January 1st - Season of Reason Day 8 -The New Year

January 1st
Season of Reason Day 8
The New Year

As we start a new year, take this time to reflect on the past year and set goals for the year ahead.  Gather friends and family for a final celebration of our cosmic connectedness and the gifts that science has given us in the last year. Make plans to learn, grow, and contribute to the world of science.

Our Final Celebration
Gather your friends and family for a potluck meal.  Take some time to honor the heros of science and their discoveries of the last year.  Reflect on how technology can bring us closer together and make our lives better and how it can drive us apart.  What scientific discoveries and inventions from the last year should be celebrated?  Use the hashtag #ScienceHero so we can all learn about these amazing discoveries of science and technology.

Final Thought
Your mission this next year is to think. 

Use your brain. 

Use reason and logic to solve problems. When you encounter a new idea or technology, don’t react with fear and distrust. When you hear a claim that sounds too good to be true, investigate it. You hold the repository of mankind’s collective intelligence and wisdom in your hands. USE IT! We are living in a wonderful time. Humanity’s collective knowledge is available to anyone with a network connection.


Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” When you hear someone make a statement that sounds too good to be true, investigate it. Do not trust what an authority figure or a talking head on TV tells you, investigate it and decide for yourself. There are many people in this world that have interests other than the quest for objective truth. 


We have a choice between two worlds. One is based on superstition and fear that wants to control people and limit their progress for whatever selfish reason and the other world is based on reason, critical thinking, the Scientific Method, and progress. On a daily basis we can see both worlds side by side. The fearful world beheads people for believing other subjective truths and oppresses women in the name of tradition. The reasonable world feeds people, cures diseases, and increases our connection with one another. 


History has shown us what the world based on superstition and fear looks like. It looks like the Dark Ages in Europe. It looks like Eastern Europe in 1943. It looks like Africa crippled by the AIDS epidemic. It looks like ISIS and al-Qaeda. It looks like Ethiopia in 1980’s. It looks like female genital mutilation. It looks like human slavery. It is the worst of human instinct. 


History has also shown us what we can accomplish when we embrace the tools we were given by the giants who came before us. We landed people on the moon, explored the solar system, linked the world together with communication, and discovered the subatomic world. But it isn’t just about lofty achievements as a species, we can make our own lives better as well. We can cure diseases, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and house the homeless. We have the tools to do it. They were given to us by Descartes and Bacon with the Scientific Method.


You have your mission. Think, debate, research, analyze, and conclude. Use your brain to find the objective truth that might just save the world or someone you care about.

December 31 - Season of Reason Day 7 - Learn Something New

December 31
Season of Reason Day 7
Learn Something New

Today's Celebration
Pledge to learn something new every day this year.  You can learn in a formal setting like a school or with a coach or you can learn by reading a book or watching a video. Your goal is to become a lifelong learner.

The gift of learning from the Muslim tradition
While Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, other parts of the world were experiencing scientific golden ages. In the far east China was experiencing a rapid expansion of technology during the Song dynasty from 900 to 1100 AD. In the Muslim world, which stretched from India to Andalusia (Spain), a scientific awakening was occurring at roughly the same time. It is a matter of intense academic debate as to which culture influenced who to become smarter and more advanced. Some scholars maintain that the Chinese took technology from the Muslim world while others accuse the Muslims of ‘borrowing’ Chinese advancements and spreading them around the Muslim world. I’m going to leave most of that historical debate for another time and place. There was one technology that the Muslims blatantly stole from the Chinese which made their advancements in technology much easier to acquire. That technology was paper. 

After the battle of Talas in 751 between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang dynasty led by Emperor Xuanzong, Caliphate forces had the good fortune of capturing some very special Chinese soldiers. These soldiers knew the secret of papermaking. The Chinese had been making paper for hundreds of years and were adept at using paper to aid in administration of government and the military. It is not surprising that the forces of Emperor Xuanzong were carrying papermakers since the army needed paper to issue orders and keep track of the million and one things an army needs while marching and fighting. Once the Caliphate realized who they had captured, they sent the papermaking soldiers to Samarkand to show Caliphate administrators how to make it and spread this knowledge all over the muslim world. In fact by the year 795 paper was being made with the Chinese method in Baghdad. Baghdad was the capital of the Caliphate, the intersection of every major trade route on earth, and would become the home to the House of Wisdom. Once the secret of paper made it to Baghdad it was only a short time before paper started showing up in Europe, Africa, and every corner of Asia. Some historians maintain that paper was the one of the fastest spreading technologies in the medieval world. Papermaking was second only to gunpowder which skipped across Eurasia in less than a generation.

The Muslim world was ready to exploit the introduction of paper because Islam placed such an emphasis on literacy. In Christian Europe most of the people who could read were members of the clergy, an overwhelming majority of regular people were illiterate and dumb as rocks. There was no requirement that you know how to read in order to be a Christian. In fact, if you did know how to read it probably would not do you any good since everything was written in Latin, a language that only the clergy understood. The situation was much different for a practicing muslim.

Muslims believe that the Quran is the direct word of God given to the Prophet Muhammad in the early 600s. Muhammad spoke arabic the language of the Quraysh tribe he belonged to that inhabited the area on the Arabian Peninsula around Mecca during his lifetime. Naturally, the Quran is written in the language that Muhammad spoke. Muslims believe that the only true form of the Quran is in Arabic. Once the Quran is translated into another tongue the translation is not longer the pure form of God’s word. Also, another major difference between Medieval Christianity and Islam is that in Islam there were no established clerics for the vast majority of the muslim community. There were formal and informal leaders among muslim communities of faith but there was no bureaucracy that existed solely to explain and interpret the word of God to the common person. In fact, in Islam followers were expected to read God’s word for themselves and make their own decision on how to worship Allah from Muhammad’s prophecy in the Quran and his example in the book of his life (the Sunnah). In order to be a good muslim you were expected to read and understand Arabic. With no formal educational infrastructure when Islam started, this was a tall order.

