The Great Debate was between astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis and concerned the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe. The basic issue under debate was if distant nebulae were relatively small and within our own galaxy or if they were large independent galaxies. The debate took place on 26 April 1920 in the Baird auditorium of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The two scientists first presented independent technical papers about "The Scale of the Universe" during the day and then took part in a joint discussion that evening. Much of the lore of the Great Debate grew out of two papers published by Shapley and Curtis in the May 1921 issue of the Bulletin of the National Research Council. The published papers each included counter arguments to the position advocated by the other scientist at the 1920 meeting.
There is also a high level group at Newcastle University in England whose forum ( see [1] ), also entitled the Great Debate, discusses the modern picture of what it is to be human in the light of evolutionary and neuroscientific discoveries.
External links
Resources related to the debate at the NASA website [2].