Month: August 2017

Trigonometry from The 18th Century BC!

Plimpton 322, a mathematical table that is thought to have been made about 1800 BC.

Back in 1922, G.A. Plimpton bought the tablet shown above from an archaeologist named Edgar Banks, and it has become known as “Plimpton 322.” According to an analysis of the writing, it is of Babylonian origin and probably dates back to the 18th-century BC. It has been known for a while that Plimpton 322 is a mathematical table that contains ratios related to triangles. However, there were aspects of the table that didn’t make sense, at least until recently. According to a study published in Historia Mathematica, it is actually the world’s oldest trigonometry table!

For those of you who didn’t take (or don’t remember) trignonometry, it is a branch of mathematics that deals with triangles. I was first introduced to it in high school, as part of my “college preparatory” mathematics education. One thing that initially struck me about this branch of mathematics was the fact that there were times you had to use a lookup table (or a calculator) in order to get the results you needed. I had never before done math like that. Sure, calculators made some math faster and certainly cut down on errors. However, for some trigonometry problems, you simply couldn’t get the answer without looking up numbers in a table or using a calculator.

Once I studied chemistry and physics at university, trigonometry became a pretty constant companion. In physics, you use it to analyze vectors, which are one of the most fundamental aspects of that scientific discipline. In chemistry, you use it to study molecular structure. Over time, I got really adept at using my calculator to solve trigonometry-related problems. Interestingly enough, however, this tablet represents a completely different means by which you can do trigonometry.

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Knowing Science Doesn’t Mean Following the Scientific Consensus

The study being discussed indicates that people with a strong knowledge of science don’t necessarily follow the scientific consensus. (click for credit)

Some people get distressed over the fact that there are those of us who don’t blindly follow whatever is advertised as the “scientific consensus.” The distress becomes so great that such people often have to come up with some kind of explanation for this non-sheep-like behavior. For example, in response to a 2014 poll that indicated Americans are skeptical about human-caused global warming, evolution, and the Big Bang, Nobel Laureate Dr. Randy Schekman said:

Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts.

I read and hear this idea a lot. If you don’t automatically accept what the High Priests of Science say, you obviously don’t know or don’t understand science. While such an idea might be comforting to those who don’t wish to think for themselves when it comes to scientific issues, it doesn’t have any basis in reality. Indeed, some of the most intelligent, well-educated people I know do not believe in evolution (in the flagellate-to-philosopher sense), do not think the earth is billions of years old, and do not think that humans are causing significant global warming.

Of course, the people I know don’t necessarily make up a representative sample of the population as a whole. As a result, I was very interested to read a study that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The authors of the study analyzed the 2006 and 2010 results of the General Social Survey, which attempts to determine the views of the American people on a wide variety of issues. At the same time, it tries to get a general sense of each individual’s level of education on those issues. The results of their study seemed very surprising to the authors, but they weren’t at all surprising to me.

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Thoughts and Pictures from the Eclipse

The International Space station (the structure in the center of the image) photobombs the 2017 eclipse. (NASA image)

I remember the 1994 eclipse. I was on the faculty at Ball State University, teaching chemistry and physics. I told all my students about the eclipse, and when it came time to view it, I joined a few of the university’s staff watching the eclipse with welder’s goggles, pinhole viewers, and even natural pinhole viewers made by the foliage of the trees. As we watched, a few people joined in. Most of them had no idea that the eclipse was happening until they saw us looking at it.

Well, the 2017 eclipse was very different! Because of social media, a lot more people knew about and planned for the eclipse, so my Facebook feed was filled with awesome photos of people watching the eclipse, the eclipse itself, and the effects that the eclipse had on the surroundings. While I agree that social media has a lot of negative effects on our culture, it also has some positive effects, and the eclipse highlighted one of those. Social media has made it much easier to “get the word out” on a variety of issues, including science-related events that people can experience.

I thought I would share some of my photos of the eclipse as well as some better ones, providing “color commentary” as I go. Before I do that, however, I would like to just make a comment about how some people, like Eric Metaxas, view an eclipse as evidence for God’s existence. The argument goes something like this: the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it is also 389 times farther from the earth. As a result, they each take up roughly (not exactly) the same amount of space in the night sky. Without this pleasant “coincidence,” a total solar eclipse could not happen. Of course, it is no coincidence. It is another piece of evidence for the fact that our solar system is designed.

While I think that nature explodes with evidence of design, I am not sure this is really one of those evidences. Sure, it represents an interesting example of “balance” between natural variables, and it certainly makes for an awesome sight. But honestly, it’s only four parameters (two distances from earth and two sizes). It’s not all that improbable for four different parameters to be balanced as a result of mere chance. In addition, those parameters are somewhat constrained, because we need a large moon for healthy oceans that can support life and a reasonably small, “gentle” star for our energy source. So while I think that the moon and the sun both provide strong evidence for the idea that our solar system is designed, I don’t think the fact that they can produce a total solar eclipse does.

