4 ms·

> One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems to come from a semi-fictional biography

> One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems to come from a semi-fictional biography of Columbus from the 18th century. See also the religion-science conflict thesis, which was popularized by Draper and White: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis > My guests today are David Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu, co-authors of Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World. David is a physicist, science teacher and writer and James is a historian of science and religion. In this interview we discuss their book and the origin and impact of the Conflict Thesis - the pervasive but erroneous idea that religion and science have always been in conflict down the ages. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkfA4v8cwYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkfA4v8cwYM

acqq 3y ago
Oh, there's now a bunch of accounts claiming that Galileo was "just" mean to pope and therefore "guilty", but this is an actual pro-religion propaganda. The real sentence is preserved up to this day and is completely clear: https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_case_of_galileo.pdf https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_cas... "heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture" More detailed: "We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scripture". Additionally, Galileo's and Copernicus' books were finally removed from the index of the banned books only in 1835, they were on the banned list for more than 200 years, since the 1616 Inquisition's judgment. Context: Galileo was the first person to see with his own eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope the moons that are today known as Galilean moons and recognized them as the satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. Which convinced him that the understanding of the church was wrong. The church sentenced him in 1633 to house arrest where he remained until his death in 1642. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > Context: Galileo was the first person to see with his own eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope the moons that are today known as Galilean moons and recognized them as the satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. Which was not evidence for heliocentrism. In the early 1600s there were seven models floating around: Heraclidean (geo-heliocentric), Ptolemaic, Copernican (heliocentric, pure circles with lots of epicycles), Gilbertian, Tychonic, Ursine, Keplerian. Newton, in his Principia (1687), did not use calculus to present his Universal Graviation: rather it was carefully structured in Aristotelian form, with axioms and deductive logic. Kepler's laws can be deduced from principles. Still no coriollis or parallax. The first inkling of the Earth's motion comes in 1728 when James Bradley detects stellar aberration in γ-Draconis. In 1791 Giovanni Guglielmini finds a 4 mm Coriolis deflection over a 29 m drop, thus providing empirical evidence of rotation. In 1806 Giuseppi Calandrelli publishes "Ozzervatione e riflessione sulla paralasse annua dall’alfa della Lira," reporting parallax in α-Lyrae. So parallax, the chief evidence for the Earth's motion came 250+ years after Galileo. Stellar parallax was considered since at least Aristotle, as he mentions in his On the Heavens (II.14), and since it is not observed then it is reasonable to conclude that there is no motion (it took several thousand years to develop instruments to actually measure it). Galileo's chief problems were (a) he was an egotistical jackass, and (b) he had no evidence for what he was claiming to be true. He was allowed to put forward the Copernican model "suppositionally", i.e., as an hypothesis, and "not absolutely". The latter of which, (b), Galileo admitted in his first deposition (12 April 1633): it was concluded that his book put forward the idea 'absolutely', which is where his conviction comes from. By the late 1600s most folks had switched over to the Keplerian model: not necessarily because they thought it was what was actually happening in reality, but probably because it made the math easier. For a good timeline of events, see (recently late) Michael F. Flynn's "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown": * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-sma... Daniel Whitten's "Matters of Faith and Morals Ex Suppositione" is also an interesting read.
  - acqq 3y ago
    So yes, that's exactly an example of the "guilty Galileo and the good church" false narrative. Many useless claims which don't disprove that his sentence was literally because of: "heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture" And the church forbade his book as "heresy" for 200 years. He was right. The church was wrong, directly referring to the effing "Holy Scripture" to support its claim and played fighting "heresy", keeping being wrong for 200 years afterwards. It's so clear.

acqq 3y ago

Oh, there's now a bunch of accounts claiming that Galileo was "just" mean to pope and therefore "guilty", but this is an actual pro-religion propaganda. The real sentence is preserved up to this day and is completely clear: https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_case_of_galileo.pdf https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_cas... "heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture" More detailed: "We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scripture". Additionally, Galileo's and Copernicus' books were finally removed from the index of the banned books only in 1835, they were on the banned list for more than 200 years, since the 1616 Inquisition's judgment. Context: Galileo was the first person to see with his own eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope the moons that are today known as Galilean moons and recognized them as the satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. Which convinced him that the understanding of the church was wrong. The church sentenced him in 1633 to house arrest where he remained until his death in 1642. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons

throw0101b 3y ago
> Context: Galileo was the first person to see with his own eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope the moons that are today known as Galilean moons and recognized them as the satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. Which was not evidence for heliocentrism. In the early 1600s there were seven models floating around: Heraclidean (geo-heliocentric), Ptolemaic, Copernican (heliocentric, pure circles with lots of epicycles), Gilbertian, Tychonic, Ursine, Keplerian. Newton, in his Principia (1687), did not use calculus to present his Universal Graviation: rather it was carefully structured in Aristotelian form, with axioms and deductive logic. Kepler's laws can be deduced from principles. Still no coriollis or parallax. The first inkling of the Earth's motion comes in 1728 when James Bradley detects stellar aberration in γ-Draconis. In 1791 Giovanni Guglielmini finds a 4 mm Coriolis deflection over a 29 m drop, thus providing empirical evidence of rotation. In 1806 Giuseppi Calandrelli publishes "Ozzervatione e riflessione sulla paralasse annua dall’alfa della Lira," reporting parallax in α-Lyrae. So parallax, the chief evidence for the Earth's motion came 250+ years after Galileo. Stellar parallax was considered since at least Aristotle, as he mentions in his On the Heavens (II.14), and since it is not observed then it is reasonable to conclude that there is no motion (it took several thousand years to develop instruments to actually measure it). Galileo's chief problems were (a) he was an egotistical jackass, and (b) he had no evidence for what he was claiming to be true. He was allowed to put forward the Copernican model "suppositionally", i.e., as an hypothesis, and "not absolutely". The latter of which, (b), Galileo admitted in his first deposition (12 April 1633): it was concluded that his book put forward the idea 'absolutely', which is where his conviction comes from. By the late 1600s most folks had switched over to the Keplerian model: not necessarily because they thought it was what was actually happening in reality, but probably because it made the math easier. For a good timeline of events, see (recently late) Michael F. Flynn's "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown": * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-sma... Daniel Whitten's "Matters of Faith and Morals Ex Suppositione" is also an interesting read.
- acqq 3y ago
  So yes, that's exactly an example of the "guilty Galileo and the good church" false narrative. Many useless claims which don't disprove that his sentence was literally because of: "heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture" And the church forbade his book as "heresy" for 200 years. He was right. The church was wrong, directly referring to the effing "Holy Scripture" to support its claim and played fighting "heresy", keeping being wrong for 200 years afterwards. It's so clear.