In before the usual nonsense vis a vis Galileo. Thanks neverdem.
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Posted on 02/17/2011 6:05:31 PM PST by neverdem
If you ever visit Florence-and you really ought to see the birthplace of the Renaissance-there is a fascinating little museum, next to the more famous Uffizi, devoted to the history of science. There you can see one of Galileo's original telescopes, as well as a fascinatingly grotesque and revealing artifact: one of Galileo's fingers, preserved in an elaborately decorated container of the style used for holy relics belonging to the Church. Legend has it that this is his middle finger-a fitting message for Galileo to send to the Church that persecuted him.
That relic sums up the contradictions of Galileo's era, as well as the fate that tends to befall independent men who break through the hostility of the establishment to defend a great new truth. They are viciously opposed when they are alive-but when they are safely dead, they are co-opted by the establishment and turned into just another mummified authority figure.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I came across an opinion piece by Mark Hertsgaard in The Politico, where he cites Galileo in defense of the current global warming hysteria. Hertsgaard appropriates the name and legacy of a man who defied the established scientific dogmas of his day-and uses it to enforce the established scientific dogmas of today.
The man who dedicated his life to defending the idea that the Earth moves around the sun is doing a little turning of his own right now-in his grave.
Hertsgaard accuses the Republicans of a "Galileo moment"-i.e, that they are acting like Galileo's persecutors-because "This week, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy Committee, introduced legislation that would 'repeal' the Environmental Protection Agency's scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare."
Never mind that he's getting the politics wrong...
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(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
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I think his name was Aristarchus and he lived in Egypt.
The politically connected won the argument and so it was determined that the sun went around the earth.
That was the Politically Correct for then.
It took 1500 years for the Politically Correct dogma to be found wrong.
How long will the PC BS last this time?
Well, strike me as curious. ;P
What's the usual trend with Galileo threads?
The EPA knows about as much science as the Obamaloon.
And to measure that amount of knowledge would require that we divide one by an extremely large number.
Remember, real scientists don’t work for the EPA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
Aristarchus's 3rd century BC calculations on the relative sizes of from left the Sun, Earth and Moon, from a 10th century AD Greek copy
Doesn't this sound more like Al Gore's consensus of scientists supporting the global warming dogma and anyone who disagrees is labeled a denier and is persecuted. No new scientific inquiry that might disprove the global warming dogma is allowed.
He would never never seek seek communion with the Universal Church of Cool Earth Stuff.
That was indeed the solar system of Ptolemy, but by Galileo's time there was no solid consensus. Some people still remembered the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus; others were inclined to the "Tychonic" system in which the other planets revolved around the sun, but the sun went around the earth. (This was popularised by Tycho de Brahe, but had first been proposed by Hipparchus of Nicaea)
Even Cardinal Bellarmine - initially one of Galileo's covert supporters - was prepared to accept the heliocentric theory if it could be proven, and reflected that, in such a case, our understanding of the Bible would have to be revised.
Anyone who was a denier of this dogma was persecuted by the Inquisition as a heretic.
Yes, when the matter was brought to a head by Urban VIII - whom Galileo had gratuitously offended by a passage in his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo - the issue was indeed sent to the Congregation of the Holy Office, which famously replied:
"[The heiocentric proposition is] Philosophically (i.e., scientifically) foolish and absurd, and is considered official heresy because it explicitly contradicts the meaning of Scripture in many places, in terms of the verbal significance of the words and in terms of the accepted interpretation and understanding of the Church Fathers and the Doctors of Theology."
Their second phrase is hard to fault, since Scripture and the Fathers do indeed say exactly that. But they give no reason for their first phrase so we have no idea why they should think heliocentrism "foolish and absurd", and moreover no hint of why scientific theories should be judged by their seeming foolishness rather than by the experimental evidence.
Indeed, two world views in collision.
And he [Galileo] was the first to observe the phases of Venus, which could only be explained if both the Earth and Venus orbit the sun.
That's wrong. The Ptolemaic system indeed requires that Venus never show more than a crescent, so Galileo's observation that it shows all phases - immortalised in his sentence Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum - refutes Ptolemy. But it is compatible with both the heliocentric and Tychonic models of the solar system, and so does not directly refute the geocentric hypothesis.
The difference between Galileo's time and now is that Galileo's accusers actually believed the earth was the center of the universe.
Gore and gang know full well their whole scheme is bogus - it's the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world, purely for profit and power.
That makes them move evil than the pope and his inquisitors.
‘more’ evil
The fundamental error of the Holy Office was to elevate a scientific theory to a theological doctrine. Bellarmine was fortunately much wiser.
People forget that scientists came up with the Ptolomaic system—not theologians. The Fathers merely accepted the prevailing scientific theory and, to some extent, built a theology around it (cf. Dante).
As to why the Holy Office thought it was scientifically foolish and absurd, I’m not sure. Maybe because if the earth moved then there had to be a stellar parallax, and no one had ever been able to see one. Course we know now there is a parallax—it’s just too small to see with the technology they had available.
Actually, the Copernican hypothesis was not finally confirmed by observations until the 18th Century. Even Copernicus was beguiled by the idea of the Circle being the “Perfect,” Kepler’s observations and mathematical advances made the solar model plausible, then the confirmations that followed Newton’s systemization, ended in showing that the new model was more accurate that the old, Ptolemaic system , which could not handle all the new data coming in.
I think it was Galileo who elevated his theory to a theological certainty. All physical theories based on math were treated as hypothetical by Bellarmine and others. Paradoxically, today’s atomic physics are almost entirely a matter of mathematic rather than physical description.
“How long will the PC BS last this time?”
Another 1500 years if the IPCC “consensus” replaces the scientific method.
Yeah, really!
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