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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."
While that publication may have been clear Flamebait is seems he was an established author at the time, which should have counted in has favour. A bit like wanting to execute Carl Sagan because of his TV show.
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... 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.
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.
To be fair to the pope, Galileo was a bit of a prick. To be fair to everybody who isn't a medieval reactionary, the pope used state power against Galileo just because of an argument they were having. .
The thing is that before Galileo published the book that called the Pope a simpleton, the Pope was Galileo's friend. Galileo was having a heated and nasty dispute with a scientific rival. This rival had connections in the Catholic Church that he turned to because Galileo was a prick and gratuitously insulted the rival. Galileo basically said, Nyah, nyah, nyah. the Pope's my friend. The Pope trumps your Bishop." The Pope said, "You are my friend, but these are powerful people. We need to tone down the rhetoric and get everybody to cool down. Galileo, you're the smartest guy I know. Write a book that makes the best case possible for both sides of the argument and I will get these guys off your back."br. Galileo wrote a book that made the Pope out to be a fool and called everybody who disagreed with Galileo on anything an idiot. If Galileo and his rival's positions on Heliocentrism had been reversed, the only thing that would have been different about Galileo's story is that very few people would have ever heard of him.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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Thank you, this exact issue has been pissing me off for quite a while now. There's been a rather substantial movement to retroactive validate the Church's behavior toward Galileo for about a decade (maybe more, but that's how long I've been watching it). Galileo wasn't the most politically astute or generous person to his enemies, but he also didn't deserve the stuff the Church sent at him. The folio with his Inquisition record, for example, was clearly tampered with, with documents clearly added into places to make them appear older than they were.
In the end, Galileo's only defense should have been that his book was allowed by the Church censors. If there had been anything objectionable in it, they should have caught it and shot the book down. Failing that, they should have taken the blame, not Galileo.
As for making Simplicio a parody of Pope Urban, the only thing I've ever heard of that indicates that this was the goal was one quote from Urban put into Simplicio's* mouth. One quote a parody does not make; it's more likely (in my mind, anyway) that Galileo was trying to address one of Urban's objections and was clumsy in how he presented it. (On the other hand, as soon as it was found in the book, Galileo's enemies in the Church went to the Pope to decry Galileo. Note that the Pope didn't get offended on his own, he was goaded into offense.)
* Also note that the name was based on a real historical figure's name.
"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." -Martin Luther
The Protestants were no better. They just didn't happen to have the political power to enforce their biblical-inerrancy induced idiocy at the time.
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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."