3 ms·

Off topic, but as an astronomer I have to dispute your characterization of the development of heliocentric theory. Around the time of Copernicus and Galileo he

Off topic, but as an astronomer I have to dispute your characterization of the development of heliocentric theory. Around the time of Copernicus and Galileo heliocentrism was a radical idea, but it also had a number of problems. Astronomers of the time expected that if heliocentrism was true and the Earth was moving we should observe parallax of the stars as the Earth orbits the Sun. But no such parallax was observed (and it took another three centuries before telescopes were good enough to measure this phenomenon). In fact it was more than 150 years before any direct proof of the Earth's motion was found (from a measurement of the aberration of light at the end of the 17th century). Of course Galileo was put under house arrest and Bruno was burned at the stake, but in the case of Galileo, the reasons were more political in nature (going out of his way to insult the pope), and in the case of Bruno it was because of his heretical theological ideas (like the idea that the Trinity doesn't exist) rather than his scientific ideas. That doesn't excuse the Church's actions, but they really just weren't all that interested in the science.

a1369209993 5y ago
> and in the case of Bruno it was because of his heretical theological ideas (like the idea that the Trinity doesn't exist) rather than his scientific ideas. No, it was not. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-a... - those things are not seperable.
- antognini 5y ago
  I do agree with the broader point, which is that there is something we could broadly call a "culture of free speech," and the Church was certainly not in favor of a culture of free speech. However, on the specific point of what got Bruno in trouble with the Church, it was definitely with regard to his theological ideas. Debates on whether or not there were other worlds and beings living on other worlds were a popular subject among academics back in the Middle Ages. In fact St. Thomas Aquinas had taken the other position, namely that no other worlds existed, and the Church condemned his argument as heretical because they interpreted him to have said that God could not have created other worlds, which would place limits on God's power. Again, none of this is to excuse the Church's persecution of Galileo, Bruno, or any of the other figures cited in the blog post you cite. Making a great intellectual discovery, scientific or otherwise, always requires some break with the conventional wisdom, and figures who are willing to do this in one area are likely to do it in other areas, too. Even if they happen to be wrong on many of these other fronts, they're following their train of logic to wherever it leads, and if you cut off those trains that produce socially inconvenient truths (think Newton's experiments with alchemy or his work on hermeneutics), you risk losing their ideas that turn out to be correct.

a1369209993 5y ago

> and in the case of Bruno it was because of his heretical theological ideas (like the idea that the Trinity doesn't exist) rather than his scientific ideas. No, it was not. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-a... - those things are not seperable.

antognini 5y ago
I do agree with the broader point, which is that there is something we could broadly call a "culture of free speech," and the Church was certainly not in favor of a culture of free speech. However, on the specific point of what got Bruno in trouble with the Church, it was definitely with regard to his theological ideas. Debates on whether or not there were other worlds and beings living on other worlds were a popular subject among academics back in the Middle Ages. In fact St. Thomas Aquinas had taken the other position, namely that no other worlds existed, and the Church condemned his argument as heretical because they interpreted him to have said that God could not have created other worlds, which would place limits on God's power. Again, none of this is to excuse the Church's persecution of Galileo, Bruno, or any of the other figures cited in the blog post you cite. Making a great intellectual discovery, scientific or otherwise, always requires some break with the conventional wisdom, and figures who are willing to do this in one area are likely to do it in other areas, too. Even if they happen to be wrong on many of these other fronts, they're following their train of logic to wherever it leads, and if you cut off those trains that produce socially inconvenient truths (think Newton's experiments with alchemy or his work on hermeneutics), you risk losing their ideas that turn out to be correct.