Galileo in the news again....*sigh*

[merkavah12]

www.getreligion.org/?p=39557

This article discusses a recent news piece written on Galileo.

Of particular note, the article highlights this howler:

Even today, centuries after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the pope’s theological watchdog, had Galileo arrested for preaching Copernicanism, the church has never quite managed to acknowledge that his heliocentric theory is correct. (For his part, Cardinal Bellarmine was made a saint in 1930.)

Is Kepler just a figment of my imagination then?

*sigh*

[deef]

People generally still think Galileo proved heliocentrism to be true, which wasn't excactly the case. Kepler did a better job at that.

[perplexedseeker]

I think it's highly overdue that someone write a book about Galileo's contemporary astronomers, which actually explains why they disagreed with him instead of mocking them for being superstitious. Come to think of it, I might write that book myself....

[ignorantianescia]

That book should particularly highlight the trick Galileo played when pitting Copernicanism against Aristotelianism in the Dialogo. With some nice thought experiments from the Dialogo thrown in, it might become a very entertaining and educative read.

[perplexedseeker]

I haven't actually read the Dialogo yet. So Galileo was a mechanist then? What "incompatibility" did he attempt to describe, exactly?

[himself]

Clavius actually did a comparison of Copernicus and Ptolemy in which he praised Copernicus, but was in the end unconvinced. He gave his reasons. Pierre Duhem discusses this in his book "To Save the Appearances," of which the relevant chapter appears in
www.amazon.com/Pierre-Duhem-History-Philosophy-Science/dp/0872203085/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280515871&sr=1-3

[wraggy]

Can anyone recommend what they consider the best detailed book that deals with Galileo and the controversy?

Jul 29, 2010 9:57:44 GMT perplexedseeker said:

I think it's highly overdue that someone write a book about Galileo's contemporary astronomers, which actually explains why they disagreed with him instead of mocking them for being superstitious. Come to think of it, I might write that book myself....

I will not let you forget that you said that Perplexed.

I remember a dispute, it may have been on RichardDawkins.net, where Tim O'Neill brought up this point. If I remember correctly, Tim was challenging the idea that a system that differed from Ptolemy/Bible could not be considered at this period. Tim pointed out Tycho Brahe as an example that this idea was wrong.

[James Hannam]

Aug 8, 2010 6:24:41 GMT wraggy said:

Can anyone recommend what they consider the best detailed book that deals with Galileo and the controversy?

Hi Wraggy,

I'd suggest The Church and Galileo, edited by Ernan McMullin as the best overall book on the topic. I alos found Galileo: Decisive Innovator a good biography of the man covering the controversies he was involved in.

Hope this help.

Best wishes

James

[wraggy]

Jul 29, 2010 9:57:44 GMT perplexedseeker said:

I think it's highly overdue that someone write a book about Galileo's contemporary astronomers, which actually explains why they disagreed with him instead of mocking them for being superstitious. Come to think of it, I might write that book myself....

Here is an article where the author suggests that there were seven competing systems in the 17th century.

"If you have been keeping count you will know that we have seven contestant in the ring squaring off for the cosmic championship, Copernican heliocentricity, Ptolemaic geocentricity, Gilbertian geocentricity with diurnal rotation, Tychonic geo-heliocentricity, Ursian geo- heliocentricity with diurnal rotation, the Heracleidian model and last but anything but least Kepler’s elliptical heliocentricity. All of these model or systems had their supporters and detractors in the early decades of the 17th century a fact that gives a very different picture to the one presented by Galileo or Kuhn in their works."

thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/galileo%E2%80%99s-great-bluff-and-part-of-the-reason-why-kuhn-is-wrong/

[peterdamian]

Nov 20, 2010 8:44:44 GMT wraggy said:

Here is an article where the author suggests that there were seven competing systems in the 17th century.

thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/galileo%E2%80%99s-great-bluff-and-part-of-the-reason-why-kuhn-is-wrong/

Thanks for that link and well worth reading. Is that your blog? Brandon mentions it here branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-links-some-notes.html .


I studied Kuhn as part of the undergraduate course.

[wraggy]

PeterDamian said "Thanks for that link and well worth reading. Is that your blog? Brandon mentions it here branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-links-some-notes.html ".

No Peter (Henry) it is not my blog. I am a factory worker on a bottom feeders wage and have no academic qualifications at all. I have recently developed an interest in the history of science and the relationship of Christianity to science.

I found this article while searching for another article on the web about Galileo that I forgot to save it in my favorites. I thought that I would post it as the topic had come up earlier.

Cheers.

[wraggy]

For those interested in Galileo and his contemporaries Thony Christie has an interesting essay at Renaissance Mathematicus.

