• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Galileo and His Place in History

catsmate1 said:
<snip>

I've read it. I've also read far, far, more on the subject. It's a reasonable introduction to the story but lacks the detail necessary to really understand it, especially the conjunction of the three elements of Politics, Personalities and Proof.
Click to expand...

Well. At least I said, "It was more complicated than that". ;)

Indeed.
Click to expand...
 
In my opinion if someone is put on trial for writing a book, regardless of whether or not he was smart to write it the way he did, or insulted powerful people in doing so, the people in the wrong are those who put him on trial.

The idea that Galileo "takes some of the blame" for what happened is, well, in my opinion very wrong: if he were put on trial only for insulting the pope, that would also be something that the church was wrong on, not him.

Would it have been possible for him to have presented the science to the world in such a way that the church wouldn't have taken offence? Maybe, but that's not the issue, the issue is simply that the church was wrong to put him on trial, and further wrong to ask him to recant, and further wrong to put him under house arrest.

I understand and agree that the reality is more complicated than the myth, that there is more to the story than the church opposing the science that he presented, but in no way do I agree that Galileo deserved what he got.
 
Damien Evans said:
You're perpetuating some yourself. Bruno was in most of his troubles because of his religious views, including defending the Arian heresy.

Here is a list of the charges against him:


holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass;
claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes, and;
dealing in magics and divination.


You'll note most of those have nothing to do with Astronomy.
Click to expand...
Well, of course, he got what he deserved. ;)
 
Leaked script for the next “Catholics Come Home” tv spot

We're the Catholic church
Guided by the holy spirit we stood as a shining beacon of science and reason by suppressing the dangerous and radical ideas of mad men like Galileo, Bruno and Copernicus.
We tried to prevent the destructive social upheavals caused by educating the masses and having bibles printed in any thing but Latin.
We stood our ground against the horrors of the occult by torturing lonely old women and Jews
We are the true ordained harbingers of the modern world, because if God wasn’t on our side could we have away with butt raping your children for a 1000 years
We are the Catholic Church
 
Damien Evans said:
You're perpetuating some yourself. Bruno was in most of his troubles because of his religious views, including defending the Arian heresy.

Here is a list of the charges against him:


holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass;
claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes, and;
dealing in magics and divination.


You'll note most of those have nothing to do with Astronomy.
Click to expand...

Hey, watch your step here!

Actually my "namesake" had a lot of unconventional views. Some were surprisingly modern, though based more on philosophy than data. Many were wrong. But he died because he dared to think on his own and to defy the dogma that authorities imposed on him. Same for Galileo. I therefore view them as martyrs to the freedom of thought, and secondarily to the spirit of science. I saw Bruno's statue at the site of his burning in Rome and found it very moving.
 
Last edited:
First of all, it isn't a new excuse that Galileo was annoying the church and that his imprisonment wasn't caused by the catholics objecting to his discoveries. It is also not a correct excuse.

In the sentencing document, translation here, the reason for punishment is solely about his science. Note also the reference to the threat of torture.

Galileo may have been irritating, but if that was the cause of his problems, then those cardinals who signed the document were lying through their teeth. However, there is plenty of other evidence that the catholic church pays lip service to the supremacy of science in describing reality while they have denied its findings. The latest shameful incident is trying to condemn the use of condoms in Africa to prevent HIV infection.
 
Weak Kitten said:
Changing the subject a bit do any of you have some good stories about those who actually died for the sake of science? Death from radiation poisoning counts, bonus points if they knew it would kill them.
Click to expand...

Well, there's Louis Slotin, who died while performing an experiment known as "tickling the dragon's tail" (no, it's not a sex euphemism) with the Demon core. He knew the accident would kill him when it happened, but presumably didn't know that the accident would happen. Although, really, it was a pretty stupid thing to do, so maybe he deserved a Darwin award.

As an aside, though, isn't "Demon core" just a bad-ass name?
 
