Astronomy: A Fad Science? :: Essays Papers

Astronomy: A Fad Science? NOTE: This paper was written for an English class and a non astronomy audience. Thus, several arguments were left out to make the material easier to understand for the target audience. These arguments would include (but are not limited to) dark energy, dark matter, and the inflationary model of the universe. If I later have time I may revise this paper to cover such topics and be more comprehensive. Science is a field that prides itself on being objective. To help ensure that this objectivity is met, scientists have formed a process to test each hypothesis. Each hypothesis is then subject to revision, or replacement should a theory come along with more support. As a science, the field of astronomy also strives to reach this goal. However, astronomy has been riddled with mistakes. Just as teens chase after fads today, be it fashion or the latest heart-throb, astronomy too has tenaciously followed trends that were logically flawed. Almost from its inception, astronomy has followed this pattern of clinging to these erroneous ideas. Much like today’s fads, these ideas seem silly in hindsight. However, this makes them no less powerful in the time they occur. But even knowing that such fads exist, which topics today are legitimate science and which are dead ends? Astronomy’s beginnings can be considered to go back as far as humankind has looked up at the sky in wonder. A simple question then led to an answer that is still being uncovered today. That question: â€Å"What is everything up there?† Two-thousand years later, some questions have been answered. Many still remain. However, the process in which these answers have been obtained has not been simple. Many times throughout history, astronomers have believed the answer was in sight and tenaciously believed the idea, only to discover they were wrong years later. These astronomical fads have held the progress of astronomy, and consequently almost all other branches of science, back for hundreds of years as the truth was sorted out. One of the first examples of this was the model of solar system. Aristotle first reasoned that the Earth was at the center and the sun and planets traveled around it on crystalline spheres (Baron 44). The most distant sphere was black and had ma ny small holes punched in it (Baron 44). Behind that was the light from Heaven which shown through the holes making the stars (Baron 44).