The way that this problem was solved was that everywhere that Islam was carried teachers went with it. Mosques doubled as places of worship and schools that taught the newly converted how to read and write in Arabic. This was a serendipitous occurrence because as Islam spread from the Indus river valley to the Atlantic ocean the common language of religion became the common language of government, administration, trade, and education. Literate people could read and write Arabic because they were good Muslims and they could use this literacy coupled with paper to effectively advance education, science, and technology. Mosques doubled as schools that taught the devout the Quran. These schools grew into madrasas that taught non-religious subjects like science, math, and the law. These madrasas became the basis for the University system in the Muslim world which was transferred to the west in the 1000s. 

So today we are going to honor Islamic madrasas and the granting of degrees written on paper from China. Specifically, we are going to recognize the founder of the first formal madrasa in the world, the University of Karaouine in Morocco. This was the first institution in the world to grant degrees to students upon completion of their studies. Al-Karaouine was founded by Fatima al-Fihri in 859.


Here is an exerpt from http://lostislamichistory.com/5-muslim-inventions-that-changed-the-world/ that explains this extrordinary accomplishment in greater detail.

"Speaking of universities, that is also an invention made possible by the Muslim world. Early on in Islamic history, mosques doubled as schools. The same people who led prayers would teach groups of students about Islamic sciences such as Quran, fiqh (jurisprudence), and hadith. As the Muslim world grew however, there needed to be formal institutions, known as madrasas, dedicated to the education of students.

The first formal madrasa was al-Karaouine, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri in Fes, Morocco. Her school attracted some of the leading scholars of North Africa, as well as the land’s brightest students. At al-Karaouine, students were taught by teachers for a number of years in a variety of subjects ranging from secular to religious sciences. At the end of the program, if the teachers deemed their students qualified, they would grant them a certificate known as an ijaza, which recognizes that the student understood the material and is now qualified to teach it.

These first degree-granting educational institutes quickly spread throughout the Muslim world. Al-Azhar University was founded in Cairo in 970, and in the 1000s, the Seljuks established dozens of madrasas throughout the Middle East. The concept of institutes that grant certificates of completion (degrees) spread into Europe through Muslim Spain, where European students would travel to study. The Universities of Bologna in Italy and Oxford in England were founded in the 11th and 12th centuries and continued the Muslim tradition of granting degrees to students who deserved them, and using it as a judge of a person’s qualifications in a particular subject.”

What makes this accomplishment particularly astonishing is that the University of Karaouine was founded by a woman. There were parts of the muslim world that were pretty progressive in 850 but to have anything this important started by any woman was remarkable. It is because of Fatima al-Fihri that millions of people have received degrees from programs of study. Fatima al-Fihri was a remarkable woman whose invention has helped incubate and create scientific progress for over 1000 years.

How do we honor such an amazing accomplishment? Today you should make a commitment to formally study something in the next year. Whatever you study is up to you. If you want to take a class and get a degree, that is awesome. If you want to scour the internet and your local library to learn a certain topic, go for it. If you want to apprentice with someone that is proficient in a subject or skill, more power to you. The only requirements that you need to follow is to enjoy what you are learning and be willing to pass it along to another person. 

Just another word of advice before you take this journey. It is OK to be ignorant and not know everything. Remember that there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is not knowing what is inside the book because you haven’t read it, stupidity is reading the book and ignoring good ideas that are inside it. Very simply, it is OK to be ignorant but don’t be stupid.

December 30th - Season of Reason Day 6 - The Internet

December 30th
Season of Reason Day 6

The Internet
Today we celebrate the idea behind the creation of the Internet, the free flow of ideas and information for the benefit of everyone who accesses it.

Today's Celebration
Today you are going to use the gift of the Internet for good.  If you have a good idea, you should share it.  Write a blog, make a YouTube video, Tweet it, or send an email.  Share it on social media with the hashtag #IdeasAreFree and #MerryNewtonmas. The Internet was created by a community of people that freely shared their work to build the awesome instrument we have today.  Honor our creation by pledging to support a free and open exchange of ideas and information on the Internet.

The Internet
Today we honor those people that invented the Internet. There are many people who claim to have invented or discovered some technological advance that either launched or pushed the Internet along. There are many individuals and organizations that can legitimately say, “if we didn’t do this one thing, then the internet as we know it would not exist.” As far as I can tell with my limited technical knowledge all of these people have arguments that I am not qualified to refute or even rank in importance. That is OK since I have a different take on why we should honor the creators of the Internet.

The Internet may be the most important communication tool in human history. In 500 years, it is the only thing that has even come close to the printing press in its scope and influence. The reason that I am not willing to crown the Internet as the most awesome communication tool ever is because it is such a young technology. We know that in the first 75 years of its existence the Printing Press helped unite the eastern and western hemispheres for the first time and fractured the Catholic church. The Internet has done some remarkable things so far but I think that we won’t know how influential the Internet is until we are able to look back on it around 2100. My bet is that it will surpass the Printing Press in influence and scope but we will have to wait and see how. 

The main reason that I think we should honor the inventors, scientists, and engineers that had a hand in creating what we know today as the world wide web is because the Internet is a prime example of the new model of science that will become more defined in the years to come. Science has always been “open source” meaning that everyone has access to its results and benefits and can improve on a current development by adding or subtracting something. When you think about it, all science is “open source” the web just makes this collaboration and sharing of ideas so much faster. 