God, I hope a thread about Galileo does not bring "Galileo" back again...the 9/11 Truther and general purpose crackpot who claimed to be reincarnation of Galileo and was one of the most annoyning Spammer and attention hogs every to grace JREF.
Uh Oh. Just mistakenly said his name three times in one post. Hope he is not like the Candyman....
 
Ziggurat said:
As an aside, though, isn't "Demon core" just a bad-ass name?
Click to expand...

"Tickling the dragon's tail" sounds pretty bad-ass too. I wonder how many scientific experiments have pretty cool nick names for what they are working on.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
An interesting article on our current understanding of Galileo from the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/02/11/130211crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all



Well worth a read.
Click to expand...

Not according to the selection you showed us. Not to criticize you particularly. However, the section of the book you describe already has some lies.

Galileo was not offered the option of offering his theory as a possible alternative to the other traditions. He was shown this possible option and accepted it. However, he was condemned to a lifetime of home imprisonment with intense day long prayer despite this 'plea bargaining'. What this book is providing is the Chruch cover story, not the actual situation.

Religious Geocentrists reject the notion of an a centric or polycentric universe. They stand by the principle that the center of the earth is the unique center of the universe, around which every other object in the universe moves. Thus, they reject both Galilean invariance and Newton’s Laws because these theories claim that there is no preferred center to the universe.

Recent apologists for the Church claim that the Church was right in rejecting both Copernicus and Galileo because of the principle of relativity. However, Galileo was condemned even though there were priests who understood the principle of relativity.


The Church was wrong because they rejected the physical equivalence of all points in space.

See the following link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
‘Galileo put forward the basic principle of relativity, that the laws of physics are the same in any system that is moving at a constant speed in a straight line, regardless of its particular speed or direction. Hence, there is no absolute motion or absolute rest. This principle provided the basic framework for Newton's laws of motion and is central to Einstein's special theory of relativity.’


One of the judges at the trial of Galileo,Cardinal Francesco Barberini, specifically said that Galileo’s theory was just a mathematical representation because there was more than one center of motion which was valid. Thus, Galileo shouldn’t have been condemned because he was merely simplify calculations rather than finding an absolute reality.

Galileo agreed to this compromise! He agreed that the sun was not a unique center of the solar system. However, the Church rejected this ‘compromise’. Other judges explicitly condemned Galileo because the earth had to be the unambiguous center of the universe. Thus, the Church’s position is unambiguously wrong! And that is why there are STILL religious people who insist that all the laws of physics, not just Galileo’s, have to be wrong.

Here is a link on Barberini.

http://law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/keyfigures.html#barberini
‘Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679)
‘Under the arrangement preferred by Barberini, Galileo would admit that the Dialogue went too far and violated papal instructions and, in return, the book could be distributed (with revisions) and Galileo spared imprisonment.* Galileo agreed to the deal, but a majority of the ten cardinals rejected Barberini's plan.* Barberini was one of three judges who did not sign Galileo's sentence, which banned Under the arrangement preferred by Barberini, Galileo would admit that the Dialogue went too far and violated papal instructions and, in return, the book could be distributed (with revisions) and Galileo spared imprisonment.* Galileo agreed to the deal, but a majority of the ten cardinals rejected Barberini's plan.* Barberini was one of three judges who did not sign Galileo's sentence, which banned the Dialogue and ordered Galileo's i Dialogue and ordered Galileo's imprisonment.’

Please note that Galileo accepted the compromise. After all, that is what is called Galilean relativity. However, Galileo was condemned anyway. The consensus of the judges was that the equal validity of more than one center to the universe was heresy. Any conjecture that the earth was not a special place in the universe was a crime against God and man. By implication, any technology which uses an acentric physical model is a sin.

BTW: Cardinal Barberini actually did scientific work to show Galileo wrong. He found an error in Galileo’s pendulum clock formula. He showed how to correct for Galileo’s mistake. He was the one who mathematically established Galilean invariance. This fellow was a hard working genius maybe as smart os Galileo. However, the Church leaders rejected Barberini because there could only be one center of the universe. One God and one center.

