Creation Myths The rise of the monotheistic religions changed this view. When one of the gods got a higher Old Myths status than others (who in some cases became Speculation about the origin and evolution of demons or devils), he continued to increase in the earth and the celestial bodies is probably as prestige and power until he became the Supreme old as human thinking. During the millennia that Lord, the undisputed ruler of the whole world. are covered by the history of science, philosphy, Then it was not enough for him to create the world and religion we can distinguish three types of ap­ in the sense of organizing a preexisting chaos; he proach to this problem. had to create it all from nothing (ex nihilo) by The first is the "theocratic-myth" approach, pronouncing a magic word or by his will power. according to which the evolution of the world was This is the meaning of "creation" when we use it governed by gods who once upon a time created today, but it is a relatively new concept. It was it. However, we must remember that the meaning generally accepted in Christianity in the second of "creation" has changed. The earliest meaning century A.D. but the Genesis description of the of this term seems to have been that the gods Creation seems to have either meaning. The crea­ brought order into a preexisting chaos. The world tion ex nihilo was not generally accepted by the was "ungenerated and indestructible"-as Aris­ philosophical-scientific community until the syn­ totle puts it-and the gods were part of this world thesis by St. Thomas of Christian dogma and Aris­ and also eternal. According to Indian mythology totelian philosophy. the "creation" took place when Brahma woke up In the theocratic mythologies the gods created in the morning and, finding the world in a chaotic the world and ruled its evolution according to their state, brought order into it, transforming chaos to whims. We read in The Odyssey how Neptune was cosmos. And when Brahma goes to sleep after a angry with Odysseus and generated storms to de­ billion-year-Iong Kalpa, chaos will again prevail. stroy him but how Pallas Athena saved him by But the world is eternal, just as are Brahma and producing other natural phenomena. In a similar the other gods. way the actions of their parents or grandparents 2 APL Technical Digest (Zeus-Jupiter and Chronos-Saturn) had led to the creation of the world. There was no obvious rea­ son why the world should be as it is. It was merely an accidental result of the activities of the gods. In the monotheistic religions God was sometimes thought to be a despot who did whatever He liked, and it was not allowed to question or analyze His acts. Mathematical Myths With the rise of philosophy and early science, the gods became less despotic and increasingly philosophically and scientifically minded. The crea­ tion of the world and its evolution were parts of a master plan, and it was not unreasonable that man should be able to understand the plan. A break­ through in this thinking came with the Pythagorean philosophy. The Pythagoreans discovered how beautiful and powerful mathematics was. They found that musi­ cal harmonies could be explained as ratios be­ tween integers, and they demonstrated that there Fig. 1- Relation between regular polyhedra and planets as demonstrated in a 1597 model were five and only five regular polyhedra. I think of the universe. (The outermost sphere is there are few if any scientific discoveries that sur­ Saturn's.) pass these in beauty. With such achievements it was quite natural that matical myth" approach, developed during the the Pythagoreans applied the same methods to centuries into the Ptolemaic cosmology. It is im­ other scientific and philosophical problems, one of pressive in its logical reasoning and mathematical them being the macroscopic structure of the world. beauty. For example, it was demonstrated that They tried to explain it in terms of simple numer­ there should be seven planets, including the sun ical relations and of logically and mathematically and moon, revolving around the earth. For seven beautiful concepts. They considered the sphere to was a holy number, there being seven days in a be the most "perfect" of all bodies and uniform week, seven tones in the scale, and so on. And ex­ motion to be the simplest and most beautiful type cluding the sun and moon there were just as many of motion. Thus the stars and the planets must be planets as regular polyhedra (Fig. 1). located on crystal spheres that revolved around However, a comparison between this cosmology the Earth with a uniform motion. The basic idea and observations led to a number of discrepancies. was that the macroscopic world must be structured In order to account for the observed motions of according to simple mathematical laws-just like the celestial bodies it was necessary to introduce a musical harmonies and geometrical figures. series of epicycles and other factors that made the Such views were not necessarily in conflict with system increasingly complicated. This did not di­ religion. No one who studies mathematics can minish the credibility of the theory-it just demon­ avoid the impression that the theorems have a strated that the material world is imperfect. beauty that may be called divine. Hence one could expect the gods to structure the world according Empirical Approach to some mathematically and logically beautiful In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the principles. It was the task of philosophers and Ptolemaic system broke down, and a new celestial scientists to find what these cosmological prin­ mechanics was introduced that constitutes the ciples were. When they were found, the cosmo­ third, "empirical", approach. It was based espe­ logical problem was solved. We need only one cially on the investigations of falling bodies by principle, one formula, in order to understand the Galilei and the very accurate astronomical obser­ whole world. vations by Tycho Brahe. This injection of new This second approach may be called the "mathe- empirical material is believed to have been fatal Volume 15, Number 1 3 to the Ptolemaic system. However, there is another and the early Pythagorean results. In each case factor that seems at least equally important. A pre­ simple and beautiful reasoning led to an important requisite for the breakthrough of the new approach breakthrough that stimulated cosmological specu­ was the collapse of the peer review system that lations. When 1 was a young student 1 was very previously had been powerful enough to prevent impressed when Eddington, no doubt one of the the rise of new ideas. When Galilei claimed that leading astronomers of his time, claimed that the the earth moved, his peers in Italy reviewed his number 137 contained the solution of the cosmo­ ideas and almost unanimously agreed that he was logical problem. And, in his fascinating book The wrong; Galilei had to recant them publicly. But Philosophy of Physical Science, he claims that sit­ the scientific establishment in Italy was not power­ ting in his armchair he had counted the number ful enough to prevent German, Dutch, and English of protons in the universe and found it to be scientists from accepting and developing them fur­ 1.57477 x 1079 or more exactly 136 X 2256 = ther. The birth of modern science was possible 15,747,724, 136,275,002,577,605, 653,961 , 181, because of a decay in the power of the philosoph­ 555,468,044,717,914,527, 116,709,366,231 ,425, ical-scientific establishment and a breakdown of 076,185,631 ,031 ,296. Considered as a myth this their peer review system that for centuries had pre­ is beautiful, but considered as science it is non­ served the-dark ages in Europe. sense, and is nowadays generally recognized to be so. The Triumph of Science However, the collapse of Eddington's cosmol­ With this breakthrough, the scientific age started. ogy has not discredited mathematical myths in The old myths, both theocratic and mathematical, general. On the contrary it seems rather to have are dead forever. We live in the scientific age, the acted as a fertilizer for a rich flora of mathematical age of reason. That is at least how we generally myths, some of which are attractive from an aes­ depict our own time. But is it really true? thetic point of view but none scientifically. One of them, the "big bang" cosmology, is at present Modern Myths "generally accepted" by the scientific community. In most daily newspapers there is a column that This is mainly because it was propagated by analyzes how the planets influence our life. But Gamow with his irresistible charm and vitality. these are not the planets that the astronomers ob­ The observational support for it that he and others serve and that are the targets of space research; claimed is totally obliterated; but the less scientific they are the planets of Greek-Roman mythology. support there is, the more fanatical is the belief in Thus Venus is not the planet with a thick atmo­ it. As you know this cosmology is utterly absurd­ sphere of carbon dioxide, it is the goddess of love; it claims that the whole of the universe was created Mars is not the sandstorm-ridden sphere of rock, at a certain instant as an exploding atomic bomb it is the old god of war. And these old gods are much smaller than the head of a pin. It seems that believed by the newspaper readers to rule our lives in the present intellectual climate a great asset of in the same way they once ruled the voyage of the big bang cosmology is that it offends common Odysseus.