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400 Years Ago, Galileo Discovered Four Jovian Moons
krswan writes "OK, the moons themselves are much older, but on January 7, 1610 Galileo first observed '4 fixed stars' surrounding Jupiter. Observations of their changing positions led Galileo to postulate they were really moons orbiting Jupiter, which became further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church, etc... Jupiter will be low in the southwest (in the Northern Hemisphere) after sunset this evening — nothing else around it is as bright, so you can't miss it. Celebrate by pointing binoculars or a telescope at Jupiter and checking out the moons for yourself."
Galileo!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I'm a big fan of History, and I'm also a fan of Astronomy. Jupiter is a little rare but its no Haley's Comet...
So what exactly are we "Celebrating"?
Yay! I'll drink to that!
Talk about a late slashdot story
Table-ized A.I.
Jupiter will be low in the southwest (in the Northern Hemisphere) after sunset this evening — nothing else around it is as bright, so you can't miss it.
I can miss it, because I'm living in the middle of a snow storm. Insensitive clod, etc.
Not a typewriter
which became further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church
To be fair, he also came up with this crazy-wrong idea about how the earth's motion was responsible for the tides. Also, making fun of any 17th-century Italian nobleman (Pope or otherwise) by naming a character in your book "Simpleton" (Simplicio) and strongly implying that you based it off of him.... after he's trying to give you a chance and says "write it up, try to fairly represent both points of view, okay?" ... Well, that's the just sort of social/political ineptitude that's going to get you into serious trouble. (Think of that next time you stumble into office politics.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
"By Jove, another moon!"
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
... back in 1985, while underway on my ship in the U.S. Navy, middle of the Indian Ocean.
I was off watch, and went and visited a Signalman friend up above the wheel house. They had a set of huge binoculars, which they called "big eyes". The sky was crystal clear, you could clearly see the bands of the Milky Way across the sky. Found Jupiter and zoomed in as far as I could, and clearly saw some of the moons around it. It was a neat experience seeing them myself for the first time.
Back then, the mod system locked you up, not just gave you a -1 troll
Table-ized A.I.
That's no moon!
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
A minor quibble with the summary above. On January 7, 1610, Galileo only recorded 3 "fixed stars" next to Jupiter. Two of the Galilean moons, Io and Europa, were too close together for Galileo to separate with his 20x power telescope. He continued to observe three moons at most, either because one or more moons were too close to Jupiter and were lost in the glare of the planet, Callisto was too far from Jupiter and was thus out of his telescope's field-of-view, or two of the moons were too close together, during subsequent nights, until January 13, when he was able to see all four for the first time.
Wikipedia is wrong on one point. True, his first observation of all four moon at once didn't come until January 13 and he didn't realize that there were four and not three until that time, but that doesn't mean that one moon's discovery (in Wikipedia's case, Ganymede) should be attributed to that date. By that point, he had observed all four on multiple occasions, just not all four at once. And to that point he hadn't even come to the conclusion that they were in orbit around Jupiter with their own separate orbits, moving a different speeds, until two days later, let alone ascribe identities to each of the stars he saw, connecting one star he saw with another from a different day, beyond the one to the east, the one to the west, and the one in the middle.
The Gish Bar Times - Blog covering Jupiter's moon Io
In defense of the atheists, it would probably be hard for Galileo to separate the two. Back then the Church often had the power to dictate what it was legal to believe. Not so much any more. It would be hard for me to imagine what he must have suffered.
Don't get me wrong, you are correct. Challenging centers of power is indeed a great way to draw their fire.
And it is a very tedious and oft repeated error of atheist militants that religions are antiscience.
No need to pick on the poor souls. They are already drowning in the irony that their rebellion drives them to dictate the beliefs of others, if even only through ridicule and spite. Just smile and let it slide. It will likely dawn on them eventually. Meanwhile it must drive them absolutely nuts to face a thinking believer, to the point that they would deny that it is possible to do both at the same time. Thus it is natural for them to attempt to deny the faithful access to science and reason. Good old fashioned dissonance...
further evidence against Aristotelian Cosmology, which led to problems with the Roman Catholic Church, etc...
