Galileo Galilee (1564-1642) was, but three months old, when Jean Calvin (1509-1564) passed away in May of 1564. Martin Luther (1483-1546) had preceded Galileo Galilee by more than a century. In effect, Galilee was a late-comer to the Christian Reformation, but it was he who made it clear that the earth and other planetary bodies, known to all of human-kind at the time, rotated around the sun, and that the earth was not the center of the universe, as many of us, humans, once believed.
The rotation of the earth around the sun does not form a concentric circle; it forms, rather, the pattern of a near circular ellipse. It is not this elliptical pattern that causes the four seasons that we who live distant from the equator experience every year. The cause is the tilt of the earth in relationship to the sun at each point of the earth’s orbit around the sun. Every year this relationship reaches four astronomical extremes: two of these occur in the spring and fall, and two in the summer and winter. Indeed, twice a year equality becomes an extreme, and the amount of sunlight and its absence, that we humans located on the earth’s surface experience, are the same.
With these thoughts I wish you a Happy Autumnal Equinox!
Roddy A. Stegemann
First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas – The Story of Real Money