Showing posts with label Brittany Hanes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brittany Hanes. Show all posts
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Ptolemaic system vs. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kelper
The Ptolemaic system was first thought up in the 2nd century a.d. by the Greek scientist Ptolemy. His theory was that earth was the center if the system and that everything else orbited around earth in sphere of incresing perfection. After the last ring was Heaven, the most perfect, and Christians accepted this because it gave a good explanation of Heaven. Then in the 16th and 17th centuries a few scientists question this theory, mainly Copernicus. The Copernican theory said that the sun was the center of the universe and that the earth and the other celestial bodies moved around it. There was no realm for heaven, and basically it was right because it was preved by math to be more accurate than the Ptolemaic system. Kelper and Galileo expanded on the principle math and refined the theory. Now that it was proven that the Ptolemaic system was wrong, and there was no longer a physical place for heaven, the church and christians all over Europe were confused and had no idea what to believe. Several rejected the theory, and the church made Galileo recant his theories and beliefs of the new Copernican system. Christians were frightened of this new belief about the universe, and the French scientist Pascal himself a devout Christian was deeply troubled by this knowlege. If God and heaven could no longer be explained by the exestence of the realm beyond which man could somewhat see, then how did they know he even existed at all? While almost all scientists of the time were Christian and kept their faith in God, they felt they had to explain their world through science and math. Unfortunately theology was forced to change dramatically along with the ground breaking advances in science.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
What caused the great financial scandals of the 1720s?
We all know of the Bubbles in England and France, and how it started out 1714-15. This great Bubble scandal started out as a few companies established by Scottish man named John Law. He personally financed the South Sea Company for England, and the Mississippi Company for France. While they created the monopoly over all other companies, he also established the national Bank of France and assumed all government debt through it. Many people invested in these seemingly profitable companies, and they were doing good for a few years. The companies were buying selling and trading the stock with good margins that kept increasing. Then John Law's credit and financing failed with such collassal stock prices, and while he fled, people lost entire life savings in failed companies. After this incident, the French company and all French assests in the company such as the Orleans company which was absorbed by it, and the French Bank were ruined and the country never recovered their credit. The French people refused to help the government and for another century the French people remained wary of government credit. In England however, the scandal played out and was fixed, Under teh direction of Robert Walpole the English people accepted the responsibility of bailing the gvernment out and several large independent corporations gave loans and bought bonds from the government and recovered and saved the bank of England and the credit of the government.
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