KNOWLEDGE LAB 000 · MAPMAKERS
Welcome, explorer. This is the online companion to The Evolution of Knowledge — The Eclipses and the Universe. The book gives you the starting point; the 21 Vectors give you the MAP; this page opens the paths beyond the page.
Each Vector below has its key ideas, its people, its connections to other Vectors, and the question it leaves open. Images that live outside the book are on the images page.
The 21 Vectors
- The Moon that Obeyed Columbus
- The Gods in the Sky
- The Gods Obey Mathematics
- The Accident that Makes Eclipses Possible
- Is the Earth Flat?
- Our Own Spaceship
- The Star We Cannot Touch
- Two Clocks for the Same Moon
- Galileo
- Does it All Make Sense Now?
- We Are Made of Stars
- When the Sky Became a Model
- Nine Planets, Then Eight
- Newton and the Apple
- The Sea that Obeys the Moon
- Space Bends
- Not Just a Gray Sphere
- Footprints and Machines
- And Now: Lunar Bases and Robots?
- And the Next Eclipses?
- The Incomplete MAP
VECTOR 01
The Moon that Obeyed Columbus
The next question: How can we use what we know when we know that our MAP is incomplete?
VECTOR 02
The Gods in the Sky
Celestial Bodies in Mythology and Culture
The next question: Are there things we still explain with stories simply because we do not yet have a better MAP?
VECTOR 03
The Gods Obey Mathematics
Mathematics and the Prediction of Celestial Events
The next question: Does the model tell us what reality is — or only how accurately we can predict what it does?
VECTOR 04
The Accident that Makes Eclipses Possible
The next question: How do we know that something is true when we cannot see it directly?
VECTOR 05
Is the Earth Flat?
Earth’s Shape, Curvature and Measurement
The next question: What else is happening in the Solar System that we cannot yet see?
VECTOR 06
Our Own Spaceship
Earth: Rotation, Energy and Life
The next question: What else might look completely different if we could observe it from somewhere else?
VECTOR 07
The Star We Cannot Touch
The Sun: Stellar Physics and Solar Energy
The next question: If the Sun is a star, how many other stars might have worlds of their own?
VECTOR 08
Two Clocks for the Same Moon
Lunar Motion and the Measurement of Time
The next question: What happens when a new instrument shows us more than our MAP can explain?
VECTOR 09
Galileo
Galileo, the Telescope and the New Astronomy
The next question: Galileo did something that changed the history of knowledge: what happens when our instruments reveal something that our best model cannot explain?
VECTOR 10
Does it All Make Sense Now?
Eclipse Geometry and the Scientific Method
The next question: What happens when everything seems to make sense — and then one observation refuses to fit the MAP?
VECTOR 11
We Are Made of Stars
Solar System and the Origin of the Elements
The next question: If the planets are part of one moving system, how did that system acquire its shape in the first place?
VECTOR 12
When the Sky Became a Model
Astronomical Models, Geometry and Predictions
The next question: How much can we learn from a simple model before reality becomes too complicated for it?
VECTOR 13
Nine Planets, Then Eight
The Solar System and the Classification of Planets
The next question: If planets can be so different even when they form around the same star, what happens when we look at planets orbiting other stars?
VECTOR 14
Newton and the Apple
Universal Gravitation and the Laws of Motion
The next question: If one of the greatest MAPs in the history of science could be replaced by a deeper one, how do we recognize when our current MAP is no longer enough?
VECTOR 15
The Sea that Obeys the Moon
Lunar Gravity and the Physics of Tides
The next question: If the Moon can influence the Earth across space, and the Earth can influence the Moon in return, where does the influence actually begin and end?
VECTOR 16
Space Bends
Light, Spacetime and General Relativity
The next question: What is gravity actually doing to space itself?
VECTOR 17
Not Just a Gray Sphere
Lunar Geology, Composition and Resources
The next question: How do we reconstruct events that happened billions of years before anyone could observe them?
VECTOR 18
Footprints and Machines
Human and Robotic Lunar Exploration
The next question: What happens when the explorer no longer needs to be human?
VECTOR 19
And Now: Lunar Bases and Robots?
Lunar Bases, Resources and Future Missions
The next question: Now we are beginning to ask a different question: Can we stay?
VECTOR 20
And the Next Eclipses?
Eclipse Prediction, Observation and Future Events
The next question: And what happens when, one day, an observation in the sky does not agree with our prediction?
VECTOR 21
The Incomplete MAP
Scientific Models, Evidence and the Limits of Knowledge
The next question: We began with an eclipse. Along the way, our MAPs changed. The Universe did not change. What changed was what we knew about it. A MAP can be imperfect, and still be indispensable. The important question is not whether our MAP is complete.
Glossary
The full glossary is in the book. A searchable online version is coming here.
Further reading & sources
The book’s Further Reading & Sources section lists every source by theme. Links to the online sources will be added here.
Images
See all images for this LAB at www.1skypress.com/lab000-images.