He also seems to think that Galileo needs to be taken down a few pegs.

"If we just take some of the statements from the, on the whole fairly good, Wikipedia article we have the following collection of exaggerated statements: Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy” the “father of modern physics” the “father of science” and “the Father of Modern Science.” Stephen Hawkins says, “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.”

At the bottom of the article we have the following title: The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History.

I have also in my reading come across the following claims: “G is the inventor of the scientific method”, “G was the first to apply mathematics to science”, “G discovered the first mathematical law of science” and so on and so forth…

The image of Galileo Galilei has been inflated like a dirigible airship that floats above the early modern period obscuring the efforts and achievements of all the other scientists, his shadow only being broken by the light of that other god of science Isaac Newton. Unfortunately this image is total bullnuts and its propagation leads to a major distortion in our understanding of the historical development of science. In what follows I shall be pulling the plug, extracting the stopper, puncturing the balloon and letting the gas out so that one can begin to judge Galileo’s achievements from a sensible standpoint.

Central to this image of Galileo is his supposed uniqueness; through his ‘once in human existence genius’ he single-handedly created modern science, the scientific method, observational astronomy and physics. This view is pure rubbish and is only possible if one totally ignores his contemporaries."

thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/extracting-the-stopper/

Love the editing program James. "bullnuts" is not quite... what he wrote.

[timoneill]

Mar 3, 2011 7:21:17 GMT wraggy said:

For those interested in Galileo and his contemporaries Thony Christie has an interesting essay at Renaissance Mathematicus.

He also seems to think that Galileo needs to be taken down a few pegs.

That's a good article, but this bit caught my eye:

The claim that Galileo invented the scientific method is not just wrong it’s grotesque! The scientific methodology that is utilised in Galileo’s work on mechanics was known to and used explicitly by Greek scientists such as Ptolemaeus and Archimedes. It was discussed and used extensively by Islamic scientists such as Al Haytham. It was also extensively discussed, but little used, in the High Middle Ages by Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon.

I'm wondering what exactly this "scientific methodology that is utilised in Galileo’s work" was that was so "little used" in the Middle Ages. How did it differ from the method used by the various Medieval natural philosophers?

It's good to see him give the Merton Calculators their due as the guys who pioneered the mathematicsation of physics. I can imagine the retired school teacher Charles Freeman and his fawning acolytes at Butterflies and Wheels having conniptions over this dreadful "revisionism". No doubt the Templeton Foundation and the Vatican mind control rays are at work yet again.

[jonkon]

Posted by timoneill on Yesterday at 10:27pm:
[I'm wondering what exactly this "scientific methodology that is utilized in Galileo’s work" was that was so "little used" in the Middle Ages. How did it differ from the method used by the various Medieval natural philosophers?]

The hypothetical-deductive method used by Galileo differs from the empirical-inductive method commonly taught in the schools as the "scientific method" in that instead of starting with an observation and generalizing from that observation, it recognizes that we have to know what we are looking for before we can make an accurate observation. The H-D method therefore begins with recognizing the existence of an anomaly. A hypothesis is then created to account for the anomaly to bring it within the scope of existing scientific knowledge. The resulting hypothesis is then tested by disproving competing hypotheses. Galileo's inclined plane experiment, for example, has been criticized for not being precise enough to demonstrate uniform acceleration. However it was more than precise enough to prove uniform acceleration over the competing hypothesis of uniform velocity.

The E-I Method suffers from its inability to distinguish between causality between two events and statistical coincidence. The H-D Method on the other hand establishes a causal link through a chain of deductions. It is this chain of deductions that is brought into experimental test, since in a well designed experiment the outcome is already known.

[wraggy]

Mar 3, 2011 22:27:20 GMT timoneill said:

Mar 3, 2011 7:21:17 GMT wraggy said:

For those interested in Galileo and his contemporaries Thony Christie has an interesting essay at Renaissance Mathematicus.

He also seems to think that Galileo needs to be taken down a few pegs.

That's a good article, but this bit caught my eye:

"The claim that Galileo invented the scientific method is not just wrong it’s grotesque! The scientific methodology that is utilised in Galileo’s work on mechanics was known to and used explicitly by Greek scientists such as Ptolemaeus and Archimedes. It was discussed and used extensively by Islamic scientists such as Al Haytham. It was also extensively discussed, but little used, in the High Middle Ages by Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon."

[/b][/i]

I'm wondering what exactly this "scientific methodology that is utilised in Galileo’s work" was that was so "little used" in the Middle Ages. How did it differ from the method used by the various Medieval natural philosophers?[/quote]

I would be interested too. Have you thought of contacting him and asking him?

His email is thony DOT christie AT t-online DOT de (to deter spam).