Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
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Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#2This is basically the thesis of Paul Feyerabend who used it as his main argument against there being a scientific method. His book "Against Method" is one of the best works on Philosophy of Science I've read during my university education.
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#3This is basically the thesis of Paul Feyerabend who used it as his main argument against there being a scientific method. His book "Against Method" is one of the best works on Philosophy of Science I've read during my university education.
And to follow-up; several works on the history of science are great and it is great for learning that history is very messy. Also in science things are never as black and white as people several decennia down the line tend to think about how those scientific discoveries went went down.
I really liked "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton which I read a couple of months ago. A Guardian review of that work can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/28/invention-of-s...
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#4Earth-Centric model was actually scientifically better at that time. With Occam's razor you would prefer it.
- Even church agreed that Earth is not static, but is rotating.
- Nobody observed star parallax, major proof for Copernican model was missing until 19th century.
- Ptolemaic model with its epicycles provided better predictions.
- Copernican model is also wrong, planets are orbiting around center of gravity, which is outside of sun..
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#5Mike Flynn has a very long and detailed story of Galileo and more generally geocentrism vs. heliocentrism at http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
Among the things I learned:
* The Copernican model had more epicycles than the Ptolemaic
* Galileo thought tides were caused by those same epicycles.
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#6There is no question that there was religious opposition to Galileo within the Catholic church. However, it was not unanimous, and there were some notable exceptions.
José de Calasanz (saint), the founder of the Piarist order, was a friend of Galileo, and had some of the teachers of his congregation study with Galileo, so that the science they learned could be taught in his schools.
Moreover, when Galileo fell in disgrace, Calasanz instructed members of his congregation to assist him. When Galileo lost his sight, Calasanz ordered the Piarist Clemente Settimi to serve as his secretary.
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#7Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#8I watched a course on Coursera and it made similar argument regarding opposition to Galileo by Church. I think it makes very important point and is noticeable everyday where deeply political arguments are passed off as scientific or logical.
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#9Earth-Centric model was actually scientifically better at that time. With Occam's razor you would prefer it. - Even church agreed that Earth is not static, but is rotating. - Nobody observed star parallax, major proof for Copernican model was missing until 19th century. - Ptolemaic model with its epicycles provided better predictions. - Copernican model is also wrong, planets are orbiting around center of gravity, wh…
Just to be pedantic, the barycenter of the Solar System [0] is "sometimes" outside the Sun, but is also often within the limb of the Sun.
[0]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_system_barycen...
Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious
#10Earth-Centric model was actually scientifically better at that time. With Occam's razor you would prefer it. - Even church agreed that Earth is not static, but is rotating. - Nobody observed star parallax, major proof for Copernican model was missing until 19th century. - Ptolemaic model with its epicycles provided better predictions. - Copernican model is also wrong, planets are orbiting around center of gravity, wh…
>planets are orbiting around center of gravity, which is outside of sun..
The only planet with a barycenter with the sun outside it's radius is Jupiter. And that only slightly. (with an altitude of 0.07 of the sun's radius)
The earth-sun barycenter is 0.0006 times the sun's radius from it's _center_