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Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

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Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#161

Post by olavk »

gumby wrote: post #160
baldfat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth mentioning: geocentric view was based on Aristotle and not scriptures. My undergraduate was in Theology and graduate degree was Historical Theology. Back then the dominate foundations of Theology in the Church was Plato vs Aristotle and one would consider themselves to be in the camp of one or the other and well Aristotle kind of won the popular vote back in those times. Here is the article on Artistole's…

Aristotle was always such an obvious idiot ("women have fewer teeth than men" is my favorite nonsense) I have always+ wondered why anyone paid attention to him, ever. + Well since I was a teenager anyway

Have you actually read any Aristotle? I don't think anybody could read Aristotle and come away with the impression he is an idiot. Obviously he is far from modern levels of scientific knowledge, but that doesn't make him an idiot. He invented multiple branches of science.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#162

Post by ziotom78 »

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…

You're right, mathematically speaking the two systems are the same. As a matter of fact, the calculations that describe the attitude of a spacecraft flying not far from the Earth are usually expressed in a geocentrical reference frame. It's much simpler, yet produces the same result you would get using the heliocentric frame.

The real disadvantage of the geocentric system is that it is a barren model: it does not allow science to advance. It is able to explain the motion of planets with exceptional precision, but it does so by using a mathematical construction (the epicycles) that does not lead to a deeper understanding of the inner laws of nature. On the other side, the heliocentric model (when corrected with Kepler's idea of using ellipses instead of Copernicus' circles and epicycles) was a big step towards the bigger understanding of gravitation that was produced by Newton's law of gravitation.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#163

Post by milcron »

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…

Thanks for clarifying. In any case, it seems that Aristotle was mostly forgotten in the North and West parts of Europe, whereas Aristotle was known and discussed in the Middle-East and Mediterranean parts.

At your last paragraph, when you say "It'd been dealt with before" who/what are you referring to?

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#164

Post by veddox »

blahi wrote: post #15
edko wrote: post #6

There 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 dis…

It is also worth noting that Galileo had a very big mouth and had many enemies. The publishing of this work was a perfect opportunity for them to pounce. It wasn't so much the church hating science as much people hating Galileo and using the church to an end.

Yes. IIRC, the pope allowed him to write a book on his views but to include both sides of the debate. Galileo did so, but put the traditional view into the mouth of a character named "Fool"...

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#165

Post by tekromancr »

gumby wrote: post #160
baldfat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth mentioning: geocentric view was based on Aristotle and not scriptures. My undergraduate was in Theology and graduate degree was Historical Theology. Back then the dominate foundations of Theology in the Church was Plato vs Aristotle and one would consider themselves to be in the camp of one or the other and well Aristotle kind of won the popular vote back in those times. Here is the article on Artistole's…

Aristotle was always such an obvious idiot ("women have fewer teeth than men" is my favorite nonsense) I have always+ wondered why anyone paid attention to him, ever. + Well since I was a teenager anyway

And I am sure if one was to read through everything you said in your life 1000 years from now, you could just as easily be painted an idiot. People say stupid shit. Aristotle was a person, therefore, Aristotle said stupid shit.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#166

Post by thisrod »

gumby wrote: post #160
baldfat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth mentioning: geocentric view was based on Aristotle and not scriptures. My undergraduate was in Theology and graduate degree was Historical Theology. Back then the dominate foundations of Theology in the Church was Plato vs Aristotle and one would consider themselves to be in the camp of one or the other and well Aristotle kind of won the popular vote back in those times. Here is the article on Artistole's…

Aristotle was always such an obvious idiot ("women have fewer teeth than men" is my favorite nonsense) I have always+ wondered why anyone paid attention to him, ever. + Well since I was a teenager anyway

Maybe he was an idiot, but everyone who lived in the previous 4 billion years was a worse idiot. In the land of the blind and all that.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#167

Post by dragonwriter »

adonovan wrote: post #71
blahi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also worth noting that Galileo had a very big mouth and had many enemies. The publishing of this work was a perfect opportunity for them to pounce. It wasn't so much the church hating science as much people hating Galileo and using the church to an end.

In Sleepwalkers (great book), Arthur Koestler argues that many senior church figures were keen and supportive followers of Galileo's physical investigations, but repeatedly warned him not to cross the line between observing the universe, and questioning the role of God and Man. Galileo was too proud to keep to one side of that line, and Koestler laments that the current epistemological opposition of science and relig…

> Koestler laments that the current epistemological opposition of science and religion dates from that unnecessary conflict.

I don't think that's even remotely true; the current (well, in America particularly and to a lesser extent other predominantly Christian places) epistemological opposition of science and religion (which is really substantially more limited than that, but that's how its often portrayed) is of more recent origin, stemming from the conflict between the literalist inerrantist views of certain parts of the Protestant community and various scientific conclusions about the origin of species, the age of the earth, and cosmology.

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#168

Post by c3534l »

prmph wrote: post #159
c3534l wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is saying that the bible has a physically accurate account of the world, only that the church at the time based their understanding of the physical universe primarily on Aristotle, and I don't think you'll find many historians arguing otherwise on account of us having writings from them arguing and justifying their positions.

> No one is saying that the bible has a physically accurate account of the world Can you point out even one instance in which the Bible is inaccurate about the physical nature of the world? I'm curious

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_scientific_errors#Astr...

http://biblebabble.curbjaw.com/errors.htm

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#169

Post by gumby »

tekromancr wrote: post #165
gumby wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aristotle was always such an obvious idiot ("women have fewer teeth than men" is my favorite nonsense) I have always+ wondered why anyone paid attention to him, ever. + Well since I was a teenager anyway

And I am sure if one was to read through everything you said in your life 1000 years from now, you could just as easily be painted an idiot. People say stupid shit. Aristotle was a person, therefore, Aristotle said stupid shit.

Good point

Re: Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

#170

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

brlewis wrote: post #68
baldfat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth mentioning: geocentric view was based on Aristotle and not scriptures. My undergraduate was in Theology and graduate degree was Historical Theology. Back then the dominate foundations of Theology in the Church was Plato vs Aristotle and one would consider themselves to be in the camp of one or the other and well Aristotle kind of won the popular vote back in those times. Here is the article on Artistole's…

I think the "religious" opposition was more based on power politics than on scriptures, faith, etc.

I mean, from many people's point of view, it usually is.
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