Image: NASA

If Orion is visible in the east just before dawn, then it must be August.  Empires may rise and fall and governments may rewrite calendars, but no project of man can alter the course of the stars in the sky. I saw Orion this morning and it was August. They can take away my office and my phone, my calendar and computers, they can shutter the schools and burn all the books, but they cannot budge Orion from his track through the sky. It is August.

The sky can tell us much more than just the date. Some of our most important questions of epistemology are answered for us by the stars. Epistemology is the study of the validity, limits, and basis of knowledge. How do we know what we know? Lots of very smart people, especially during the twentieth century, enjoyed shooting holes into knowledge that the rest of us would have thought was certain. Here is one brainy fellow agonizing over the color of his table:

The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1912

Although I believe the table is ‘really’ of the same colour all over, the parts that reflect the light look much lighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light. I know that, if I move, the parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of colours on the table will change. It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colours, because no two can see it from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view makes some change in the way the light is reflected… We know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged… When, in ordinary life, we speak of the colour of the table we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real: and therefore, to avoid favoritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.

One has to be very careful with such a line of thinking. Any of our senses can be fooled, and one might soon be doubting all of one’s senses, and doubting everything one knows. Illusion is a powerful problem. Is illusion invincible?

The sun and Moon predate Bertrand Russell, they predate polysyllabic words, they predate spelling color with a u, they even predate tables. Anyone who has watched the full Moon rise from the horizon has been struck by how much larger the Moon appears then than when it is overhead. The Moon does not change size, nor does it approach the Earth by an appreciable amount over the course of a night. It should seem the same size at the horizon as when overhead, yet it does not. This phenomenon has been visible to all, from tribesmen on the Serengeti to erudite philosophy professors. Those on the Serengeti might have no understanding of orbital mechanics, but even they can see that the Moon, on rising, appears freakishly large. Is it really that big? The sight of it practically begs for confirmation.

Such confirmation isn’t difficult. Tie some twigs together for a measuring device and one can work out that the Moon at the horizon has the same angular size as when it is overhead. (Measure carefully enough, and you will find it is actually ever so slightly smaller at the horizon; there is half the Earth’s diameter of distance more than there will be at midnight.) The Moon isn’t any bigger, that is just an illusion. This illusion is there for any to see, and has been with us since the beginning.

There are lessons within the lesson. The apparent size of the Moon has little functional importance for the human condition. It does not affect how we eat, where we live, what we wear, or who we like. As far as illusions go, it is a very safe one. No one is likely to lose their life due to the Moon appearing bigger when at the horizon. Despite its harmlessness, the illusion is easily noticed. We see the Moon virtually every night, no matter who we are or where on the planet we live. (If you never go outside at night– well, that’s your problem.) We all know how big the Moon is, and we all notice that dramatic change in size when it rises. The illusion is harmless, but it is right in front of us, a bright, glowing sign in the sky.

The sign says: “Hey! Look! Things aren’t always what they appear to be! Illusions exist!” We don’t need Bertrand Russell to warn us about illusion, the Moon has been warning us all along. The sign says something else, too. It says we can get around illusions, if we are alert to their possibility and we do a little checking. It takes only a little bit of checking to confirm that the Moon, in fact, stays the same size– illusions are not invincible. And if illusions are not invincible, then there must be some reality in the perceptions that our senses bring us. Though it is possible for our senses to sometimes be fooled, it is also possible for them to report truth. Like Orion heralding August, the Moon is there to teach this to all of us.

(The sun, by the way, is subject to the same illusion as the Moon, but we generally do not stare at the sun, and so the phenomenon is not as widely known.)

The Moon somewhat and the sun especially are bright objects. The night sky itself is dark. The darkness of the night sky is patently obvious, but that darkness contains another profoundly important lesson. As with the Moon on the horizon, one need not be highly educated in order to tease out what that lesson is; it is there for all of us to see. The night sky is dark, punctuated with bright points called stars. It does not matter that some people might not know what stars are (giant balls of ionized gas, billions of miles away), it matters only that we have points of light, and an expanse of dark. It is not all light, nor all dark; there is heterogeneity.

Heterogeneity has some profound consequences, as I have discussed elsewhere: http://alamanach.com/2009/03/28/for-b/. Heterogeneity requires that there be a difference between This and That. Such a difference requires that there be boundaries between This and That, and if there are boundaries, then things are not all equal; some things could be special. Astronomers traditionally have been repelled by the suggestion that some region of space could be special. Over the centuries they developed what we now call the Copernican Principle, which holds that Earth is not in a central or special position. In practice, no point of space is considered to be special; the average density of matter and the laws of physics here are assumed to be the same as the average density of matter and the laws of physics anywhere else in the universe. For a long time in astronomy there was a related idea that the universe was infinitely old. Were that the case then time would be subject to the Copernican Principle, too; the average denisty of matter and the laws of physics now would be the same as the average density of matter and the laws of physics then. (The “infinitely old” model of the universe got stabbed through the heart when Edwin Hubble discovered that all galaxies are moving away from each other. Research Einstein’s cosmological constant for more on that story.)

