Galileo and Heliocentricity: A Rough Guide (2014)
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* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
We tend view things in hindsight and judge people with our 20/20 view, when events really unfolded over a period of time, and so people made decisions with imperfect knowledge.
Two things that people forget or don't know: (a) Galileo was technically wrong, since he insisted on Copernicus' circular orbits, and it was Kepler that got it right (with elliptical orbits). And (b), it was not until 1806 that the Earth's motion was demonstrated through parallax (150+ years after Galileo died), at which point heliocentrism was more than simply an untested hypothesis.
Regarding (a) and (b) together: people when from Ptolemy to Kepler by the 1690s not because they had proof that it was true, but mainly because it made the answer easier. Ptolemy worked reasonably well mathematically at predicting orbits, it just took a damn long time.
> Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love is a book by Dava Sobel. It is based on the surviving letters of Galileo Galilei's daughter, the nun Suor Maria Celeste, and explores the relationship between Galileo and his daughter. It was nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.[1]
I think the same when people think Newton was crazy for pursuing alchemy. With hindsight it's clear that this wouldn't work but with the information he had at the time this was not so clear.
- Life expectancies are soaring.
- Wounds that easily would've been fatal in 1850 are routinely survived by even the poor or middle class.
- Diseases of every variety are being tamed or eradicated.
- You can transmute elements, if you try hard.
- We've weaponized transmuting elements, at least two different ways.
- We've invented machines and materials that embody some human faculties, eg the ability to perform logic.
- We're making significant progress on artificial souls.
- We've created several varieties of artificial life.
I think people who regard the alchemists as failures are completely nuts and exactly the sort of people rebranding and marketing work on. Science is nothing but rebranded magic -- to the point if you substitute nouns with unfamiliar words, it sounds like magic out of a book. (Go on -- try explaining how cellphones accessing Wikipedia works at the level of electrons and photons with entirely new nouns in place of the familiar ones.)
For fun, we can even argue about if LIGO is actually just a successful version of the Michelson-Morley experiment and the detection of gravitational waves is also a confirmation of the existence of an aether. (It's obvious why M-M was a failure, given that it was trying to detect a much weaker effect with much less sensitive equipment.)
Isn't that the most important difference between the systems?
In the second episode, we saw a slew of new telescopic discoveries during 1610-1611; viz., the mountains on the moon, the Medicean stars, and (more decisively) the phases of Venus. Now the first two do not demonstrate geomobility, not do they undermine geostationarity. The first indicates that the moon is not incorruptible. But this is agreed to by theology, and it undermines only Aristotelian physics. The second indicates that some heavenly bodies -- Cosmo, Franco, Carlo, and Lonzo -- circle Jupiter and not the Earth. This bothers Aristotelian physicists, but not Tychonic astronomers. Only the phases of Venus KOs Old Man Ptolemy.
But eliminating Ptolemy does not prove Copernicus any more than eliminating Darwin would prove ID. There may be [and were!] other alternatives. When Ptolemy was ptossed, astronomers flocked... to the Tychonic and Ursine systems -- because none of the telescopic observations have so far established the motions of the Earth.
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
In Part 2 Flynn outlines the seven major models in play:
* Heraclidean. Geo-heliocentric. Mercury and Venus circle the Sun; everything else circles the Earth.
* Ptolemaic. Geocentric, stationary Earth.
* Copernican. Heliocentric, pure circles with lots of epicycles.
* Gilbertian. Geocentric, rotating Earth. (proposed by William Gilbert in De magnete)
* Tychonic. Geo-heliocentric. Sun and Moon circle the Earth; everything else circles the Sun.
* Ursine. Tychonic, with rotating Earth.
* Keplerian. Heliocentric, with elliptical orbits.
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
This account is actually more careful and nuanced than other accounts of the Galileo trial that I've come across.
Another possibly useful insight into Galileo is that he ridiculed Kepler for suggesting that the planets would have elliptical orbits. Galileo could never make his heliocentric model fit the observations, and meant he couldn't convince anyone that it was correct, because it wasn't. Kepler basically saved heliocentrism by proposing a model that worked, and Galileo mocked him for it, because he found non-circular orbits as ridiculous as others found his heliocentric model.
Galileo did a lot of important other work, but in the past his role in proving the heliocentric worldview has incorrectly been painted as unrealistically saintly. He was about as wrong as he was right, and he was self-centered and careless.
Actually I find it very suspicious that the author of this article skips the trial altogether.
We have the minutes. We have the judgement. Even if Galileo was an ambitious asshole Ith political afterthoughts, one important fact remains: The Church used the literal interpretation of the Bible to contradict a scientific theory.
This is the main point and the main problem of the Galileo trial and why it is significant. Galileo deserved opposition in a debate, not condemnation in a religious tribunal. It happened and the blame is solely on the dogmatism of the church. From this point, science diverged more and more from religious teaching and stopped seeing the church as an ally.
But whatever your religious beliefs are, Galileo did lack proof. His model was wrong. His idea was correct (though originally from Copernicus, of course). But without proof, and without a correct model (which Kepler later provided) there was no way at the time they could know it was correct. There was simply no scientific basis yet to accept it over the existing geocentric model.
The RC Church's position on science was not homogenous. Various officials have said that if an interpretation of the bible ever conflicted with verifiable observations, then clearly the interpretation of the bible must be incorrect. Obviously not everybody agreed, but heliocentrism did have its supporters within the church. It was not considered heresy until Galileo made his position impossible and alienated his biggest fan (pope Urban). In any case, Galileo's theory here, his model, was simply incorrect, and they knew it. There was a solid scientific basis to contradict it. They did pile on a bunch of other accusations, but that's primarily because he angered the wrong people.
Galileo did receive opposition in debate. His problem is that he didn't accept it. He wanted everybody to accept his model, despite the lack of a scientific basis for it.
You know who else lacked proof? It didn't bother you just as it didn't bother the inquisition. Maybe try using the same standards for those theocrats as you apply to Galileo.
It was all Galileo's fault!
Of course it's still not good to get punished for dissing the pope according to our modern freedom of speech, but in those days, insulting rulers was still frowned upon. And Galileo went well beyond simply having an opinion; he insulted the pope. Not merely by ignoring the pope's instruction to present both alternatives in a balanced way, but by putting arguments from the pope (a good friend before this) in the mouth of a character called "Fool" (Simplico).
This notion that Galileo insulting the pope was some sort of rhyme and reason for his persecution is wrong. It's commonly accepted that Galileo had no intention of insulting the pope, and the pope didn't take it as an insult (Heilbron goes into much detail) . There is some minor evidence involving the rumour that someone suggested to the pope that it looked bad, but this is not at all the central reason for his persecution.
Did you get this from the Dava Sobel book? It's takes an awful license with history. Her Longitude book is the same, it's just wrong in so many aspects while presenting itself as accurate.
Geocentrism only selling point was dogma: the idea that our planet was important and had to be in the center of the universe. That was the main reason to defend it.
Geo heliocentrism was an attempt to keep this, but really, it makes little additional sense: it is basically a frame substitution for a heliocentric model and required some orbits to cross each other if you wanted to assume the outer planets orbited the Earth.
Galileo had no solid proofs but lots of evidence: respective sizes of Earth and sun (there was an intuition that bigger objects were harder to move) the fact that other planets have moons.
I think it's safe to call this an attack on Galileo's reputation. It does match my fuzzy understanding that the story we got in elementary school was not that accurate, but on a personal level, it's pretty mean spirited.
In particular, to modern ears, it's pretty jarring to hear a man convicted over scientific arguments described as being "stamped on for his hubris".