It used to be that a person would discover something, write it up in a scholarly journal in their field, and have their peers examine the discovery and try to poke holes in it with their own research. This was a very effective system but new advances took time to discover and vet. Also, the only people who had access to this system were the experts themselves. If you were not a subscriber to this literature, you were out of luck. I assume that some libraries had these journals in their collections but it was probably few and far between. This was not a very democratic system, the knowledge come from the top of the intellectual pyramid and filters down to the general public (sometimes).

Tim Berners-Lee is the person most often credited with the creation of the Internet as we know it today. In 1991 he created a system known as HTTP. Here Berners-Lee explains in his own words:

"I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web... Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Berners-Lee took existing ideas like Transmission Control Protocol and Domain Name systems and combined them in one system. Berners-Lee also created the world’s first web browser that used HTTP to share information over networks in a new way.

I pick this as an example of scientific progress in the Internet age because it highlights how collaborative and democratic science has become. Berners-Lee took other people’s advancements and created something new that enabled others to gain access to more and more information. He also gave away this invention and placed it in the world’s hands to do with what they wanted. In 20 years the world wide web has grown to be a ubiquitous presence in our world that has changed many lives for the better. The reason for that is people from all walks of life have seized Berners-Lee advancement and have added their genius to it. Anyone can access information. There are many “open source” projects on the world wide web that are driven solely by individuals willingness to share and improve technology solely for everyone’s gain. That in itself is special and was not possible 25 years ago in our old system of print based information. 

The Internet has not been all sweetness and light. The worst of human nature is present in this invention as well. Lies, propaganda, and pseudoscience are more easily spread than in the past. New criminal enterprises have flourished on the web. Some things that are too disgusting to discuss in polite company. The internet is a mirror to who we are and that reflection is sometimes disturbing but I would say that on the whole the internet has given us more gifts than pitfalls in its short existence. 

We can only hope that the invention that Tim Berners-Lee launched in 1991 will continue to shape our world in positive collaborative ways in the future. Hopefully that spirit of democracy and the value of working together to help everyone will spread from the online world into our day to day lives.

Your task today is to consciously use the internet. Every time you use your computer or phone to access a network think, “I have access to more information than anyone who has ever lived.”

What you do with that gift is a reflection on you.

December 29th - Season of Reason Day 5 - Be Skeptical

December 29th 
Season of Reason Day 5
Be Skeptical

Skepticism is the process of applying reason and critical thinking to determine truth. A skeptic is a person who bases conclusions on facts and evidence. A skeptic is NOT someone who refuses to change their mind. If there is compelling evidence that supports or refutes a claim, then it is incumbent on the skeptic to align their thinking with the facts and evidence. 

This is where we have a problem in our society today. Many people make outrageous claims like "global warming is not real", "the earth is flat", and "vaccines cause autism" then refuse to accept the science that refutes these claims. In many cases there is a mountain of peer reviewed, testable data that has been vetted by the smartest people in the world and these "skeptics" choose to dismiss them because they refute their strongly held beliefs. This is not science. This is wrong and can cause real world damage. One of the greatest tools a skeptic has is the scientific method. A true skeptic arranges their beliefs to match the facts that are present, not the other way around.

Today's Celebration
Challenge a long held belief that you have.

How to be Skeptic in today's digital world in 10 easy steps (taken from wikihow, full article here)
1) Inspect and critically think about the information. There are lots of people who make up stories for the sake of doing it, but few who are really talented at keeping the manufactured facts straight for any length of time.

2) Ask pointed questions, and expect specific answers. If someone tells you that they heard or read something in the media, ask when, where, and in what context. You can often go directly back to their purported sources and determine the validity of the story.

3) Check other reliable sources of information. If you have access to the Internet, search the topic and look for authentic links like university websites or other institutions.

4) Find the bottom line of what you are being told. In email circles, you will often see people try to lure you into believing information that is completely outrageous. An example would be the proverbial (almost) free laptops. Most people are automatically skeptical of these offers, but enough people fall for the sales pitch.

5) Fact check everything you hear on the news. Many news sources have a reputation for misconstruing information and being biased.
As a news consumer, be sure to write to newspapers, magazines and broadcasters correcting mistakes and demanding that they keep a certain quality of coverage. There are campaigns going on against "copy and paste" journalism and to get newspapers to cite and provide links to the original sources used in their stories.

6) Cultivate a skeptical mindset. Even in the academic world, there have been innumerable instances of accepted facts being exposed over time as ridiculous. We once thought the world was the center of the universe but skeptics disproved this accepted "fact".

7) Frequently test facts against your own reason. This goes back to listening to and thinking about what you are hearing. If someone tells you something and it sticks with you, you are more likely to accept it as fact if you hear it mentioned again somewhere else. If you don't objectively think about and aggressively fact check what everybody tells you, your arguments could be perceived as fallacious by others who have done research.

8) Test statements for yourself when it is practical. If someone tells you driving with the windows down will save gas, try it out. This may not be a good idea when some television pitchman is selling a $79.99 gadget that can be installed in ten seconds and double your mileage, but often there is little risk if no investment or potential for embarrassment exists. This doesn't mean you should believe someone who tells you poison ivy makes an excellent herbal tea.

9) Remember the results of these suggestions. The object of the requested topic is how to be a skeptic. Listening, checking, and testing will probably open your eyes and show you just how much myth and misinformation is being spread in our daily lives, and when you find this out, presto! You will become skeptical.

10) If you think that everything written in steps 1-9 is may not be true and needs to be tested by logic and reason, congratulations! You're already a skeptic!

