Student Number: 2426911
Name: Tintswalo Ayanda Onthatile Chauke
Module: The State, Modernity and The Constitution of
The Political
Course Code: POLS2006A
Lecturer: Dr. Ahmed Veriava
Task: Tutorial Assignment 2
Tutorial Group: 3
Tutor: Mpho Ogboro
Date: 02 August 2022
, TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
1.) List the key figures of The Scientific Revolution highlighted by Tarnas’ discussion; and
write a few lines on each of their contribution.
Tarnas highlights a sun centred universe with a planetary Earth and
mathematically worked out implications by Nicolaus Copernicus. He states
that “Despite the innovation’s apparent absurdity it resulted in a system
Copernicus believed to be quantitatively better than Ptolemy’s.” -This
heliocentric model explained the reasons for the movements of the sky and the
stars and contributed greatly to the study of astronomy. The discovery of orbits
led to explanations for day and night, the creation of what we know today as a
calendar and most importantly time. Although this theory grounded in a
heliocentric model simplified many of the perplexed ideas and assumptions
made by philosophers and astronomers about the astrology, it had a negative
impact on the religious beliefs of the era. Copernicanism received negative
critique by reformers in the likes of Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon who called
who saw it as pernicious heresy. Copernicanism posed a threat to the Christian
framework of cosmology, theology, and morality as the Christian worldview of
an Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentric universe (Ptolemaic system). This doctrine
was seen as tantamount to atheism. On the positive end other philosophers and
astronomers such as Giordano Bruno, publicized advanced versions of
heliocentric theory, stating that the Bible’s teaching was to serve as moral
teaching and not elucidation of the astronomical structures of the universe. Such
philosophers were executed by the Inquisition. (Tarnas 2010, 250-257)
Johannes Kelper’s discovery of the ellipses shaped orbits, with the Sun as one
of the two foci and each planet moving at varying speeds proportionately
according to their distance from the Sun -fastest near the Sun, slowest away
from the Sun with equal distance on the arc in equal intervals of time. Kelper
also conceived a third law that the different orbits were related to each other
by mathematical proportions -the ratio of the squares of the orbital periods
Page 1
Name: Tintswalo Ayanda Onthatile Chauke
Module: The State, Modernity and The Constitution of
The Political
Course Code: POLS2006A
Lecturer: Dr. Ahmed Veriava
Task: Tutorial Assignment 2
Tutorial Group: 3
Tutor: Mpho Ogboro
Date: 02 August 2022
, TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
1.) List the key figures of The Scientific Revolution highlighted by Tarnas’ discussion; and
write a few lines on each of their contribution.
Tarnas highlights a sun centred universe with a planetary Earth and
mathematically worked out implications by Nicolaus Copernicus. He states
that “Despite the innovation’s apparent absurdity it resulted in a system
Copernicus believed to be quantitatively better than Ptolemy’s.” -This
heliocentric model explained the reasons for the movements of the sky and the
stars and contributed greatly to the study of astronomy. The discovery of orbits
led to explanations for day and night, the creation of what we know today as a
calendar and most importantly time. Although this theory grounded in a
heliocentric model simplified many of the perplexed ideas and assumptions
made by philosophers and astronomers about the astrology, it had a negative
impact on the religious beliefs of the era. Copernicanism received negative
critique by reformers in the likes of Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon who called
who saw it as pernicious heresy. Copernicanism posed a threat to the Christian
framework of cosmology, theology, and morality as the Christian worldview of
an Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentric universe (Ptolemaic system). This doctrine
was seen as tantamount to atheism. On the positive end other philosophers and
astronomers such as Giordano Bruno, publicized advanced versions of
heliocentric theory, stating that the Bible’s teaching was to serve as moral
teaching and not elucidation of the astronomical structures of the universe. Such
philosophers were executed by the Inquisition. (Tarnas 2010, 250-257)
Johannes Kelper’s discovery of the ellipses shaped orbits, with the Sun as one
of the two foci and each planet moving at varying speeds proportionately
according to their distance from the Sun -fastest near the Sun, slowest away
from the Sun with equal distance on the arc in equal intervals of time. Kelper
also conceived a third law that the different orbits were related to each other
by mathematical proportions -the ratio of the squares of the orbital periods
Page 1
