Guest Speaker To Give Lecture On Finish Of World Theories

T he science historian Jacob Bronowski raises an odd query and affords a fair odder answer. The query is, “Why did astronomy develop within the previous world, but not in the new one?” Within the Southern hemisphere no civilization at all developed astronomy. Within the Americas, only the Aztecs did serious astronomy earlier than Columbus. The Aztecs had been high quality mathematicians, however their astronomy dealt only with time-keeping – with calendars. They did not invent planetary fashions, and so they did not use the celebs to navigate.

Dec 1842; 18 Feb 1899) was a Norwegian mathematician who made important contributions to the theories of algebraic invariants, steady groups of transformations and differential equations. Lie teams and Lie algebras are named after him. Lie was in Paris on the outbreak of the French-German conflict of 1870. Lie left France, deciding to go to Italy. On the way in which however he was arrested as a German spy and his arithmetic notes have been assumed to be coded messages. Solely after the intervention of French mathematician, Gaston Darboux, was Lie launched and he determined to return to Christiania, Norway, the place he had originally studied arithmetic to continue his work. *TIS

The tonalpohualli was the ‘counting of days.’ It originated by historic peoples observing that the sun, crossed a sure zenith point close to the Mayan city of Copan, every 260 days. So this primary system is organized in a 260-day cycle. These 260 days were then broken up into 20 periods, with every period containing 13 days, known as trecenas. Every interval was given the identify of one thing that was then shown by a hieroglyphic sign, and each trecena was given a #1-thirteen. Every trecena is also thought to have a god or deity presiding over each of the trecena.

The C.P. Snow Lecture Collection started in the College of Humanities and Sciences more than forty years ago as a way of bridging the hole between the sciences and the humanities. It was named for the British physicist and novelist Sir Charles Percy Snow, a man who truly embodied the mission of the collection for his work as an internationally famend scientist, author and lecturer. Audio system through the years have included “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling, Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, “Future Shock” writer Alvin Toffler and physician Patch Adams.

Although the Aztec Calendar Stone reveals the unbelievable precision of the Aztecs and their capability to make use of astronomy to determine the yr size and the photo voltaic patterns to determine a day size, archaeologists still don’t really know what the Aztecs used the Calendar Stone for. The fact that one of the prime focuses of the disk is the solar god supports the concept that perhaps the Calendar Stone was used as a spiritual ornament or some type of sacrificial alter.