William Whewell and the Cosmic Calendar

1 William Whewell and the Cosmic Calendar In discussing William Whewell’s point of view, we saw the inception of a theory which came to be known as the Rare-Earth hypothesis. In making his case, Whewell argued that for the majority of its life, the earth has been lifeless and he reasoned that wastage in nature is not a rare phenomenon and thus the teleological arguments made in favour of the existence of extraterrestrial life were flawed. In this homework, we will see the modern concept of “Cosmic Calendar” which at least partly testifies to the veracity of Whewell’s claim. As you already know, the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. We can imagine that this time span is compressed into a year. In this Cosmic Calendar, each month roughly represents 1 billion years, each day is 40 million years and each second is more than 400 years. The big bang occurs at the first instant of January 1st and now is the stroke of midnight on December 31st. Study the image in the next page carefully and answer the questions that follow. Please note that you will need to change the given dates to how many years after the big bang. For instance, if an event happened 1 month after the big bang on February 1st, then it happened about a 12.5 billion years ago.

1. According to the Cosmic Calendar, when did our Milky Way galaxy form (try to estimate this to the best of your ability)?

2. According to the Cosmic Calendar, when was our Solar system born?

3. When did life first start on Earth?

4. When did Photosynthesis start?

5. When did the first multi-cellular organisms appear?

6. When did the land plants appear?

7. When did the first amphibians appear?

8. When did the dinosaurs appear? 3

9. When did the dinosaurs get extinct?

10. When was the last time Humans and other apes shared a common ancestor?

11. When did humans start to walk upright?

12. When did the modern human evolve?

13. When did humans permanently settled?

14. When was Christ born?

5. How long ago did Galileo use a telescope to look at the heavens (hint: this happened in 1609, roughly 400 years ago)?

16. How long ago was the Pioneer plaque (1972) launched into space? 4

17. How long is the entire human civilization?

18. How does the length of time during which animals and plants have lived compare to the length of time during which life has existed?

19. How does the length of time during which humans have existed compare to the length of time since mammals and dinosaurs first arose (find the ratio of the time spans)?

20. For how long after its formation, the Earth did not possess intelligent life? How does this appearance of intelligent life compares to the age of Earth?

21. Having studied the Cosmic Calendar, do you agree or disagree with William Whewell’s argument? Describe your position in a paragraph (in doing so, you 5 need to review Whewell’s argument and the teleological arguments which he criticized).