The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

That the secrets of the universe lie in minute structures, in nearly indiscernible details, in patterns that only the most sensitive, fragile, and expensive instruments can detect, is an insight so important that it deserves a name. I call it the Tychonic principle, after the sixteenth-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who, working just before the invention of the telescope, was the last and greatest “naked-eye” astronomer, using sextants and quadrants to pinpoint the positions of stars and the movements of planets to within 0.02 degrees. To achieve this level of accuracy, Tycho built an observatory called Stjerneborg (“castle of the stars”) entirely at basement level, seeking as Michelson and Morley later would to shelter from the inaccuracy inflicted by the bustle and noise of the world outside (Figure 5.2).