Total eclipse
08/04/24 02:12
Today is the day of a thriving experience for millions of people. A total solar eclipse will be visible from a wide swath of area from Mexico to Canada. Here in the United States, the path of totality spans from Texas, up through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The maximum duration of totality in Missouri will be 4 minutes and 13 seconds. I have friends who have traveled across the states and, in some cases, paid a high price for motel rooms that have been reserved for months in order to be where they will be able to observe the phenomenon.
I understand their excitement. If we lived a bit closer, I would have gone to significant effort to observe the event. On August 21, 2017, we got up early at our home in Rapid City, South Dakota, picked up a friend at his home and drove south to Alliance, Nebraska, where we found a spot in the yard of St. John’s Lutheran Church to set up our cameras and experience two and a half minutes of totality. It was a stunning experience. The crowd gathered to see the eclipse went silent during totality and cheered at the day’s second sunrise. The roosters in the neighbor’s yard crowed again to hai the second dawn. The experience of totality was unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. I had observed a couple of partial eclipses prior to the event, using pinhole cameras to view the sun. For this event, we had special sunglasses to protect our eyes as we looked at the sun as totality approached. The experience was more than just the brief moments of totality, which were impossible to ignore. We had over two hours of being able to observe partial totality. The next day, I wrote about the experience and published a picture of partial totality in my journal. Here is a link to that report.
I would love to experience a total eclipse again one day, but they are rare and even though I am retired, I don’t feel the leisure to completely disrupt my life with long distance travel this year.
Total eclipses of the sun are relatively rare. And they are generally historic events that are recorded and the reactions of people to the experience are remembered. In college, I studied one famous eclipse as part of a course I took on the history and philosophy of science. In the spring of 585 B.C., in the Eastern Mediterranean, a total eclipse turned day into night. At that time, solar eclipses were cloaked in scary uncertainty. They caught people by surprise. But that eclipse, 585 years before Christ had been predicted by a Greek philosopher named Thales. He lived in what is now Turkey, but at that time was a center of Greek civilization. Thales was said to have abandoned the gods and gained the power to predict the eclipse. He is credited by some historians of science as the founder of scientific method. He observed the movements of the sun, planets, and moon across the sky as seen from earth and was able to predict where in the sky certain heavenly bodies would appear.
Over the ages since that time, the reputation of Thales soared. Herodotus reported his ability to predict the eclipse. Aristotle called him the first person to fathom nature. He was honored as one of the seven foremost wise men of ancient Greece.
The science of observation of the sun and moon is very precise these days. Astronomers have determined to the second when the sun will disappear today across North America. According to Internet reports, it will be the most-viewed astronomical event in the history of our nation, with millions of sky watchers positing themselves for a view. They have been able to plan their observations because of the accuracy of the scientist’s predictions. Back in 2017, we were not only able to pan our viewing of that eclipse, but we already knew that today’s event would occur and there were maps of totality available at that time.
Solar eclipses, however, were not always predictable to humans. Thales is famous because 2,600 years ago, such events were not the matter of philosophers and scientists. They were interpreted as portents of calamity. Kings trembled. Lives changed. Superstition reigned. Thales’ prediction began a huge philosophical change from superstition to rational observation.
In 585, the kingdom of the Medes and that of Lydian were engaged in a brutal war that had gone on for years. The daytime darkness caused by the eclipse was seen as a very bad omen. The armies quickly laid down their arms. Terms of peace were negotiated. The daughter of the king of Lydia was married to the son of the king of Medes. Peace came to people whose lives had been dominated by war.
Sadly, no one expects today’s eclipse to bring peace to Ukraine, Somalia, or other war-torn places across our globe. The scientists have predicted the event and there are very few people for whom it will come as a surprise. You don’t have to be a scientist to benefit from the careful observations of astronomers. There is a phone app that you can download for free to track solar eclipses and similar phenomena.
In my class of the history and philosophy of science, Thales was considered to be the first scientist. He was the founder of a radical new way of thinking. Instead of seeing human experience as subject to the whims of gods, he was able to experience nature as an observable phenomena, with predictable patterns. It is likely, however, that Thales did not “invent” this new way of thinking in isolation. There is clear evidence that court astronomers in Babylonia in ancient Mesopotamia made accurate observations of the moon and planets. Although they typically interpreted their observations in the language of gods and magic and their numerical calculations in mystical terms, they prepared the minds of people for the coming change in the way people think about the world and natural phenomena. There are Babylonian clay tablets that report eclipses that have been dated to as early as 750 B.C. Modern historians now cast doubt on the notion that Thales was the founder of science. Some say the stories of his way of thinking are more apocryphal than based in fact. It is likely that the process of changing the way people think and interpret nature took a very long time and evolved slowly.