Now let’s see some pictures!

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One Reason The Argument from Morality Might Be Persuasive

Allegory of Goodness by 16th-century Italian artist Jacopo Comin, who became known as Tintoretto.

As I have noted previously (see here and here, for example), I consider the Argument from Morality a very, very weak argument for God’s existence. Nevertheless, many philosophers who are much deeper thinkers than me champion the argument, and in many of the accounts of atheists who became Christians, the Argument from Morality was at least a factor in them accepting the Truth.

I have read several books and internet articles on the issue, but I have not read a single defense of the Argument from Morality that has been even moderately convincing to me, despite the fact that I do believe that God is the only source of morality. As a result, I have often wondered why the Argument from Morality has so much apparent power. One possible reason is that I am totally clueless on what makes a good argument for God’s existence. However, I recently ran across a study that might provide an alternate reason.

It was published in Nature Human Behavior, and it explores the preconceptions that people have when it comes to morality. The authors studied nearly 3,800 people in 13 different countries, and they found that in the vast majority of those countries, the participants were much more likely to believe that an evildoer is an atheist.

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Resources for The Upcoming Solar Eclipse

The 1999 solar eclipse as photographed through a telescope (and then Photoshop enhanced) by Luc Viatour in France (click for full credit)

As most people are probably aware, there will be a total eclipse of the sun visible from many parts of the United States. It will occur on August 21st, but the exact times depend on where you are. I received a question about how to best enjoy it, so thought I would compile some resources to help people who are interested. First, you can find out exactly when to expect the eclipse by going to this website:

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in.html

If you put in your city and state, it will tell you when to start viewing the eclipse, when it will be at its maximum, and when it will end. In addition, it will tell you the magnitude, which is the fraction of the sun that will be blocked by the moon. If it doesn’t have your city, just add a comma and the full name of your state, and it will bring up several other cities in that state. Choose the one closest to you.

The next thing to make clear is that YOU SHOULD NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE ECLIPSE! The sun produces a lot of light; too much for your eyes to handle. As a result, when you look directly at the sun, the light-sensing cells in your eyes can be overwhelmed. If they are overwhelmed for too long, they can die. Even though the sun is a lot dimmer during an eclipse, it still produces too much light for your eyes. However, it isn’t as difficult to look at as the uneclipsed sun, so you don’t notice that you are overwhelming your light-sensing cells. This can lead to solar retinopathy, which can cause serious vision problems.

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It’s REALLY Hard for a Planet to Support Life

The surface of Mars, as photographed by the Pathfinder lander (Image courtesy of NASA)

Dr. Stephen Hawking, one of today’s greatest minds in theoretical physics, stated:

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

While the last sentence is obviously offered tongue-in-cheek, the first sentence is a popular view among atheists. Because they believe that life must have come into being solely as a result of natural processes, they are forced to conclude that it must be prevalent throughout the universe. After all, if it happened here, it must have happened on a lot of other planets.

As a result, many atheists are enamored with the idea of finding life on other planets. Indeed, Bill Nye the anti-science Guy says that finding life on Mars or Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons) would:

…utterly change this world. Everybody would think differently about everything.

As I wrote in the post linked above, I can’t imagine that’s true. The people who commented on the article seem to agree. Nevertheless, in many atheists’ minds, it’s a big deal. After all, if life is found on other planets, it becomes easier to believe that there is “nothing special” about life. It’s common throughout the universe, so there is no need to invoke anything other than natural processes to explain its existence.

The problem, of course, is that the scientific evidence speaks strongly against such a notion.

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When People Don’t Believe in God, They Will Believe Anything!

Some people actually think it is possible that we are living in a computer simulation.
(click for credit)

Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist who was largely responsible for bringing Mother Teresa to the world’s attention, once said:

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.
(Malcolm Muggeridge and Christopher Ralling, Muggeridge Through the Microphone, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1967, p. 44)

I couldn’t help but think of that quote when a student asked me to read Scientific American’s article entitled, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?”

Apparently, that question was the topic of a debate held at the American Museum of Natural History back in 2016. The debate was moderated by serial spreader of falsehoods Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is responsible for one historian asking if it’s okay to lie about history, as long as the lies support a good cause.

According to the article, Dr. Tyson made the evidence-free speculation that there is a 50/50 chance we are, indeed, living in a computer simulation. Why? Because as Muggeridge suggested 50 years ago, when you give up belief in God, you must believe in all sorts of wild ideas in order to make sense of the universe around you.

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