I know that people who repeat such things are only showing their ignorance (heck, even Wikipedia explains the controversy better), but I feel this lie gets repeated often enough that it should be addressed.
According to Wikipedia:
In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner,[56] and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work.[57] The Jesuits were offended,[58] and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance ,[59] under the pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano,[60] purporting to be one of his own pupils.
And later:
Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book,
Indeed, it was Galileo's political antagonism, not his ideas, that got him trouble. Imagine that.
There is a very simple question one can ask to determine if a someone is genuinely objective and dispassionate in their search for the truth:
The manner in which this question is answered is often quite revealing:
In much the same way that there exist Creationists who refuse to accept any evidence contrary to their opinion, even to the point of committing logical fallacies, there exist individuals who really don't read history, and just blindly accept whatever they've been told. Worse, they often repeat things which are provably false, which - aside from the damage done to the Church - call into question their ability to think rationally and perform rigorous analysis.
The Galileo fiasco - that is, the belief that the Church is somehow anti-science because of what happened to Galileo - is an interesting teaching moment. The outworn argument against Creationists, Flat-Earthers, Global-Warming deniers, etc... has always been that science is objective, dispassionate. And yet, in the Galileo fiasco, you have people who in matters of science are otherwise logical and objective, repeating something they know (or should know) is false.
Interesting.
It seems the failings of human nature apply to everyone, after all.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
No need to pick on the poor souls. They are already drowning in the irony that their rebellion drives them to dictate the beliefs of others, if even only through ridicule and spite. Just smile and let it slide. It will likely dawn on them eventually. Meanwhile it must drive them absolutely nuts to face a thinking believer, to the point that they would deny that it is possible to do both at the same time. Thus it is natural for them to attempt to deny the faithful access to science and reason. Good old fashioned dissonance...
A nice load of straw atheists you have there...
Heliocentrism was NEVER a problem for the Catholic Church, Copernicus never had a problem with that many years earlier. Galileo was the pope's cousin and constantly defied the pope on his writings, never touching heliocentrism, heliocentrism was just the way they used to get him some punishment.
Now that's what I call news!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't worry. It'll be duped in 100 years.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Good on you, sir. I cowardly post anonymously anything which might defend a church: any attempts to explain that organised religion has, over the millennia, worked with science and technology rather than against it, are met with one line dismissals and moderation to suggest that the opinion must be that of a troll.
The once silent minority polarised viewpoints of strong atheism and literal, reason-rejecting interpretation of religious texts have become so loud! What happened to the healthy scientific scepticism of yore, where doubt and questioning rather than certainty and dogma was the foundation of knowledge?
I know this is the wrong audience, and the Western Anglo-Saxon countries have almost given up on the classical education approach which would give students an understanding of the origins of science, rather than a rote knowledge of Newton's laws. I mean, if you Astronomy 300 and know how to map the motion of planets, you're almost as great as Galileo and Kepler, right? The intellectual imagination and environment required to actually come up with those laws are just a side note in history, which surely went something like this: Lone Genius hackers in a sea of idiots keeping them down. The coincident discoveries, say, of the calculus by Leibniz and Newton? pot luck! Society was against them, man!
39 years ago (in 1981), the Catholic Church finally got around to forgiving Galileo for insisting that the Earth was not the center of the universe! Nobody can say the Pope isn't up to speed on all the latest issues!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Correction, it was 18 years ago, in 1992 that the Church forgave Galileo.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
OK, the moons themselves are much older...
Oh really? How do you know? Until they were observed, they might have been indeterminate. Paging Schrodinger!
You have no proof the moons are older than 400 years...
