J Ovalo, Kristine Joy R.

BSABE 1A

GEE 111: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Activity 1:

Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud Scientific Revolution

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) created the heliocentric idea, a concept of a

universe in which the distances of the planets from the sun bore a direct relationship
to the size of their orbits, which was very controversial as it contradicts Aristotle's
idea on geocentrism. Failure of Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe to follow
Aristotle’s requirement for the uniform circular motion of all celestial bodies disturbed
Copernicus made him determined to eliminate Ptolemy’s equant and create a
heliocentric model, which was the start of a change in the way the world was viewed,
and Copernicus came to be seen as the initiator of the Scientific Revolution. Charles
Robert Darwin (1809-1882) on Natural Selection Theory. He suggested that animals
and humans shared a common ancestry, which shocked Victorian religious society.
His nonreligious biology appealed to the rising class of professional scientists, and
by the time of his death, evolutionary imagery had spread through all of science,
literature, and politics, and his scientific theory of evolution by natural selection
became the foundation of modern evolutionary studies. The Keys to Darwin’s Theory
of Natural Selection are individuals have a lot more offspring than they should, not all
offspring can survive, each offspring is different, and parents can pass on their traits
to their offspring. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) on Psychoanalysis. His creation of
psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of
its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated
criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell
remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as
it is narrowly defined. If, as the American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended,
“psychological man” replaced such earlier notions as a political, religious, or
economic man as the 20th century’s dominant self-image, it is in no small measure
due to the power of Freud’s vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual
legacy he left behind.

One of my reactions to Nicolaus Copernicus about Heliocentrism was at time when

mankind was beginning to accept the myth of their greatness which was supported
by the assumption, that we are the center of everything. Someone proposed that not
only the earth that circled around the sun but also all the other planets. Charles
Darwin's path to prominence and eventual acceptance may have been the most
difficult of the three Renaissance philosophers named because his entire idea was in
opposition to the presence of God. But the data Darwin obtained while aboard the
Beagle to support his "Theory of Evolution" has stood the test of time. Darwin's
Theory of Natural Selection also has a significant point that individuals have a lot
more offspring than they should, not all offspring can survive, each offspring is
different, and parents can pass on their traits to their offspring . Sigmund Freud’s
approach to the study of human psychology did not sit well with the others as he
tackled subjects like feminism, religion and other sensitive issues.

I think that for a very long time, our understanding of the solar system remained
incomplete. From the days of Ptolemy in ancient Roman Egypt, humans thought that
the Sun, moon, planets and stars orbited around Earth. This notion of geocentrism
was based on the observation that the Sun and moon appeared to revolve around
the Earth once a day, and that the Earth was stable and fixed in position. Then came
along Nicolaus Copernicus, who thought otherwise. He observed that the planets, on
occasion, would travel backwards across the sky over several nights of observation.
He theorized that this was because both the Earth and other planets were moving in
the same direction, but at different speeds. This made the other slower planet
appear as though it was moving backwards in relation to the faster Earth. Charles
Darwin wrote an influential and controversial book called On the Origin of Species. In
it, he proposed that species evolve (or, as he put it, undergo "descent with
modification"), and that all living things can trace their descent to a common
ancestor. Darwin argued forcefully that all creatures were subject to the same natural
laws, and that humans had evolved over countless eons, just as other animals had.
Darwin also suggested a mechanism for evolution, natural selection in which
heritable traits that help organisms survive and reproduce become more common in
a population over time. Darwin proposed that species can change over time, that
new species come from pre-existing species, and that all species share a common
ancestor. Each species has its own unique set of heritable (genetic) differences from
the common ancestor, which have accumulated gradually over very long time.
Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst on Psychoanalysis and had an idea that
unconscious mental activity is important. At the beginning of the century, his beliefs
about the inner workings of the human mind appeared so revolutionary, yet now,
most schools of psychological thinking embrace them.

I have also found that Copernicus' challenge was to present a practical alternative to
the Ptolemaic model by more elegantly and accurately determining the length of a
solar year while preserving the metaphysical implications of a mathematically
ordered cosmos. And his heliocentric model retained several of the Ptolemaic
elements that caused inaccuracies such as the planets' circular orbits, epicycles, and
uniform speed. While at the same time, Copernicus used the ideas that the Earth is
one of several planets revolving around a stationary sun in a determined order, Earth
has three motions which are the daily rotation, annual revolution, and annual tilting of
its axis, retrograde motion of the planets is explained by the Earth's motion and the
distance from the Earth to the Sun is small compared to the distance from the Sun to
the stars. Charles Darwin believed that humans come from monkeys and
demonstrate that the various kinds of living and fossilized things we find in the world
are related to one another genealogically by descent - they evolve. Sigmund Freud
and his theories have been influenced by modern ideas on dreams, childhood,
personality, memory, sexuality, and therapy. Numerous other theorists built on
Freud's work as they created their own theories in opposition to his, and many more
used it as a springboard for their own ideas.

In conclusion, I concur and appreciate the contributions made by Charles Robert

Darwin and Sigmund Freud. Despite not being a part of the Scientific Revolution,
both of them revolutionized how people thought. Their research is among the most
influential since it emphasizes not just human behavior but also the survival instinct,
which leads to pleasure, survival, and other things.