December 28th - Season of Reason Day 4 - Books

December 28th 
Season of Reason Day 4 
BOOKS: An Information Revolution
Until the invention and widespread use of the Internet, books and paper were humanity's most valuable tools to create and document scientific progress.  The use of paper allowed human beings to talk to people across the globe and through time.  The invention of the Printing Press gave the invention of writing and the technology of paper a mass audience.  This combination of paper and printing made our modern world possible.

Today's Celebration
Today's Season of Reason activity is simple, honor the inventions of paper and the printing press by sharing a book. An actual book with paper, ink, and binding.   The book you share should be something that you have read that means something to you.  Share what books you gave and tell us why @merrynewtonmas.  Use #newtonmas #newbook to tell all of your friends the cool books that you receive today.


Books and Paper
Today we are going to recognize the impact of the Printing Press in the advancement of science and technology. Specifically, we are going to talk about moveable type printing which is defined as a printing press that has the ability to take letters and characters in and out of the printing plate and move them around to form a different word on another plate. It may seem like a small difference between a Printing Press with a fixed plate but the ability to to swap letters and words out of a plate and put them into a new one caused an explosion of books in the medieval world.


If you ask a group of 100 people , “who invented the Printing Press?” most will answer Johanes Gutenberg. Actually I hope that they answer Gutenberg. I fear that many of the answers will be “I don’t know” or incorrect because of some fuzzy memory they have from middle school. I guess it really doesn’t matter because Gutenberg wasn’t the first person to invent a moveable type Printing Press. Just to be clear, Gutenberg did independently invent his printing press in around 1450 in Europe but he wasn’t the first to do it. That honor goes to a Chinese inventor named Bi Sheng.


Bi Sheng was a man of “unofficial position” during the Song dynasty meaning he did not take the exams to become a scholar-official but still worked for the government in some some capacity. Sometime after 1042 he invented the first moveable type Printing Press in the world. The first generation of presses used either wood cut or ceramic characters and the ceramic type soon won out because the wood characters were not hardy enough to be used more than a few times. Using ceramic makes sense if you think about it because the Chinese were world leaders at making porcelain and other pottery at that point in time.


So why do most textbooks, history teachers, and state curriculum guides hold to the notion that Johannes Gutenberg is the inventor of the moveable type Printing Press? Is it because the United States is culturally oriented to Europe instead of China? Is it because Gutenberg’s press was more versatile and durable because he made his moveable characters with metal and Bi Sheng with ceramics? Is it because of the self imposed isolation of the Ming empire after the Mongol takeover of China? A strong case has been made by more than one academic for each of these reasons. Allow me to advance my not so original idea as to why Bi Sheng is not recognized as the inventor of the Printing Press. That reason is simple, Chinese is hard.


Functional literacy in Chinese demands knowledge of between 3000 and 4000 characters. Historians reading ancient texts have to know over ten thousand words in order to understand what they are reading because, ya know, language changes over time as people invent and discard words. The language that the Chinese use is not based on sounds like English. It started as pictograms and evolved into characters that meant specific things. Symbols were combined to create new words and the process took on a life of its own as the years went by. There is more to it than what I just described but for the purposes of our discussion that is what you need to know.


There is an advantage to this language structure. The symbols and characters spread all over Asia and are used in more than just China. So, you could have people that spoke different dialects or even languages who would use the same writing. They may say different words for “house” but when “house” was written down, it was written exactly the same way by speakers of different languages. This is quite useful because it unites disparate peoples under a common written language and the central authority can distribute orders and information so that everybody can understand. Also, this is a boon to trade because it gives people from different regions a way to talk to each other.


The giant disadvantage to this language structure is that the reader needs to know at least 3000 characters to function in day to day life. That means if you want to communicate with someone by printing a few paragraphs of text, you will need a keyboard with at least 3000 buttons. Right now, I am typing on a keyboard that has only 72 buttons. This is what the racks of letters that Chinese printers in the middle ages used to make basic messages in text.


The Chinese did invent the moveable type printing press before anyone else and they used it for many things. Information distribution, printing money, and copying Confucian texts for would be scholar officials to study in preparation for their exams. But the sheer size of the characters needed to compose a simple message made these machines expensive to produce and rare. It is no wonder why this technique did not make it out of China onto the Silk Road like so many other Chinese inventions and advancements.


Movable type’s potential was limited by the language of its inventor. Chinese was not suited to exploit all of the gifts of the moveable type Printing Press. Western languages were because their alphabets were based upon the sounds the letters made. They are phonetic alphabets. English has 26 letters and 42 basic sounds needed to communicate. The sounds that exist outside of the traditional alphabet are given combinations of letters to make the necessary sounds like /sh/ or /ch/. We know that many words in English do not sound the way that they are spelled but these instances do not require that an entire new character is created, we just need to memorize the irregular spellings.


Yes, it is true that Gutenberg did not speak English. All the native languages of Europe share the same qualities as English in this regard.


Once Gutenberg was created metal letters that could be moved from one plate to another, an information revolution was born. Before the Printing Press was invented it took monks years to copy them by hand. Recently a man in Britain set out to copy one himself. It took him four years working 14 hours a day.  Check out this article


The original Gutenberg bibles took a while to print too but they didn’t take as long as a person did to copy by hand.


The printing revolution had two long lasting effects. The first has to do with Marco Polo’s tales about travelling to China in the late 1200s and early 1300s. Marco Polo’s book was one of the most famous books in in Europe in the 1300s and 1400s when people were still copying books by hand. Once Gutenberg’s printing presses started churning out books, Marco Polo’s tales became a bestseller trailing only the Bible in number of copies printed and sold. One of these books ended up in Christopher Columbus’s hands in the late 1400s and inspired him to look for a shorter way to the China that Marco Polo described. When Columbus ran into the new world in October of 1492 he had two books in his possession, The Adventures of Marco Polo and The Bible. Both were printed on presses like the one that Gutenberg designed.