Wow, somebody else is pointing out other things that got left out when people talk about the Saint of Science. On top of what you've added the church actually updated their position to the Tychonic model. (Where the Sun and Moon orbit the Earth and the planets orbit the Sun.) The big problem with the Earth going around the Sun is the stars should exibit parallax. There's a few explainations for this. One is the Earth moves but the stars are so far away that they couldn't measure it. The other is it's not actually there because the Earth doesn't move. Tycho's system had the Earth not moving which was a valid point of view given the evidence. (Of course in the 1800's they could finally see the parallax and they knew the Earth moved. Well actually they knew about it before then because Newtonian mechanics pretty much require the Earth to move but they didn't have that either when G was kicking around.) Anyway like you say, if you play around with politics at that time period it could work out badly. (Because that's how politics were at that time.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I mean be fair. It's annoying when people talk about the RCC as a bunch of biblical literalists. (One step above creationists.) As a Catholic I can tell you they're not, they're control freaks. That's what they like, to control information. Then let that information out slowly. I mean they kept the bible and masses in Latin for centuries. (It's kind of hard to interpret the bible for yourself if you don't understand the language it's written in.) Of course there's loads of stuff that they did over the centuries where it's kind of hard to figure out where in the bible it said that.(Like indulgences. I still haven't heard an explaination for why we're supposed to eat fish on Fridays that made any sense.) Hell, go to a Catholic mass for once. It's all "Stand, sit, stand, kneel." It's like the priest is a gym teacher putting the parishioners through calisthenics.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I have to admit I never looked through a telescope (well, aside of those times in college but it wasn't really pointed at the sky at that moment...), but doesn't something like that require observation over some time? Or are those moons so large that you immediately notice them as moons and not as some sort of stars that might not be visible without? Else I'd expect Gallileo to monitor them for some time, notice that they move around Jupiter and thus conclude that they must be moons.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And the G-Spot.
Science is dispassionate, that doesn't mean the scientist have to be weak, meek, and keep their heads down for fear of pissing off some fools or otherwise.
True...but neither does it mean that we have to go out of our way to piss off people either. It is enough to state the truth and correct it when others get it wrong. You do not need to go the extra mile and call them an idiot for getting it wrong - that is extremely counter-productive when trying to educate others about what you have discovered.
And later:
Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book,
Indeed, it was Galileo's political antagonism, not his ideas, that got him trouble. Imagine that.
Hmmm.....you might have wanted to include the rest of that sentence you quoted from the article:
Pope Urban VIII personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism.
Sorry but forbidding the advocation of scientific knowledge is pretty much anti-science. Galileo may well not have helped himself by being somewhat politically antagonistic but the overwhelming picture is that the Catholic church was happy to support science as long as science did not come up with any discoveries which went against what they decided was the "truth". That would be like saying that you support freedom of speech as long as I don't say anything which you disagree with....it really isn't support at all. The church certainly supported education but their support of science is far more questionable.
Of course the Catholic church, for the most part, is not like that now and does support and listen to scientists - indeed as a physicist I've often thought it would be really interesting to have a chat with one of the astronomers from the Vatican observatory to hear their take on science. But that does not mean that in the past they were so enlightened.
....save up and take a trip somewhere dark.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Why didn't Galileo attach his telescope to a rifle? He could have eliminated all of his pig headed enemies, assuming they rifles were around back then.
My understanding is that the fish on Fridays part stems from giving something up for Lent - namely one of the Popes decided the fishermen were hurting, so it would be good for Catholics to give up meat on Fridays (why Fridays? I'm not sure, but I'd speculate that it has to do with the importance of Good Friday).
As to the stand, sit, stand, kneel, they reflect degrees of attention/respect to be displayed at different points in the mass. I'll give a few highlights:
When entering the pew, one should genuflect towards the tabernacle to show respect for the body of Christ (excess/left over Eucharist consecrated at previous masses).
Sitting seems to be the default position.
You stand for the gospel as a means of showing more respect for the words and acts of Christ.
