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from the month-late-reporting-on-13th-century-thought dept.
Ideas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues.
A paper called "De Luce" (On Light), written in 1225 in Latin and dense with mathematical thinking, explores the nature of matter and the cosmos. Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory. To our knowledge, De Luce is the first attempt to describe the heavens and Earth using a single set of physical laws. Implying, probably unrealized by its author, a family of ordered universes in an ocean of disordered ones, the physics resembles the modern 'multiverse' concept.
This may be of special interest to those learning of the history of the universe on "Cosmos", which covers other famous historical thinkers.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday April 28 2014, @02:49AM
You're correct. Putting together a perfect summary is difficult though, and I think I did this fairly late at night. He was apparently a brilliant man. It seems he went extremely far with very little existing knowledge to base his theories on. Up until some recent modern ideas though, he was probably thought to be nuts, otherwise we'd probably have heard of him before.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 28 2014, @04:06AM
Yes, one does not just simply walk into a Medieval Multiverse Theory! Especially if you have to really stretch the illumination to make it fit. But no matter. Grosseteste, or in modern terms, Gross Testes. No wonder people may have thought he was nuts. English, you know.
(Score: 2) by starcraftsicko on Monday April 28 2014, @04:42AM
Grosseteste, or in modern terms, Gross Testes.
I believe the correct translation is 'Giant Balls', though I am worried that the plural may not be quite right.
This post was created with recycled electrons.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 28 2014, @08:21AM
Perhaps you are right, the singular would be "teste"? Or maybe not, these things tend to make me "testy", or prone to irrational irritation about speculative theories that I put forth in the second century, or thereabouts.
(Score: 1) by EvilJim on Wednesday May 14 2014, @03:39AM
a gross is 12 dozen, that would be 144 balls. not bad...
(Score: 2) by black6host on Monday April 28 2014, @08:06AM
Indeed, a good summary is/can be a bit of work. Certainly wasn't meant as a personal attack. And thanks for the submission. I learned another interesting thing today.
Actually I wrote a journal entry on this very subject (the difficulty of writing good submissions.)