The other effect of the printing revolution that Gutenberg started in 1450 was the quick distribution of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses all over Germany in 1512. Without the rapid distribution of this important document the Protestant Revolution may not have happened.


Within one lifetime, the moveable type Printing Press designed by Johannes Gutenberg helped unite the hemispheres and split the Christian church. Those two events alone would make the Printing Press one of the most influential inventions of humankind. Add onto that list of accomplishments the sheer volume of knowledge that was printed into books and shared all over the world. The printed word has directly caused every human triumph in the last 500 years. Not just ‘had a hand’ in the invention of new technology but actual directly influenced the creation of these inventions because they stored knowledge of previous inventions that were needed to advance science and technology. Without printed books there would have been no Scientific Method, Declaration of Independence, Theory of Gravity, or even the Internet.


Moveable type printing and books have given mankind more treasures than any other technology so far. The internet has a shot at being more influential than the printed word but it still was created by a bunch of engineers using books written by scientists who paved the way.

December 27th - Season of Reason Day 3 - Do Science!

Season of Reason Day 3 (12/27) - Do SCIENCE!
Today we are honoring the accomplishments of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) astronomer, scientist, and convicted heretic.  Galileo conducted one of the most famous experiments in the history of science when he dropped two objects from the balcony of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  What better way to honor this great man's legacy than to conduct a scientific experiment.


Today's Celebration
Today your challenge is to conduct a scientific experiment!  Using the scientific method developed by Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon (THANK BACON!) you will create a hypothesis, test it, and revise that hypothesis to fit your findings.  Check at the bottom of the page for some easy experiments that you and your friends can do right now.


Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Why Galileo?
Galileo’s many accomplishments contributed to the advancement of science and technology. The one that he is probably most famous for is the invention of the telescope. To be fair, Galileo didn’t exactly ‘invent’ the telescope. He took a children’s toy that magnified objects 3 times and improved its magnification ten times so he could look at the night sky. Galileo was the first human being to see the moons of Jupiter. In fact, four of Jupiter’s moons are still referred to as Galilean moons. His observations of Jupiter’s moons as well as his observations of Earth’s moon using the telescope revolutionized the field of astronomy and provided data that proved the heliocentric (the earth orbits the sun) theory of the solar system.

Galileo’s conviction by the Inquisition
Galileo wrote a few noteworthy books that were famous during his lifetime. His writings on heliocentrism caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Inquisition for being contrary to church teachings on the nature of the universe. The Catholic Church held that the Bible and subsequent pronouncements from the church supported the Aristotelian view of geocentrism (the earth is the center of the universe). Since Galileo was advancing the scientific theory of heliocentrism the Catholic Inquisition put him on trial for heresy. Galileo was convicted of the charge of heresy and was forced to publicly recant his scientific findings and promised not to publish any more works in support of his theories. In exchange for this, the Catholic Inquisition put Galileo on house arrest until his death in 1642.

The Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences
While on house arrest Galileo wrote Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences. Since he was on house arrest and promised not to publish anything supporting his scientific theories he wrote it in secret. The book was published after Galileo died and turned out to be extremely influential in the advancement of science. In fact, Isaac Newton used the Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences as the basis for his discoveries in the fields of physics and astronomy.

Galileo’s Legacy
Galileo has been called the “father of modern science”, the “father of observational astronomy”, and the “father of modern physics”. His work formed the foundation for Sir Isaac Newton’s discoveries in gravity. Galileo’s willingness to conduct experiments to test his hypotheses was also something new in the area of science. His willingness to use observation and experiments to prove or disprove his ideas were a glimpse into the scientific method we use today. For that we should be eternally grateful because without questioning the assumptions before us, we would still be stuck in the dark ages.

Galileo's Experiment
Aristotle’s ideas on science had dominated western thought for over a thousand years by the time Galileo was born. Which would have been fine if anyone had taken the time to test his ideas to see if they were right. Galileo decided to see if Aristotle was right.

Legend has it that Galileo climbed the leaning tower of Pisa and dropped two metal balls of differing weight at the same time to see which would hit the ground first. If Aristotle was right, the heavier ball would fall faster and hit the ground first. We want you to recreate Galileo’s experiment to see of Aristotle was right. Here is how you do it.

Take two objects that are of differing weight like a tennis ball and a basketball. Drop them from the same height at the same time. If you live near Pisa you can use the same tower that Galileo used. If you don’t find someplace that has a balcony or a window where you can drop objects and observe their impact on the ground. If you don’t have a safe place to do this, simply hold both objects above your head and drop them at the same time.

Note: Science is important! Pushing the bounds of science is important as well. If you are going to conduct any scientific experiment please do so safely. There is no reason to injure yourself or others while you are discovering how the world works. In this case, do NOT drop things onto people. Science is about making the world a better place, not putting people into the hospital.


Links to some easy Scientific Experiments you can do with your friends
10 easy science experiments
A year of science experiments

Check out our Galileo themed tshirts!

December 26th - Season of Reason Day 2 - The Scientific Method

December 26th
Season of Reason Day 2
The Scientific Method
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

All modern scientific progress and invention can be traced to the application of the Scientific Method to real world problems. The two men credited with laying the groundwork for the Scientific Method are Rene Descartes and Sir Francis Bacon. Descartes gave the philosophical kick start to question everything in the natural world and Bacon gave the method to uncover objective truth. Both men are giants in their chosen fields and together have influenced our world more than anyone else in history. 

