David A. Grandy discusses the cosmology of Helaman 12:15.

Date
2012
Type
Academic / Technical Report
Source
David A. Grandy
LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Secondary
Reference

David A. Grandy, "Why Things Move: A New Look at Helaman 12:15," BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2012): 99–128

Scribe/Publisher
BYU Studies
People
David A. Grandy
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

In Helaman 12:15, Mormon offers what has appeared to many readers to be a heliocentric description of the solar system: “And thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun.”1 For example, the Book of Mormon Reference Companion states that “they [the Nephites] apparently had a more accurate understanding of the earth’s movement than did their Greek contemporaries who at that time predominantly believed in a stationary earth.”2 It was Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) who first figured out how one could eliminate the planetary retrogradations that marred the geocentric worldview by putting the earth in motion around the sun.3 A moving earth, thus, has been thought to be the common truth that connects Mormon with the modern and “more correct” Copernican heliocentric worldview.

I wish to argue in this article, however, that the attribution of motion to the earth, even with a concomitant recognition that the sun is stationary, should not be construed as evidence that the Nephites had adopted or understood a heliocentric model of the solar system. Put differently, Mormon’s lament about the inconstancy of man is not evidence of the Nephites arriving at a scientifically correct understanding of the earth’s motion before Copernicus. Rather, it is a case of the Nephites understanding the earth’s motion differently from the way it is understood scientifically today. In brief, Mormon’s attribution of motion to the earth, like Alma’s in Alma 30:44, signifies a different attitude toward motion than that given by modern science. As a consequence, it is hard for modern readers to draw from these passages their originally intended thrust and meaning. Moreover, by limiting the interpretive possibilities to the right-or-wrong of heliocentricism versus geocentrism, we erect a false dichotomy4 that puts the Book of Mormon at risk of looking like an anachronistic text.5 For as far as we know, no pre-Columbian American culture espoused a heliocentric worldview, and not until about 1700 (with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica) was the worldview question of Aristotle versus Copernicus scientifically decided in Western Europe.

A more comprehensive view of things helps to show that Mormon was not a proto-Copernican, and that “modern science” (I will qualify my use of this term shortly) is not always superior to past understanding. Instead, my submission is that Mormon is thinking along a much older wavelength, one that is more consistent with gospel principles than the one provided by modern science. Thus, I will suggest that Mormon’s statements are not anachronistic, but reflect a worldview that lost traction with the emergence of modern science.

My central concern in this article is why things move. I believe that this (the “why”) is what Mormon is most concerned about. In Helaman 12, Mormon’s concern is not about whether it is the sun or the earth that moves; or whether either body moves around the other, about which no mention is made. Instead, Mormon’s concern is whether entities of any sort move in response to God’s will. This view emerges from the context of the passage, and it is fully consistent with other scriptural descriptions of motion. But without a religious understanding of motion, readers have difficulty fully grasping Mormon’s overriding point.

Someone may ask: which understanding is the more correct understanding, the scientific or the religious? Well, each is fitted to serve a different purpose, and each makes different assumptions about the nature of reality. In what follows, I briefly examine the scientific understanding of motion as it developed alongside Copernican astronomy. I then look at Mormon’s explanation of the earth’s motion. My intent in proceeding in this fashion is to throw into relief the vast divide that separates the two views of motion. Neither view can claim to be absolutely authoritative, but Mormon’s outlook, I believe, is far more congenial to our spiritual sense that the universe is informed by God’s purpose and presence.

. . .

What is more, we may fail to realize that Mormon offers us a worldview vastly more promising and expansive than Newton’s mechanistic cosmos. Although motion is conserved in Newton’s system, it is not conserved indefinitely: entropy, the irreversible tendency of closed systems toward disorder (what Paul calls creation’s “bondage to decay”59), has the final word, and so, to follow Bertrand Russell, “the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.”60 Believers may counter this dark prospect by relying on the Atonement of Jesus Christ.61 This is Mormon’s stance, but for him the saving power of the Atonement is already on offer: it is fully manifest in the everyday operation of nature, or, to use scriptural language, the glory of creation. Like Lehi, he understands that without a merciful, atoning God, “we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things” (2 Ne. 2:13). That is, we would not exist to exercise agency and to take up such questions as why things move. For Mormon, God has already rescued humankind from oblivion, and the created universe is the living revelation of that rescue. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” wrote the Psalmist, “and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Ps. 19:1).

It is interesting that when Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo advanced the heliocentric worldview, each argued that the sun, owing to its God-like radiance, deserves to occupy the center of the cosmos.62 Thus each man was alive, at some level, to the older sensibility of a God-centered, God-quickened universe. Mormon clearly shares that sensibility, but given the steep attrition of modernity, the full scope of his prophetic pleading is not easy for us to recover. Newtonian physics offers a very different sensibility or thought world, one that has gotten tremendous scientific and technological leverage on physical reality by characterizing the universe as a mechanistic system. Certainly this has not been a bad development—modern science and technology have blessed our lives in many ways. But Newtonian physics need not be taken as absolutely authoritative in its explanation of why things move. Mormon’s explanation, like Newton’s, is rich, distinctive, and highly compelling.

Citations in Mormonr Qnas
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