The only trouble is, the sky is dark. If the universe were infinitely large, infinitely old, and uniformly populated with stars, then in every direction we looked, our eyes would land on a star. The night sky should be as bright as the sun. (This is known as Olbers’ Paradox, by the way, after Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers.) That the sky is dark is one of the most fundamental and profound astronomical observations we can make.

What space would look like were it not expanding. Animation from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

We do not need to know about the Copernican Principle in order to recognize the heterogeneity that bright stars in a dark sky express. But since I expect that you, dear reader, do happen to have some understanding of modern astronomy, let us look at the astronomer’s resolution to Olbers’ Paradox.

The conventional solution is that the universe is of finite size and is expanding. This expansion necessitates that the universe is of finite age, too. Because light moves at finite speed, everywhere we look we are looking into the past. Where it is dark, we are looking into places where no star had yet formed. Because of the expansion of space, the incredibly bright event of the Big Bang has been red-shifted into invisible microwaves. Only by applying boundaries to space and to time can we resolve the paradox.

A more whimsical solution to the paradox suggests that the universe is not expanding, but rather that the stars are in a fractal array, and that as scales of measure increase to infinity, the average density of matter decreases to virtually nothing. Mathematically, this could give us a dark sky, but we would have to give up our Copernican notion of uniformity throughout the universe.

Either way, the Copernican Principle gets its wings clipped. Either there are boundaries, or there are special points in space. There is heterogeneity. Anyone who can see that the light has been separated from the darkness can see that. 

Another very simple observation we can make about the sky is that we are exposed it. Even if we do not know what stars are, we can see that there is nothing between us and them. Stars cannot be touched by man, and so like a pristine forest or mountains, they are as wild as anything else in nature. Unlike forests and mountains, stars are always around– one only needs to step outside. The fluctuations of Betelgeuse, the solar flares of EV Lacertae, and the volcanoes of Io are just outside our door, and often in line-of-sight from where we stand. Even if we lack technical knowledge of stellar dynamics and xenoplanetary geology, our imaginations still can make us aware that similarly wild things could be happening out there. The stars, whatever they are, are untamed, and we are present for all their activity.

There are two lessons to draw from this observation. The first is especially pertinent to those who live in urban areas and do not see the wilderness much. That lesson is that the world is a wild place, and even the high walls of civilization do not keep all the wildness out. The risk of the unknown will always be with us. We try to minimize that risk through all kinds of means, and these days we have defanged a lot of it. Someone born into a prosperous country like the United States can expect to be safe and comfortable for virtually every moment of his entire life. There is no need to go hungry, to sleep outdoors, to risk injury, or to be faced with physical hazards at all. There are exceptional cases of people whose lives have gone terribly wrong, but they are a minority. Most people in such countries will feel the bite of hunger, of cold, of pain, and other hazards only if they choose to launch some voluntary adventure. Life can be so comfortable that we forget that the world is fundamentally a wild, risky place. The stars remind us.

The other lesson is that we are free. With no boundary between us and the stars, there is nothing to prevent any one of us, individually, from travelling to them. This is not to say that the problems of gravity, distance, and life support do not exist; they do. But there is no problem of authority. We do not need anyone’s permission to travel to the stars. There is no boundary to cross, no private property to invade, no neighbors between us and our destination. The stars are above us, it is only a matter of going. T.E. Lawrence had to do more negotiating when he crossed the Fejr desert than any of us would have to do to reach the stars. This lesson of freedom should not be lost on us.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom
T.E. Lawrence
1922

It was obvious from Wejh we had only one road: to march inland through the Billi hills: to cross the railway, and pass through the Fejr desert to Wadi Sirhan by Jauf: and then to march up Wadi Sirhan and westwards to Jefer, in front of Maan. There we could concentrate, and either strike at Maan or slip round it, and march down the Turkish line of defenses to Akaba. This was the unguarded way, the line of least resistance, and the only possible one for us. It would be an extreme example of a turning movement, since it would involve us in a desert march of perhaps six hundred miles to capture a trench within sight of our ships: but there was no alternative, and it was so entirely in the spirit of my sick-bed principles that its issue might well be fortunate, and would certainly be instructive for us. We plumped for it.

There are lessons within lessons. When we study the night sky, even without the aid of sophisticated apparatus or deep scientific knowledge, we can learn about the trustworthiness of our senses, the boundaries of space and time, the basic wildness of the world, and our own individual freedom. These lessons are available to anyone with eyes to see. And what is the lesson within those lessons? It is that the Bertrand Russells of the world do not have a monopoly on knowledge, or wisdom. God put these lessons here in plain view for everybody. Everybody has access to knowledge, to wisdom, and to the secrets of the universe; they are written in the stars. Look around and you will discover they are written in the plants, in the birds, the rocks and rivers and trees. The most subtle and ineffable facts of metaphysics are written in language as plain and solid as a mountain. Truth is all around us, not for the elites to ration out at their whim, but for any of us to share in freely. This is August.

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The Moon image is from NASA, and like most of their images, it is in the public domain. It is available on their website: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_290.html

The animation illustrating Olbers’ Paradox is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. I’d have included the original author’s name, but that information was not available to me. The Creative Commons 3.0 license is here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ and the animation can also be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Olber%27s_Paradox_-_All_Points.gif

The text excerpts from Bertrand Russell and T.E. Lawrence are both in the public domain.