Today's Celebration
Today we celebrate these accomplishments by using the Scientific Method to solve a problem or perform a task. When you are done say "Thank Bacon!"  Share your accomplishments with us @merrynewtonmas using #ThankBacon and #MerryNewtonmas


Why celebrate the Scientific Method?
The largest contribution that Descartes made to the birth of the Scientific Method was one simple idea. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”. Which means that the only thing you can count on in this life, the only thing you can take for granted is that you exist. Everything else is in play. Descartes encouraged people to question everything. And he meant everything. Don’t take anyone’s discoveries as the gospel truth until you can prove it yourself. 

This is a revolutionary idea because for the entire stretch of human existence people used appeals to authority as proof that they were right. Whether they used the Bible, Aristotle, or the Pope ‘thinkers’’ before the Scientific Revolution used these paragons of authority to stifle intellectual curiosity instead of cultivating it. Aristotle and his theory of the geocentric universe is the best example of this. For over a thousand years scholars in the west treated Aristotle’s writing as if they were Gospel and should not be questioned. When someone tried to question the geocentric universe the Catholic Church’s Inquisition courts put them on trial. Some scholars were executed for heresy for questioning Aristotle! At some point a Pope endorsed Aristotle’s geocentric universe and it became sacred which is why the Church was prosecuting these people for heresy.

Sir Francis Bacon wanted to create a new focus on an empirical scientific method that depended on tangible, repeatable, physical proof. Experiments were conducted to gather data and analyze it so the information would organize the natural world in a rational way. Bacon believed that if science was used in this way it would become a tool that would benefit humanity. In 1620 he published Novum Organum Scientiarum (New Scientific Method) that detailed how experiments and scientific research should be conducted. 

If you google “Scientific Method” you will find a few different versions of what the Scientific Method is. Some Scientific Methods have combined steps, some have left procedures out, and there is no universal agreement on what to call the procedures. All methods for inquiry that claim to be scientific agree on the following steps in one form or another.
1. Ask a question/Define the problem
2. Research the problem or question
3. Construct a hypothesis for how the question can be answered or problem will be solved.
4. Conduct a test or experiment with controlled variables to see whether your hypothesis is true or not.
5. Analyze the results of your test or experiment and judge whether your experiment proved your hypothesis.
6. If your experiment confirms your hypothesis, share it with your peers so they can conduct their own experiments to see if the hypothesis is true.
7. If your experiment or the findings of your peers do not support the hypothesis, revise the hypothesis and test/experiment again (go back to repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 and modify the hypothesis until it agrees with your evidence)

Today’s challenge is to recognize where you use the Scientific Method in your daily lives. Whenever you follow the procedures for identifying a problem, figuring out how to solve that problem, conducting an experiment, and analyzing the data from that experiment we want you to say “THANK BACON!” 

Even if you are watching dishes by hand you are doing the Scientific Method. Think about it. You have a problem (a dirty dish), you hypothesize on how to solve that problem (washing in warm soapy water and rinsing it with clean water), you conduct an experiment (putting the dish in the sink to wash it), and you analyze the experiment (is the dish clean now?). You may have to revise your hypothesis and repeat the procedure if the dish is still dirty (need more soap or need to scrub harder or use a different sponge then rinse with clean water). Analyze the data from the experiment (is the dish clean now?). If the experiment was a success put it in the dish rack to dry (or use a towel) or repeat as many times as necessary to achieve the goal of a clean dish. 


Every time you clean a dish or use the Scientific Method we want you to say, “THANK BACON!”. Every time you use a piece of technology that came from the Scientific Method say, “THANK BACON!” We think it is time to give credit to the man who is responsible for the creation of more technology than any other human being in history. Sir Francis Bacon may have a larger legacy than any other person on the face of the earth. 

Scream it from the mountain tops! THANK BACON!

December 25 - Season of Reason Day 1 - Merry Newtonmas

December 25 - Season of Reason Day 1

Merry Newtonmas
The Newtonmas celebration should look very familiar to many of you.  This holiday centers on family, friends, presents, good cheer, community, and apples.

Today's Celebration
On Newtonmas we celebrate the gifts of science by giving these gifts to each other.  Since we are honoring one of the greatest scientists that the world has ever known, our gifts are centered on technology. Anything that has been created by the scientific method or the hard work of human trial and error qualifies as a Newtonmas gift.  The technology does not have to be sophisticated either.  A simple hat and scarf are genius human inventions that have saved many lives and created comfort for people in cold climates.  Many people are already giving Newtonmas gifts for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Mithramas, and Saturnalia and they don’t even know it! 

The other part of our celebration has to do with apples.  Share some apple pie, apple fritters, apple butter, apple juice, applesauce, or apple cobbler with your friends and family.  The apple plays an important part in Isaac Newton's discoveries and we honor this humble fruit and the bounty it provides for our bellies as well as our brains.

Apples are important to Sir Isaac’s story because it was during a walk in his garden that an apple falling to the ground inspired him to form a hypothesis for Gravity. So give an apple, eat an apple, hang an apple ornament on your Newtonmas (or Christmas or Yule) tree, drink apple cider, give apple wine, the possibilities are endless. Have fun with it and let us know how you have incorporated apples into your celebration.

Let other people know that you are celebrating Newtonmas by using #Newtonmas or #MerryNewtonmas on social media.  Take a picture of your gifts and your yummy apple treats and send them to your friends!

A word about myth and magic. Newtonmas does not incorporate any fictional characters into the holiday. Our stance is that what people have accomplished using math, science, and reason is miraculous enough. We don’t need a magic elf using our chimney to drop off presents. If you want to feel holiday magic ponder our place in this vast and ever expanding universe. Realize how we are all made of stars and connected to everything by our biology and chemistry.

Merry Newtonmas!

