Rick Nybakken, demonstrates the flight path of the Juno spacecraft. Photo: Richard Vogel / AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.This month we witnessed the incredible flight of the NASA Juno spacecraft as it brushed the cloud-tops of the planet Jupiter, over half a billion kilometres away. On the face of it this has nothing to do with my convictions as a British republican. Yet the process by which we as human brings can carry out such an audacious project is inextricably linked to the structure of a well-ordered republican society
Christmas day of 1642 saw the birth of a baby who would grow up to effect our world in ways unimaginable even to himself. His name was Isaac (subsequently Sir Isaac) Newton, originator of the Universal Theory of Gravitation. As a giant of the age of enlightenment his achievement symbolised a method of thinking which rapidly gaining ground at the end of the 17th century. His birth date was to some extent ironic for the person whose theories would, in subsequent centuries, lend considerable weight to deist beliefs within a mechanistic world view.
Despite his own vehement rejection of atheism, Newton was not averse to challenging the accepted teaching of the clergy of his time. For example he postulated the possibility of intelligent life on other planets in the universe along with a theory that the moons of the aforementioned planet Jupiter were ‘substitute Earths’ held in readiness for a new creation when this one comes to an end!
