What does it take to discover a New World?

The topic of class discussion today was discovering New Worlds. The men of the Renaissance discovered Classical Greek literature. Copernicus and Galileo discovered that it is the Earth that rotates around the Sun and not the other way around. Before they succeeded however, Copernicus and Galileo had to oppose the accepted Catholic position that Ptolemy was correct.

This concept of defying convention in order to discover something new reminded me of a book I read last year. The title was Longitude:The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. (Amazon $3.51) The setting is during the mid 1700's, and the English Parliament has offered a  prize to whoever can solve the longitude problem. At the time, sailors knew how to find how far north or south they were relative to the equator by using a sextant, but they didn't know their position east or west. The favorite to win the prize was the Royal Society, where all of Britain's brightest gathered to discuss new topics. The current opinion was that the secret could be found in increasingly complicated Star Maps.

Enter John Harrison, a self-educated clockmaker by trade. John Harrison designed a clock (which he named a Chronometer) that could keep remarkably consistent time. Sailors would set the time for their home port (Greenwich, England). Then while they were on they ocean they would determine what time it was at their position, compare that to the time in Greenwich and be able to identify their location.

John Harriso had to defy the accepted source of authority and prove that knowledge is not dependent upon social class or economic status. We don't need to own a boat or a space ship to discover new worlds. Sometimes we can discover new worlds by discovering something that makes us change the fundamental way in which we view the world.