For unto you is born this day on the island of England a Genius, which is Sir Isaac Newton. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the Genius has invented Calculus, defined gravity, and given three laws of motion. And with the Genius is a multitude of the greatest minds praising reason and the scientific method, and saying, Glory to Science in the highest, and for the progress that allows man to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, defeat disease, and drive back the darkness.

The Season of Reason is coming!

It's beginning to look a lot like the #SeasonOfReason! Only a few days until our kickoff event on Newtonmas, December 25th. Get your books and your science experiments ready! Here is a primer on how to celebrate all 8 days of the Season of Reason.

Sir Isaac Newton - LGBTQA Icon

Isaac Newton should enjoy an honored place in the LGBTQA community.  After all, his work in the field of optics demonstrated that a beam of light consists of all the colors of the rainbow.  That’s right! Newton discovered and studied the rainbow ultimately giving this community a recognizable symbol to rally around and identify themselves.

That would be enough to endear Newton to the LGBTQA community forever but there is another reason that this community should be familiar with his legacy.  It has been theorized that Isaac Newton was in fact a member of the LGBTQA community.  Although Isaac Newton opined on a multitude of subjects from the end of the world as foretold by the Bible to how to calculate the speed of an object on an ellipse, he never mentioned his sexual preference.  His peers were silent on the subject as well but there are some interesting clues embedded in the history of Sir Isaac.  

Isaac Newton never married.  That was not uncommon amongst academics and scholars of the 1600s.  In fact, being a lifelong bachelor was quite normal in Newton’s chosen profession.  He also never had any children so there is no clear and definitive evidence of heterosexual behavior.  There is some speculation that Newton had an unrequited (unconsummated) homosexual relationship with a Swiss mathematician named Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.  This claim comes from an interpretation of some of Newton and de Duillier’s correspondence.  Actually, historians are arguing about one passage in one letter.  Some historians have argued that these writings point to Newton’s true sexuality while others remain skeptical about the interpretation of texts.

There is no definitive evidence for Isaac Newton being heterosexual, homosexual, or some combination of each.  

There are some of Newton’s writings that point to a different conclusion.  One of Newton’s works the ‘Prooemium', with its first chapter on the history of Christian church as well as some of his private writings, define his views on celibacy.  Newton was against the Roman Catholic practice of celibacy amongst clergy.  But Newton also wrote that for scholars and academics the practice of celibacy was honorable and that he was in fact celibate.

Our best evidence about Isaac Newton’s personal life indicates that he was celibate which means he falls into the category of “A-Sexual” and fits right into the LGBTQA community.  

Congratulations members of the LGBTQA family, Isaac Newton was not only the person who discovered the rainbow but he was also a member of your community as well!

https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/03/the-life-and-loves-of-isaac-newton.html

https://www.quora.com/Was-Isaac-Newton-possibly-gay

http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/translation/TRAN00001

Buy a T-shirt here.

https://www.sunfrog.com/147202571-1220557126.html?49039

Celebrate Science with Newtonmas Lights!

There is a tradition that we enjoy for the winter season that is much more suited to Newtonmas than any other holiday.  That tradition is adorning our trees and homes with light.  Specifically putting strings of multi colored lights or projecting lights for decoration.  We can’t say for sure where or when the practice of taking lights that were intended for holiday trees were put on houses for seasonal decoration.  But there is no doubt that many people are enjoying this activity now.

Christmas trees are a German tradition left over from the pagan practice of bringing evergreen plants inside during the winter to symbolize the promise of the coming spring. Protestants in Germany added to the tradition of placing evergreens inside their houses for Christmas by putting candles on their trees.  When Germans emigrated to other countries, they took their lighted trees with them.  The tradition caught on in England during the Victorian era and came to the United States shortly thereafter.  

Americans kept the tradition of lighted Christmas trees, first with candles and then with electric lights.  Electric tree lights have some obvious advantages.  Although early versions of electric lights were not as safe as the ones we use today, they were a lot safer than putting a candle on a dead tree inside a house.  These strings of lights were taken from the living rooms of America and flung on the bushes our in front of the house by some unknown pioneer and the tradition of decorating your domicile in light for the holiday season was born.  It took a few decades to grow to the orgy of light that it is today with lights that blink, shimmer, dance, and shine.  The over to top house decorations have seeped into our popular culture in movies like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and in reality shows that are competitions to see who can create the most dazzling display in the country.

So, what does any of this have to do with the baby Jesus?  As with many other winter holiday traditions, outdoor “Christmas” lights have nothing to do with the birth of the christian savior.  It is more of a reflection of American consumerism and savvy marketing in our capitalist culture.  There was an activity that everyone liked during a season where people spent a lot of money and some smart people decided to sell products to satisfy a demand where one had not existed before.  It is no surprise that decorating houses in an extravagant and sometimes gaudy manner has really taken off in the last 25 years when the tools and tricks of marketing have become much more refined and effective.  

It is depressing to think that the reason that we take part in an activity has more to do with being manipulated by Madison Ave and Hollywood than any nostalgic tie to a tradition. But we have a chance to change the narrative on this tradition from one of base consumerism to one that actually has meaning.  

Christmas lights are now called “Newtonmas Lights”.  This makes sense on a few levels.  First, it is a way to celebrate Newtonmas and the Season of Reason.  Second, it honors the work that Sir Isaac Newton did with light and the visible spectrum.  Newton was the first person to realize that if you refract light that it produced the colors of the rainbow.  Before Newton’s discoveries, the common understanding of light was that color was made by adding or subtracting light.  Newton proved this idea wrong when he split white light with a prism and discovered that regular sunlight contained all the colors of the rainbow.  Newton’s groundbreaking work “Optiks” detailed his experiments and revolutionized the science of color.  

Isaac Newton gives us our modern understanding of light and color. This understanding has opened the door to revolutionary change not only in science and engineering but in art and culture as well. There is no better way to honor this man’s accomplishments than by decorating your house with the very colors that he helped us understand.

Good luck with your Newtonmas decorations and lights! This year I am going with colored lasers!

Merry Newtonmas T-Shirts

The first batch of Newtonmas T-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts are here for ladies, men, and kids. Follow the link to buy one. Click here! All sizes and many colors available.

Season of Reason T-Shirt

The Season of Reason is almost here! Pick science over superstition this holiday season and show your support for the world's newest holiday.

Click here to check it out

Newtonmas Carol Contest

Write a Newtonmas Carol and win a free "Merry Newtonmas Holiday Ornament" 

Pick a classic holiday song and write lyrics that celebrate Newtonmas and the Season of Reason.  For example...


To the tune of "Over the river and through the woods"

"Out of the green tree and onto his head
The big red Apple did fall
The bump showed the way
We are able to stay
On this big blue beautiful ba-all"

Post your entry on our blog Reason's Greetings, tweet us @MerryNewtonmas, or post on our Facebook page to enter. Bonus points for those who perform the song and submit a video.
(limit 1 prize per household, 10 prizes will be awarded over the length of the contest, contest ends 12/31/17)

Was Isaac Newton born on December 25, 1642 or January 4, 1643?

The short answer is YES.

How can someone have two birthdays, especially two that are so far apart?

From the calendar that we follow today, Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643.  That is to say that if we counted backward from today and subtracted the number of days he was alive and the number of days he has been dead, we would come up with January 4th as Newton’s birthday.

But if we rely on the calendar that England was using at the time of Newton’s birth, the day changes to December 25, 1642.  When baby Isaac Newton first popped out into the world the calendar on the wall of every house in England said December 25.  

The reason for this discrepancy is that we don’t use the same calendar today as England used in the 1600s.  The calendars look the same and have the same name for the 12 months and the 7 days of the week but they kept time differently.  The English in the 1600s used the Julian Calendar which was named for Julius Caesar who proposed the calendar in 45 BC.  This calendar had 365 days in each year and there was one leap day every 4 years on February 29th.  The length of the year on the Julian calendar is 365.25 days and this is the main fault with the Julian calendar.  The actual length of a solar year is 365.2425 days.  The Julian calendar was off by 0.002%.

What difference does 0.002% make in the grand scheme of things?  Aren’t there more important things to worry about?  There may be more important things to worry about but that still does not mean that we can ignore this problem because, over time, the calendar starts to drift.  When I say drift, I mean that the Spring and Fall equinoxes start to change days the longer the calendar is in effect.  Since the Julian calendar was enacted in 45BC, the calendar has ‘drifted’ 13 days.  That means that the Spring Equinox on the Julian calendar would occur on March 7th/8th instead of March 20th/21st when it is supposed to happen if an accurate calendar is followed.

Newton was born when England and her colonies were using the Julian calendar to measure time and the day that he was born was December 25, 1642 according to the calendar his culture was using at the time.  

The Gregorian reform of 1582 corrected the mistakes of the Julian calendar by doing two things.  First, days were skipped to make up for the days that were never counted on the Julian calendar.  For example, people went to bed on January 1st and woke up the next morning on January 14th.  The second reform was to change the occurrence of leap days.  The new rule is best summarized as every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the year 2000 is.  There are still leap days on February 29th every four years except for those exceptions.  This brings the calendar in line with the actual solar year which is 356.2425 days long.  The calendar that we observe now is called the Gregorian calendar which was named after Pope Gregory XIII who initiated the reform in 1582.

Countries with Catholic governments adopted the calendar sooner than their Protestant counterparts which is why it took England 170 years to abandon the Julian system for the more accurate Gregorian calendar.

It is our view here at Merry Newtonmas that Sir Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642 because the English did not recognize and use the Gregorian calendar until 1752, well after his death in 1727.

Fun facts

England and her colonies in the Americas switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 so the American Revolution occurred while the Gregorian calendar was in use.  So breathe easy, the American Independence Day will always be on the Fourth of July.

Greece was the last of the European countries to use the Gregorian calendar. They switched in 1923.  One reason they waited so long is that the Greeks depended on the Orthodox Church’s calendar which was the Julian model.

Gregorian Calendar 1 solar year = 365 days 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds

Julian Calendar 1 solar year = 365 days 6 hours

Many countries who are outside of the European Christian cultural tradition eventually adopted the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes and international trade.

Merry Saganmas!

Carl Sagan was born November 9, 1934 in Brooklyn New York.
Today is a day to contemplate the vastness of the universe and your connection to it.  You share DNA with every living thing on the planet.  Every atom in your body was born in the belly of a dying star.
Now, go change the world.

Merry Newtonmas/Stranger Things Mashup

Spread the word!  Newtonmas is coming!

Happy Birthday Edmund Halley!

Happy Birthday Edmund Halley - November 8, 1656

Astronomer and Mathematician that is best known for the Comet named after him.  He predicted the orbit and return of the comet in 1682.  Posed the question to Isaac Newton that spurred him to write the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica which Halley edited and published.  He identified the proper motion of stars and predicted the transit of Venus which was later proven by Cook’s Voyage to Tahiti.

Cool Links about Halley

How I Discovered Halley's Comet by Edmond Halley TheAtlantic.com 8/3/2012

Why is the transit of Venus so rare?

Halley’s Comet on Cosmos - clip

Transit of Venus BBC documentary (free)

The Comet’s Tale - BBC Documentary (free)

Crash Course - Astronomy Part 1

If you have not seen the most recent COSMOS miniseries, please check it out.  This is probably the best episode of the bunch.

Halley and Newton on Cosmos Full Episode - $1.99