Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious • Hacker News Board

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#141

Post by lootsauce » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

By far the best writing on this subject I have found is over at the fantastic Renaissance Mathematicus blog.

Galileo, the Church and Heliocentricity: A Rough Guide. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/galileo-the-church-a...

Galileo, Foscarini, The Catholic Church, and heliocentricity in 1615 Part 1 – the occurrences: A Rough Guide. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/galileo-foscarini-th...

And part 2 https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/galileo-foscarini-th...

Acceptance, rejection and indifference to heliocentricity before 1610. https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/acceptance-rejection...

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#142

Post by amoruso » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

The opposition to Galileo was not really religious or scientific. More than anything, it was political. You can't understand what happened outside the context of the religious wars of the time. His findings undermined the authority of the Catholic Church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion

There are plenty of examples of political suppression of science in our own time. The Nazis and Communists were two extreme examples.

In our own society, religion doesn't have this kind of power any more. But there are still political pressures on researchers to be PC. I'll let you think up some examples yourself.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#143

Post by DSMan195276 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

loteck wrote: post #132

smallnamespace wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that simply begging the question though? If you adopt a geocentric reference frame, then the Sun appears to rotate around the Earth, and all the other planets also appear to follow epicyclic paths around the Earth. You can predict the motions of every planet and star equally well, the equations are just different. So again, why is one more 'correct' than the other, besides calculational simplicity?

I'll admit I'm way out of my depth here! But wouldn't the fact the planets experience orbital decay that ultimately cause them to be pulled into the star they are orbiting, mean that heliocentric is "more correct" when discussing a planet's relation to a star?

You could still calculate that with an earth-centric approach, it just might not be fun. As far as the physics go, it doesn't care which point or body you pick to be non-moving - the math all works out, it's just relative to a different point. And with that, there's no spot in the universe you can point at and say "That point is not moving", so there's no "fundamental zero" we can compare everything to.

Perhaps the point is that "more correct" is subjective. Both approaches will give you the right answer, it's just that heliocentric makes finding the answer easier.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#144

Post by Florin_Andrei » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #140

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a little too quick to paint an almost caricatural image there, perhaps informed by more recent religious developments, such as the literalist interpretations (mostly, but not exclusively, an american phenomenon). The reality is that the people who shaped the debates within the Catholic church back then tended to be well educated, and possessing all the attributes of one raising through a hierarchy - above ave…

> Before telescopes, Plato and Aristotle were state of the art knowledge in cosmology No, they were not. They were just popular but not state of the art, as neither from them actually preformed astronomical observations or did the calculations. There are people before and after these two who did much more. Because they actually did some real science. Aristarchus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distanc…

Again, that was a fairly quick but narrow reaction.

I did not say "astronomy". I said "cosmology". The choice was conscious. The one is the more practical study of celestial phenomena, and you are correct that neither Plato nor Aristotle were astronomers. The other concerns itself with the large-scale structures and phenomena, both in time and space. Astronomy studies what is going on out there. Cosmology tries to figure out how it all works together.

Astronomy was not an immediate concern to theologians. But they obviously were interested in what was then a proto-cosmology, intertwined with philosophy. If you were an educated person back then, and you were interested in an overall synthesis of how the universe works, Aristotle had it, and you were sure to read his books.

Also be aware that back then nobody had proof positive that Aristarchus (who was much closer to the current definition of an astronomer) was right. Just like today, there were many competing ideas. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that he was on to something. But really it took the invention of the telescope, and the scientific revolution after 1600 to definitely tip the balance.

It is good that you fight narrow-mindedness, but be aware that its antidote is having a broad understanding of these issues. Spend some time thinking about that, okay?

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#145

Post by Houshalter » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

A somewhat better article on this is here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_th...