Kneeling is reserved for the consecration and prayer after communion, times when the congregation is seeking God's mercy.
Is it 2020 already? Christ, that was some New Year's hangover.
Good points since the Catholic Church is often criticized for not adhering to the Sola Scriptura philosophy. But the Bible in Latin a problem? What was the language of science/education at the time? Copernicus was the latinazation of Kopernek, a Polish sir name. Most educated people at the time conversed and corresponded in Latin and were perfectly capable of reading and understanding a Latin Bible. The rest of the populace were, by and large, illiterate at the time and printing books was still expensive.
Incidentally, we eat fish on Fridays because Fridays are a day of penance. In the U.S., the bishops chose to remove the abstinence from meat on Fridays but Catholics are still expected to perform some sort of penance on Fridays (and with what's happened lately, there's a lot of penance that needs to be done).
Finally, I have to mention a hero of mine. Father Gregor "Father of Genetics" Mendel, an Augustine priest who's study of plant inheritance spawned the science of genetics. The Church never condemned his findings, however, one can see how the simplest desire to understand nature can lead to pure evil. The discovery of genetics allowed us to to create that most evil movement called eugenics. So even the best science can go bad when in the wrong hands.
The issue isn't that Galileo was a saint, but that he had to recant under threat of torture. He's become a symbol of a time when religious powers told people what they could say, under threat of torture, prison, or death. When people exaggerate how great Galileo really was, what they're really saying is that they're thankful that part of history is behind us. Whether you love James Dobson or cringe at his name, I don't know anyone who would want to empower him with the authority to have someone tortured and killed because they published a scientific paper, right or wrong, that went against his religious views. We should all be thankful that our culture has moved beyond that.
The Eastern bloc was more backward even then. Kepler has to return in a hurry to Regensberg at one point to defend his mother who was accused of witchcraft. Galileo on the other hand was a very important man, the top technical expert in Florence, the public face of the most advanced science of the day. He was the equivalent of Edison, Fermi, Einstein and Feynman rolled into one. Of course he thought he could push his views further than could much lesser academics. We need Galileos to stand up to be counted in a world where people can take a Sarah Palin seriously.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Your best chance of seeing the moons with binoculars is if you rest the binoculars on something, preferably a tripod. I never saw one Jovian moon with binos until I found a way to keep them still (the binos, not the moons).
I mean that's part of the point. He was using political connections at the time to get his point of view across. (A point of view that btw he had no evidence for.) While we have advanced from that time it wasn't just that the church could do that, if you played politics at all at that time it could turn out very badly for you. (I mean like it's been pointed out he didn't really get into trouble until he basically called his buddy the Pope "Mr Stupid". He screwed with the political connection he used to get ahead and it turned out badly for him.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
No need to be afraid. Even if they senselessly and maliciously mod me into oblivion when I oppose their agenda, they'll mod me back up later when we agree on something else. Such is the way of the slashdot.
I didn't pick the load, OP did. But thanks for dragging out the meme for the best possible use...
The pope has stock in Spanish fishing fleets?
You make the mistake of assuming they can't do both. As any power that was larger than it should have been, the church logically rooted for science when it suited them and silenced scientists when they were inconvenient.
The scientific method is now stronger than ever, IMO. In Ye Olde Days only a select few could write their ideas on paper so it may seem like idiocy is on the rise, but I'm ready to bet that's not true -- there are quite certainly more scientists-by-heart alive now than ever before. I think you may be looking at history with rose-tinted glasses.
And the GP was a troll: as mdwh2 said his straw men arguments are so far fetched that there's just nothing to discuss.
