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