Abstract
Milutin Milanković is considered to be the founder of the modern astronomical theory of climate change. In 1912, in an article entitled “On the Mathematical Theory of Climate,” he began to mathematically demonstrate the interrelation of celestial mechanics and the Earth sciences. At the intersection of a number of scientific fields, including spherical astronomy, celestial mechanics, and mathematical physics, he developed climatology as an integrated cosmic science that could be applied to specific problems of the Earth sciences, including the problem of the Pleistocene ice ages. Milanković’s achievement was facilitated by his position as Chair of Applied Mathematics at the University of Belgrade where a nonspecialized, holistic culture of education was prevalent. The ultimate educational aim of the University, “acquiring unity among the sciences,” was in dissonance with a specialization-driven scientific culture of that time, but without that cultural eccentricity the problems that Milanković solved would probably not even have been posed.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition to the cycle of eccentricity and the precession of the equinoxes, Croll afterward also added to his considerations the change of the tilt of the Earth’s axis, although he could not calculate its real effect. He proposed that the “true cosmical cause” of climate change “must be sought for in relations of our Earth to the Sun,” that “geological and cosmical phenomena are physically related by a bond of causation,” and that changes in the Earth’s orbital elements, combined with physical feedbacks, were “sufficiently great to account for every extreme of climatic change evidenced by geology.”
- 2.
For more about computational realization of the mathematical principle of analogy, see Petrović (2005).
- 3.
Vilhelm Bjerknes also had to face this computational challenge in his attempt to formulate a “true physics of the atmosphere.” See V. Bjerknes, (Jan. 1914) Meterology as an Exact Science, Monthly Weather Review.
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Petrović, A. (2012). Canon of Eccentricity: How Milanković Built a General Mathematical Theory of Insolation. In: Berger, A., Mesinger, F., Sijacki, D. (eds) Climate Change. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0973-1_9
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