The Pope cited Aristotle, who cited Ptolemy. The following is seldom discussed. Ironically, Ptolemy’s theory has two centers to the universe. The universe revolves around the center of the earth and around the center of the sun. Aristotle agreed with Ptolemy. So by rejecting a polycentric universe, the Pope was also rejecting Aristotle. However, no priest was brave enough to point this out to the Pope.

Many Modern Apologists like to cite Einstein’s relativity or Mach’s relativity to claim that the Church was basically right. However, this makes no sense since the theories of both Einstein and Mach are polycentric. So one really can’t save the Pope’s honor. The Pope, most of the Roman Catholic Church and Genesis screwed up.

Yes, I know Galilean relativity is not the same as Einstein’s relativity. For that matter, Galilean is not the same as Mach’s relativity. However, all three relativities show that the universe is polycentric with regard to physical law. The Church, by condemning relativity, explicitly rejected all versions of relativity.’ Geraldous Bouw, a Protestant defender, keeps on citing Mach as a geocentric scientists. However, Mach’s theory is about as acewntric as it is possible for any theory to be.

Let us be fair to the Roman Catholic Church. Not all the confederacy of dunces are Roman Catholic. Many religions of that time rejected Galilean relativity. Martin Luther, who started the Protestant revolution, wanted Copernicus arrested. Someone then told him Copernicus was dead, but of course that made no difference. There was a council of rabbi’s that rejected the view that the earth orbits the sun. There are still rabbis and ministers who insist that the center of the earth is the only stationary point around which everything moves. Two Lubuvitch rabbi’s, leaders in the Chassidic Jewish movement, have in the last 5 decades rejected the a centric models of the universe. There is a fanatic moslem terrorist who claims that a centric astronomy is Western corruption. The Hare Krishna leaders, Hindu fanatics, reject a centric astronomy. There is something in a centric physics that repels religious believers of many types. ‘

So relativity doesn’t remediate the credibility of the the ‘super orthodox’ religions. The Western religions screwed up. You can not believe in the infallibility of the Pope (or Lubuvitch Rabbi) and still believe any modern science at all.

So no thank you. I don't think the book is worth the read. If they can be so brazen as to make this false claim, that Galileo did not accept a compromise, then the book is pure polemic. The book is a lie.
 
catsmate1 said:
Well two criticality accidents, with two dead and eight irradiated, so I think it deserved it. : boggled :
Click to expand...

I disagree. I think the much-maligned core is entirely blameless. Slotin was a jackass who couldn't have deserved his fate more if he'd introduced it by saying "hold my beer and watch this". Not only should he have known better, he did know better. I hope the moons of Jupiter gave him the finger on his way to heaven. Every "accident" with that core was a preventable incident. Demon Core my ass. More like the Nemesis Core, righteous retribution for the hubris of men.

ETA: Damn! Fished in by a Darwin Zombie Thread.

Dude, seriously? Are you going to resurrect every single thread in this subforum?
 
Last edited:
I think what people forget when they talk about Galileo being under house arrest is that he had a really, really nice house.
 
Darwin123 said:
<snip>
BTW: Cardinal Barberini actually did scientific work to show Galileo wrong. He found an error in Galileo’s pendulum clock formula. He showed how to correct for Galileo’s mistake. He was the one who mathematically established Galilean invariance. This fellow was a hard working genius maybe as smart os Galileo. However, the Church leaders rejected Barberini because there could only be one center of the universe. One God and one center.
<snip>
Click to expand...
It's also important to understand the political context of the trial, which was probably more important than the actual facts. Francesco Barberini was nephew to Maffeo Barberini (Ubran VIII) and aligned to his uncle's Italian Faction, who were opposed by the powerful Spanish Faction within the church and Curia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom