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Search for Copernicus Over
blamanj writes "Nikolaus Kopernik, aka Copernicus, father of modern heliocentric theory, was buried in Frombork Cathedral (Poland) after he died in 1543. However, the cathedral's tombs were a mess, and it was unclear exactly where he was. Archaeologists now believe they've found his remains, and are planning to do DNA testing to verify. The search began in 2004."
Yes, well, we've got these bones. And we're going to test them to make sure they match with the known DNA sequence of Copernicus.
Alright, so, they track down known relatives... problem is, 500 years? Thats what... 25 generations?
"Yes, this man is Copernicus's Great-great-great-....-great-grandson. We can see they both have green eyes. This woman is his great-great-...-great-granddaughter, twice removed. We can see by this DNA that they're both left handed. So, of course, these must be is bones!"
Not to mention he didn't have any kids of his own. Which just quarters the probabiliy of similarities.
Or did I miss something? Anyone know how accurate this will actually be?
Clones are people two.
Nope. He did a lot of research in order to present the theory. Being a priest, he wasn't in such deep shit as Galileo or Giordano Bruno, but still he was smart enough to have his finding published after he died :)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Umm. Not quite.
You should not apply current views of knowledge to earlier times when the entire paradigm wa different. Nowadays we prize independent and inovative thinking - as the Greeks did around 500 BC. During the Middle Ages and up to the Renaissance, however, this was not the case. All human knowledge was believed to have already been revealed, either in the Bible or the 'wisdom of ancients', and the job of an intellectual was to extract this knowledge.
So prior authority was not only important - it was critical. You HAD to cite such authority for your ideas, otherwise they could not be accepted. Producing your own ideas with no authoritative backing was seen as a sin similar to fabricating your base data nowadays. Intellectual giants like Roger Bacon fought against this approach in favour of the experimental method, but it was not really overcome until the 1700s. This is why all writings of this period cite earlier authority.
School histories of Galileo and others are always done in complete ignorance of the mediaeval mindset, and end up portraying all his opponents as a set of unthinking morons - they were most decidedly not. However, I suppose simple ideas make better television!
Not that I want to be skeptical, or claim to know the real story, but do you have any non-catholic sources for that information?
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