have probably heard the word “Universe” more than once. What it is? This word usually means outer space and everything that fills it: cosmic or celestial bodies, gas, dust. In other words, it's the whole world. Our planet is part of the vast Universe, one of countless celestial bodies.

An ancient device for measuring the distance between celestial bodies

For thousands of years, people have admired the starry sky and watched the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets. And we always asked ourselves an exciting question: how does the Universe work?

Babylonian tablet with astronomical information

Modern ideas about the structure of the Universe developed gradually. In ancient times they were completely different from what they are now. For a long time, the Earth was considered the center of the Universe.

The ancient Indians believed that the Earth was flat and rested on the backs of giant elephants, which in turn rested on a turtle. A huge turtle stands on a snake, which personifies the sky and, as it were, closes the earthly space.

The Universe as Viewed by the Ancient Indians

The Universe was seen differently by the peoples living on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The earth, in their opinion, is a mountain surrounded on all sides by the sea. Above them, in the form of an overturned bowl, is the starry sky.

Ancient Greek scientists did a lot to develop views about the structure of the Universe. One of them - the great mathematician Pythagoras (c. 580-500 BC) - was the first to suggest that the Earth is not flat at all, but has the shape of a ball. The correctness of this assumption was proven by another great Greek - Aristotle (384-322 BC).

Aristotle proposed his model of the structure of the Universe, or world system. In the center of the Universe, according to the scientist, there is a motionless Earth, around which eight celestial spheres, solid and transparent, revolve (translated from Greek “sphere” means ball). Celestial bodies are fixedly fixed on them: planets, Moon, Sun, stars. The ninth sphere ensures the movement of all other spheres; it is the engine of the Universe.

Aristotle's views were firmly established in science, although even some of his contemporaries did not agree with him. The ancient Greek scientist Aristarchus of Samos (320-250 BC) believed that the center of the Universe is not the Earth, but the Sun; The earth and other planets move around it. Unfortunately, these brilliant guesses were rejected and forgotten at that time.

The ideas of Aristotle and many other scientists were developed by the greatest ancient Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90-160 AD). He developed his own system of the world, in the center of which, like Aristotle, he placed the Earth. Around the motionless spherical Earth, according to Ptolemy, the Moon, the Sun, five (known at that time) planets, as well as the “sphere of fixed stars” move. This sphere limits the space of the Universe. Ptolemy outlined his views in detail in the grandiose work “The Great Mathematical Construction of Astronomy” in 13 books.

The Ptolemaic system explained well the apparent motion of celestial bodies. It made it possible to determine and predict their location at one time or another. This system dominated science for 13 centuries, and Ptolemy’s book was a reference book for many generations of astronomers.

Two great Greeks

Aristotle- the greatest scientist of Ancient Greece. He was originally from the city of Stagira. He devoted his entire life to collecting and comprehending information known to scientists of his time. He was interested in everything: the behavior and structure of animals, the laws of motion of bodies, the structure of the Universe, poetry, politics. He was the teacher of the outstanding commander Alexander the Great, who, having achieved fame, did not forget his old teacher. From his military campaigns, he constantly sent him samples of plants and animals unknown to the Greeks.

Aristotle left behind numerous works, for example “Physics” in 8 books, “On the Parts of Animals” in 10 books. Aristotle's authority was unquestioned in science for many centuries.

Claudius Ptolemy was born in Egypt, in the town of Ptolemais, and then studied and worked in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great. It was the largest city in the Mediterranean, the capital of the Egyptian kingdom. His libraries contained scientific works from the countries of the East and Greece. The famous Museum of Alexandria alone housed more than 700 thousand manuscripts. Famous scientists of the ancient world worked here.

Ptolemy was a comprehensively educated person: he studied astronomy, geography, and mathematics. Having summarized the work of ancient Greek astronomers, he created his own system of the world.

Test your knowledge

1. What is the Universe?
2. How did the ancient Indians imagine the Universe?
3. How does the Universe work according to Aristotle?
4. Why are the views of Aristarchus of Samos interesting?
5. How does the Universe work according to Ptolemy?

Think!

Compare the models of the Universe according to Aristotle and Ptolemy, find similarities and differences in them.

The Universe is outer space and everything that fills it: celestial bodies, gas, dust. Modern ideas about the structure of the Universe developed gradually. For a long time, the Earth was considered its center. It was this point of view that the ancient Greek scientists Aristotle and Ptolemy, who created their world systems, adhered to.