Don’t expect today’s eclipse to result in a radical change in the way people think. It may, however, be a moment to pause and re-think some of the notions we have long held. Perhaps it can be a time for a few people to embrace a few new ideas. Who knows, at some time in the distant future, people may look to our time as the opening of a new way of thinking.
I understand their excitement. If we lived a bit closer, I would have gone to significant effort to observe the event. On August 21, 2017, we got up early at our home in Rapid City, South Dakota, picked up a friend at his home and drove south to Alliance, Nebraska, where we found a spot in the yard of St. John’s Lutheran Church to set up our cameras and experience two and a half minutes of totality. It was a stunning experience. The crowd gathered to see the eclipse went silent during totality and cheered at the day’s second sunrise. The roosters in the neighbor’s yard crowed again to hai the second dawn. The experience of totality was unlike anything that I had ever experienced before. I had observed a couple of partial eclipses prior to the event, using pinhole cameras to view the sun. For this event, we had special sunglasses to protect our eyes as we looked at the sun as totality approached. The experience was more than just the brief moments of totality, which were impossible to ignore. We had over two hours of being able to observe partial totality. The next day, I wrote about the experience and published a picture of partial totality in my journal. Here is a link to that report.
I would love to experience a total eclipse again one day, but they are rare and even though I am retired, I don’t feel the leisure to completely disrupt my life with long distance travel this year.
Total eclipses of the sun are relatively rare. And they are generally historic events that are recorded and the reactions of people to the experience are remembered. In college, I studied one famous eclipse as part of a course I took on the history and philosophy of science. In the spring of 585 B.C., in the Eastern Mediterranean, a total eclipse turned day into night. At that time, solar eclipses were cloaked in scary uncertainty. They caught people by surprise. But that eclipse, 585 years before Christ had been predicted by a Greek philosopher named Thales. He lived in what is now Turkey, but at that time was a center of Greek civilization. Thales was said to have abandoned the gods and gained the power to predict the eclipse. He is credited by some historians of science as the founder of scientific method. He observed the movements of the sun, planets, and moon across the sky as seen from earth and was able to predict where in the sky certain heavenly bodies would appear.
Over the ages since that time, the reputation of Thales soared. Herodotus reported his ability to predict the eclipse. Aristotle called him the first person to fathom nature. He was honored as one of the seven foremost wise men of ancient Greece.
The science of observation of the sun and moon is very precise these days. Astronomers have determined to the second when the sun will disappear today across North America. According to Internet reports, it will be the most-viewed astronomical event in the history of our nation, with millions of sky watchers positing themselves for a view. They have been able to plan their observations because of the accuracy of the scientist’s predictions. Back in 2017, we were not only able to pan our viewing of that eclipse, but we already knew that today’s event would occur and there were maps of totality available at that time.
Solar eclipses, however, were not always predictable to humans. Thales is famous because 2,600 years ago, such events were not the matter of philosophers and scientists. They were interpreted as portents of calamity. Kings trembled. Lives changed. Superstition reigned. Thales’ prediction began a huge philosophical change from superstition to rational observation.
In 585, the kingdom of the Medes and that of Lydian were engaged in a brutal war that had gone on for years. The daytime darkness caused by the eclipse was seen as a very bad omen. The armies quickly laid down their arms. Terms of peace were negotiated. The daughter of the king of Lydia was married to the son of the king of Medes. Peace came to people whose lives had been dominated by war.
Sadly, no one expects today’s eclipse to bring peace to Ukraine, Somalia, or other war-torn places across our globe. The scientists have predicted the event and there are very few people for whom it will come as a surprise. You don’t have to be a scientist to benefit from the careful observations of astronomers. There is a phone app that you can download for free to track solar eclipses and similar phenomena.
In my class of the history and philosophy of science, Thales was considered to be the first scientist. He was the founder of a radical new way of thinking. Instead of seeing human experience as subject to the whims of gods, he was able to experience nature as an observable phenomena, with predictable patterns. It is likely, however, that Thales did not “invent” this new way of thinking in isolation. There is clear evidence that court astronomers in Babylonia in ancient Mesopotamia made accurate observations of the moon and planets. Although they typically interpreted their observations in the language of gods and magic and their numerical calculations in mystical terms, they prepared the minds of people for the coming change in the way people think about the world and natural phenomena. There are Babylonian clay tablets that report eclipses that have been dated to as early as 750 B.C. Modern historians now cast doubt on the notion that Thales was the founder of science. Some say the stories of his way of thinking are more apocryphal than based in fact. It is likely that the process of changing the way people think and interpret nature took a very long time and evolved slowly.
Don’t expect today’s eclipse to result in a radical change in the way people think. It may, however, be a moment to pause and re-think some of the notions we have long held. Perhaps it can be a time for a few people to embrace a few new ideas. Who knows, at some time in the distant future, people may look to our time as the opening of a new way of thinking.