I believe you will find satisfactory answers to all that you mention if you seek it out. I'll mention simply on the matter of translations a few points:
* We take for granted that people read the Bible, or at the very least they are capable of doing so today
* We further take for granted that printed text is cheap and available
* The Church *did* translate the Bible into the vernacular but has maintained that the Latin Vulgate produced by Saint Jerome is the authoritative version
* At times the Church prohibited some vernacular translations because they omitted books or took liberties in translation that were disruptive to the unity of faith. Critics will sometimes point with glee at how the Bible made its way onto the list of banned books but they rarely explain that it applied to specific translations.
* This may seem like a control issue, but the Magesterium has the sole authority to interpret Scripture. They have done a remarkably good job of it and it has prevented the chaos and disunity of faith evidenced where private interpretation (sola scriptura) is the norm.
"I still haven't heard an explaination for why we're supposed to eat fish on Fridays that made any sense."
This is an explanation: meat is expensive; in the past it was often prohibitively so. Christians who had the means to afford meat for their daily meals were asked to give it up on one day a week, that is, on the weekly celebration of Christ's death each Friday. They were then asked to donate to the poor the money that they would have spent on the meat. This was, and still is, considered to have two benefits: the Christian can to a very small degree identify with the self-giving of Christ by making a personal sacrifice (by not indulging in tasty meaty goodness), and by providing for the less fortunate (giving the funds to the poor), all in one act.
Why fish then? Fish was substituted as a less expensive alternative to the more expensive beef, pork, or poultry, so that the Christian could still have a healthy meal in his or her diet on Friday. Recently this practice has been relaxed (except during Lent when it is still required), so that the Christian can come up with his own penitential act each Friday.
Whether you agree with this practice or not, I don't think you can deny that it makes at least a little sense. Also, this might help: imagine a similar practice in another culture of which you are less critical than you are of Catholic culture (Native American spirituality, Buddhism, Islam, etc). You'd probably not criticize it so readily; in fact, you'd probably have praiseworthy things to say about it.
"Hell, go to a Catholic mass for once. It's all "Stand, sit, stand, kneel." It's like the priest is a gym teacher putting the parishioners through calisthenics."
Again, an explanation: Catholics and Orthodox Christians, much more so than Protestants, hold that we are spiritual AND bodily beings, and that we pray not only with our souls but with our bodies. Your posture (i.e, bodily position) is the way to pray with your body. Similar to the way that you stand in a courtroom to show respect to an entering judge, or the way that you go down on one knee when you propose to a woman, what you do with your body is an outward sign of what you're doing with your soul. The Catholic Mass is full of various "postures" of the soul toward God and toward your fellow congregants, and the bodily postures are designed to be signs of these inner dispositions. It seems like calisthenics to an outsider, but when understood rightly it is quite beautiful.
Again, you might not agree with all the sitting, standing, or kneeling, but you asked for a reasonable explanation, and I've tried to give one. I'm really not trying to be antagonistic here, just to explain the things you've asked about; I hope it helps you to be a more informed Catholic.
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
How likely is that Thomas Harriot discovered the four moons before Galileo, or possibly someone else?
You're confrontationally agreeing with me: the Church supported /science/ when it suited the Church (almost always, because science and technology bring worldly and spiritual power), otherwise it ignored science; and the Church silenced /scientists/ when they were inconvenient (i.e. when specific scientists tried to use their tools or position to work against the Church).
What on earth is a "scientist by heart"? Do you mean someone who applies the scientific method? That was very much formalised by the quasi-religious Neoplatonists, whose Renaissance resurgence was seen in such works as Kepler's _Harmonices_. It relies on faith in one's senses and memory (you are fairly sure you read that paper this morning, aren't you?) for its application to have any meaning whatever, and it applies those senses to understand God's divine creation. There is no need to be elitist about the scientific method: such an approach to living does not even require one to read or write.
The scientific method today may have numerically more practitioners, but we also have more people on the earth. It is justified on humanist grounds or, more frequently in the last couple of decades, with blubbering handwaving and anger as if science were on a crusade to destroy religion. But the practice is the same: increase your understanding of the world by trusting your senses and your memory, rather than superstition and dogma.