There were also politics involved. Galileo insulted the pope and did some other controversial stuff. He wasn't persecuted for his scientific beliefs.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#146

Post by acqq » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

camelNotation wrote: post #136

milcron wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the pre-Crusades 'dark ages', Europeans were by-and-large ignorant of Aristotle. Christianity was popular, and the philosophic framework was predominantly Neo-Platonic. Fortunately, Aristotle's work was preserved and commented upon by Islamic scholars. Averroes and Avicenna are two important Islamic scholars who commented on Aristotle. After the Crusades, this was reintroduced to the West. As Aristotelianism was r…

The legend of early Islamic scholars "preserving human knowledge through the dark ages" is extremely overdone. Eastern Christendom fleeing the encroachment of Islamic invaders (which is largely what reintroduced Aristotle to the West, not Islam) had grappled with the conflict between Platonic and Aristotelian theological influences for centuries prior to the Crusades. The dispute between Gregory Palamas and Barlaam o…

Exactly. The modern myth of Islamic invaders "preserving" anything was just a myth and as far as I know is very recent.

The areas that we today identify with this faith had the history of a lot of science work before the invaders came. And the religion was also not that one:

From the five holy "sees" only Rome survived the invaders:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_see#Listing_of_the_s...

"Rome, in Italy (Saint Peter and Saint Paul)

Constantinople, now Istanbul in present-day Turkey (Saint Andrew)

Alexandria, in Egypt (Saint Mark the Evangelist)[14][15][16]

Antioch, in present-day Turkey (Saint Peter)[17]

Jerusalem, in the Holy Land (Saint Peter and Saint James)[18]"

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#147

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#148

Post by acqq » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:25 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #144

acqq wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before telescopes, Plato and Aristotle were state of the art knowledge in cosmology No, they were not. They were just popular but not state of the art, as neither from them actually preformed astronomical observations or did the calculations. There are people before and after these two who did much more. Because they actually did some real science. Aristarchus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Sizes_and_Distanc…

Again, that was a fairly quick but narrow reaction. I did not say "astronomy". I said "cosmology". The choice was conscious. The one is the more practical study of celestial phenomena, and you are correct that neither Plato nor Aristotle were astronomers. The other concerns itself with the large-scale structures and phenomena, both in time and space. Astronomy studies what is going on out there. Cosmology tries to fi…

No again. In order to be the "state of the art" in cosmology (as you define it that "concerns itself with the large-scale structures and phenomena") you should know what the "large-scale" actually is. That is what I quoted that these other Greeks actually calculated. The orders of magnitude.

And no, this is also not true: "really it took the invention of the telescope"

It's Tycho Brahe who measured enough:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

"he was the last of the major naked eye astronomers, working without telescopes for his observations."

I don't understand why people who don't know history try to argue here. In fact, I think I know, you don't have to try to explain me.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#149

Post by jules » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #112

Stupid question: given General Relativity, and in particular that all reference frames are equally valid , including rotating and accelerating ones, in what sense is heliocentrism more 'true' than geocentrism? E.g. you can pick a geocentric reference frame and all the math works out (albeit you'd need to define large fictitious forces, etc., but again, they are only 'fictitious' from the perspective of a different re…

The modern view is indeed that there is no preferred reference frame. It's just a matter of choosing a coordinate system.

If you wanted to make a distinction you could say that the laws have a simpler form in a heliocentric coordinate system, but this is only really true if you make certain approximations.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#150

Post by hprotagonist » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #96

hprotagonist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bruno was burned alive for being a complete prat, and pissing off all the wrong people, actually. Formally, he was condemned because: > In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to retract his errors, he was finally condemned (January, 1600), handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burne…

Well, it sounds like he was burned alive for some fairly mundane opinions that were not tolerated by the religious authorities who had at that time the power to murder anyone who disagreed with them.

or, in a word, politics.

this being a time in which the vatican had the single largest mercenary force in europe, and all. The church wasn't just "the religious authorities". The vatican had been the most stable de-facto state for much of Europe for something close to a millienia at that point.