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> "In addition to offering insights on celestial movement, the book rebutted Aristotle, who had maintained that heavenly bodies were smooth and “perfect”; with

by Osmium 12y ago

> "In addition to offering insights on celestial movement, the book rebutted Aristotle, who had maintained that heavenly bodies were smooth and “perfect”; with his telescope, Galileo had also looked extensively at the Earth’s moon, and could see mountains and craters on its surface." Surely you can see the moon's unevenness with the naked eye?

barwell 12y ago
This is correct. But the belief in Aristotle's philosophy was even more powerful: "The medieval followers of Aristotle, first in the Islamic world and then in Christian Europe, tried to make sense of the lunar spots in Aristotelian terms. Various possibilities were entertained. It had been suggested already in Antiquity that the Moon was a perfect mirror and that its markings were reflections of earthly features, but this explanation was easily dismissed because the face of the Moon never changes as it moves about the Earth. Perhaps there were vapors between the Sun and the Moon, so that the images were actually contained in the Sun's incident light and thus reflected to the Earth. The explanation that finally became standard was that there were variations of "density" in the Moon that caused this otherwise perfectly spherical body to appear the way it does. The perfection of the Moon, and therefore the heavens, was thus preserved." http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/moon.html http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/moon.html
- SilasX 12y ago
  That ... seems like a lot of effort to avoid facing up to the moon looking bumpy. And Aristotle? WTF dude, you saw the same thing!
breadbox 12y ago
I believe they were just considered to be blemishes, and as such not part of the shape. (Perhaps just a coating picked up from being too close to the earthly realm?) The telescope, however, showed that there were shadows that changed as the sun and moon changed positions, making it clear that the craters and mountains were actual structures.

by Osmium 12y ago

barwell 12y ago

This is correct. But the belief in Aristotle's philosophy was even more powerful: "The medieval followers of Aristotle, first in the Islamic world and then in Christian Europe, tried to make sense of the lunar spots in Aristotelian terms. Various possibilities were entertained. It had been suggested already in Antiquity that the Moon was a perfect mirror and that its markings were reflections of earthly features, but this explanation was easily dismissed because the face of the Moon never changes as it moves about the Earth. Perhaps there were vapors between the Sun and the Moon, so that the images were actually contained in the Sun's incident light and thus reflected to the Earth. The explanation that finally became standard was that there were variations of "density" in the Moon that caused this otherwise perfectly spherical body to appear the way it does. The perfection of the Moon, and therefore the heavens, was thus preserved." http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/moon.html http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/moon.html

SilasX 12y ago
That ... seems like a lot of effort to avoid facing up to the moon looking bumpy. And Aristotle? WTF dude, you saw the same thing!

breadbox 12y ago

I believe they were just considered to be blemishes, and as such not part of the shape. (Perhaps just a coating picked up from being too close to the earthly realm?) The telescope, however, showed that there were shadows that changed as the sun and moon changed positions, making it clear that the craters and mountains were actual structures.