Profs and Pints Iowa City presents: “The Universe Revealed by Clashing Minds,” a look at how debates between science’s greatest thinkers led to new understandings of the cosmos, with Kenneth Gayley, associate professor of physics at the University of Iowa and scholar of the physics of stars.

Scientific progress is often framed as coming about through the collision of two opposing views of the universe and the triumph of the right one over the one deemed wrong. The most famous example of this is Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a 1632 book in which Nicolaus Copernicus’s view that the Earth and planets orbit the Sun triumphs over Claudius Ptolemy’s placement of the Earth at the center of the universe.

Often, however, deeper truths do not emerge from the triumph of a right view of the universe over a wrong one, but from a synthesis of the two ideas that reveals something profound and unexpected. In many cases, it comes through a realization that in the initial debate was a fool’s errand because the wrong question had been asked.

Come to the Graduate Iowa City to explore this dynamic with the help of Dr. Kenneth Gayley, a physicist whose research and teaching is especially focused on the various insights that have helped us understand the physics of stars.

In a talk that melds physics, astronomy, and intellectual history, he’ll show us how the progress of science comes about through the synthesis of colliding views of the universe, a process that is much richer than simply deciding whose view is correct.  

The prominent examples he’ll discuss include: Galileo Galilei versus Tycho Brahe on whether the Earth orbits the Sun or, instead, the Sun orbits the Earth; Isaac Newton versus Christiaan Huygens on whether light is a particle or wave; Democritus versus Parmenides on whether the universe is made of atoms or is all one thing; and Edwin Hubble versus Fred Hubble on whether the universe changes with time or basically stays the same.

You’ll come to appreciate how the deeper truth that emerges from the synthesis of opposing ideas often can be described as sublime or even shocking. There may be lessons here that transcend the scientific method and extend to other human pursuits and interests. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees and 12 percent state and local sales tax. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: From a color-enhanced print of Andreas Cellarius's illustration of Copernican heliocentrism for his 1660 star atlas the Harmonia Macrocosmica.