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Timeline

Rough notes towards a timeline of geodesy, astronomy, scientific method, and evolution.

Ancient history

  • ~650 BC. Tablet 11 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, containing the Gilgamesh flood myth.1
  • ~600 BC. Anaximander writes On Nature, containing an argument that celestial bodies have circular paths going around the earth.2
  • ~ 360 BC. Plato writes Timaeus, the earliest surviving account of a natural theology.3
  • 350 BC. In his book On the Heavens, Aristotle argues that the earth is spherical.4
  • ~240 BC. Eratosthenes estimates circumference of earth.5
  • ~150 AD. Ptolemy develops a geocentric model that is used for roughly 1500 years6.
  • ~383 AD. St. Augustine is influenced by Neoplatonism, for example, God is not material.7
  • 476 AD. German barbarian king deposed the last emporor king of Western Roman Empire, imperial insignia sent to Eastern Roman Empire.

900s

  • 902. Muslim conquest of Sicily.

1000s

  • 1085. Fall of Toledo.
  • 1091. Norman conquest of Sicily.

1100s

  • ~1175. In Toledo, Gerard of Cremona translates Ptolemy's Almagest from Arabic to Latin.

1200s

  • 1204. Sack of Constantinople.
  • 1210. Church bans teaching Aristotle.
  • 1231. Church clarifies Aristotle should be reviewed for which parts should be banned.
  • 1265-1268. Thomas Aquinas writes Summa Theologia, including The Five Ways, arguably a synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian Theology.8

1400s

  • ~1400. Plato translated from Greek to Latin.
  • ~1440. Johannes Gutenberg invents printing press.
  • 1453. Fall of Constantinople.
  • 1492. Columbus sails west.

1500s

  • 1517. Martin Luther publishes Ninety-five Theses.
  • 1543. Nicolaus Copernicus publishes Copernican heliocentrism.9
  • 1588. Tycho Brahe publishes Tychonic/Tychonian system10 (geoheliocentric).

1600s

  • 1608. First known record of refracting telescope11.
  • ~1609. Galileo Galilei designs Galilean telescope11.
  • 1609-1621. Kepler publishes three laws of planetary motion.12
  • 1610. Galileo Galilei discovers the four moons of Jupiter.13
  • 1615. Friar's submit complaints that Galileo is contradicting Scripture.
  • 1616. Church consultants report heliocentricism theologically erroneous. Inquisition prohibits the theory. Galileo given warning.14
  • 1620. Francis Bacon publishes New Method, moving away from Aristotelian logic, and towards modern scientific methods. Demotes Aristotle's cause "final".
  • ~1620. Compound microscopes first appear in Europe.15
  • 1633. Galileo found guilty of suspected heresy.
  • 1638. Galileo Galilei publishes Two New Sciences, its contents include the law of falling bodies.16,17,18
  • 1641. ReneĢs Descartes publishes Meditations, its contents include the idea of Cartesian doubt.19,20
  • 1665. Robert Hooke publishes Micrographia, introducing the term "cell".
  • 1687. Newton publishes universal law of gravitation.

1700s

  • 1735, 1758. Carl Linnaeus publishes Linnaean taxonomy.
  • 1798. Thomas Robert Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle of Population, the sixth edition was cited as a key influence by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the theory of natural selection.

1800s

  • 1802. William Paley publishes Natural Theology, containing the watchmaker analogy.
  • 1809. Transmutation of species introduced by Lamarck.
  • 1813. Georges Cuvier proposes catastrophism.
  • 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace publishes On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type.
  • 1859. Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.21
  • 1865. Samuel Rowbotham publishes Zetetic Astronomy: The Earth not a Globe.22

1900s

  • 1910. General Assembly of Presbyterian Church produce Doctrinal Deliverance, (the Five Fundamentals), including inerrancy of scripture.23
  • 1912. Alfred Wegener proposes continental drift.24
  • 1923. George McCready Price publishes The New Geology.
  • 1925. Butler act introduced, prohibiting any teaching that denies that man was divinely created, as described in Bible, for example, that man descended from a lower order of animal. A misdemeanor, subject to fine between $100 and $500.
  • 1926. Scopes trial.25
  • 1946. Arthur Holmes adjusts estimate of age of earth to at least 3 billion years.
  • 1961. Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb publish The Genesis Flood.
  • 1967. Butler act repealed.
  • 1987. Edwards v. Aguillard.26
  • 1989. Of Pandas and People published.27
  • 1994. Eugenie Scott coins the term, "Gish gallop".28

2000s

  • 2005. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.29

Footnotes

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth ↩

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres ↩

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_theology ↩

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy ↩

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_circumference ↩

  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentrism ↩

  7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism ↩

  8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas) ↩

  9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism ↩

  10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system ↩

  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refracting_telescope ↩↩

  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler's laws of planetary motion ↩

  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons ↩

  14. https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism ↩

  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_microscope_technology ↩

  16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_New_Sciences ↩

  17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo's_law_of_odd_numbers ↩

  18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Time-squared_law ↩

  19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy ↩

  20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_doubt ↩

  21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species ↩

  22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zetetic_Astronomy:_The_Earth_not_a_Globe ↩

  23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist-modernist_controversy#The_Doctrinal_Deliverance_of_1910_(the_Five_Fundamentals) ↩

  24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift ↩

  25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_trial ↩

  26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_v._Aguillard ↩

  27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People ↩

  28. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop ↩

  29. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District ↩