Prehistory of the Space Age

Prehistory of the Space Age

...........The events that led to human travel beyond the Earth stretch back thousands of years, and it is impossible to isolate the modern age of rocket ships and space stations from the earlier ages of technological and cultural development. Perhaps the greatest testament to the power of the human brain is our ability to construct and pilot vessels to perform interplanetary travel. But this ability was not an instantaneous achievement; it is an evolutionary legacy that has progressed and grown slowly for millennia. To understand the causal factors of the space age, it is necessary to examine critically not only technological and scientific developments, but also the development of human culture and ideology. From the ancient philosophers to the scientists of today, a thirst for knowledge and explanation with proof has increased and co-developed with the tools of resourceful technology.

Stirrings of Science: the Ionian Ideal

...........New theories and ideas introduced by the early Ionian Greek philosophers around the year 600 BC transformed the human brain from a storehouse of superstition and myth to a tool for the pursuit of science. Before men such as Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Aristotle, some of the first philosophers, the universe was generally thought to be populated by gods and goddesses who controlled the events on earth with a casual disregard. These men introduced the revolutionary idea that the world was not controlled by the random whims of deities, instead it was bound by immutable laws of nature, laws that could be perceived, recorded and observed by human beings (Waxman, 8). It is impossible to overstate the significance of the Ionian philosopher’s ideas. These concepts were the foundation for essentially all scientific advancement later achieved. By proposing that man could understand and predict the goings on of the universe by some means other than the standard astrological methods of the past, these men placed the importance of human intelligence on a new plateau.

This Ionian coin-map embodies the pragmatic nature of these people. Besides its use as a specie it doubled as a travelers map.

...........It was these men who first began speculating about the happenings of the moon and outer space, and the love of wisdom and thirst for knowledge they exhibited continues to bind the human race to the pursuit of science. It was Pythagoras who probably first realized that the earth is a sphere, his contemporaries that studied and hypothesized about the nature of the sun and moon. A generation later, Democritus of Abdera was envisioning a universe immensely populous with other stars, and only a generation after that that saw Aristotle planting the seeds of objective scientific reasoning (Waxman, 9). Although many of the assumptions of these first philosophers were false, the implications of this new brand of thought were vast; humanity will forever strive to better understand and realize the laws of nature. According to the ingenious physicist Stephen Hawking, one of the most highly regarded minds of the twentieth century, it is the eventual goal of science to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe (Hawking, 17). Not only do the tools and methods of science advance over centuries, so do the aspirations of grandeur increase. We may someday achieve the unification of all now-conflicting theories, a far throw from the conjecturing of those groundbreaking philosophers of ancient times.

...........Although the critical analysis of the world introduced by the ancient Ionians suffered major setbacks in early history and had little embodiment until the Copernican revolution in the 1500s AD, the human interest in scientific advancement was reasserted and continued to flourish thereafter. War and conquest in ancient Greece saw the hostile takeover of the Roman Empire, and a decline in the general interest in astronomy. The Ptolemaic concept, proposed by Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria around 200 AD stated that the earth was in the center of the universe, around which all other bodies revolved; it was the standard of thought for the next fourteen hundred years (Emme, 19). This now-obviously-flawed perception of the universe epitomized the lack of progress in science over this epic period. The fall of the Roman Empire essentially reset the progress of the centuries before. During this time, humanity saw the destruction of the greatest tome of ancient knowledge ever compiled with the fall of the Library of Alexandria. The dominant Christian church feared and loathed any pagan philosophy such as the Ionian concepts, and persecuted anyone who challenged the church-established conventions. Not until the renaissance in the fifteen through seventeen hundreds did the wisdom of the ancients regain the attention it deserved. It is impossible to say how much further along we would be in our expansion into space had the teachings of the Grecian philosophers been embraced rather than rejected. But after the reappearance of scientific criticism, the space age found its first solid beginnings.

With Ionia left in ruins, much of the ancients wisdom was to be lost for hundreds of years.

The Ptolemaic model of the universe. Notice the Earth at the center of this perfectly circular universe. Despite the paradoxes inherant between observable reality and this novel geocentric idea, it remained as the standard for an epic period after proposed by Claudius Ptolemaeus.