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Copernicus Reburied As Hero
CasualFriday writes "Mikolaj Kopernik, a.k.a. Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. On Saturday, his remains were blessed with holy water by some of Poland's highest-ranking clerics before an honor guard ceremoniously carried his coffin through the imposing red brick cathedral and lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005."
Jacek Jezierski, a local bishop who encouraged the search for Copernicus, said that he considers Copernicus' burial as part of the church's broader embrace of science as being compatible with Biblical belief.
In the end it's just one big format war...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Sometimes, i just dont understand people's motivation for this sort of thing. Copernicus was a great man, why on earth do we need to dig up his corpse and rebury him to honor his achievements? The mere fact that we discuss him and his work 500 years later is the greatest honor. There are times were circus and spectacle are needed, this is not one of them.
Good-bye
Copernicus' burial in an anonymous grave in the 16th century was not linked to suspicions of heresy. When he died, his ideas were just starting to be discussed by a small group of European astronomers, astrologers and mathematicians, and the church was not yet forcefully condemning the heliocentric world view as heresy, according to Jack Repcheck, author of "Copernicus' Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began."
"Why was he just buried along with everyone else, like every other canon in Frombork? Because at the time of his death he was just any other canon in Frombork. He was not the iconic hero that he has become."
And stupid people keep thinking burials are for the dead, not the living.
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This is the catholic church we're talking about, they've much more progressive than the American sects that oppose science (hence the acceptance of evolution in Europe, there are no debates about what should be taught in schools here).
I'm aware that the catholic church is extremely conservative but compared to the madness of the American fundamentalists that make the news they're moderates.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You do know that Copernicus was a Catholic priest also right?
There are a lot of misconceptions about what Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and all the other important figures during this time period were doing. For example, a lot of people don't realize that the system constructed by Copernicus still had epicycles. It was more aesthetically pleasing and slightly simpler mathematically than the Ptolemaic system but it wasn't actually more accurate. It wasn't until Kepler came around that a system that was genuinely superior in both simplicity and accurate. Also, people seem to forget that a major reason for Copernicus' work was that the Church wanted a more accurate astronomical system because they needed it to calculate the dates for Easter and other issues. And the Roman Catholic Church didn't even take a negative stance to heliocentrism until many years after Copernicus. Martin Luther and some of the other early Protestants reacted negatively far years before the Church did. The actual history is much more complicated than the standard narratives make it out to be. There are two excellent books on this topic. The first is Thomas Kuhn's "The Copernican Revolution" which presents the history pretty well although it gets filtered slightly through Kuhn's philosophy. The second is Alan Hirschfield's "Parallax" which takes a broader outlook over a much longer time period but with less detail on the period directly after Copernicus. Both books are very good reads.
They're doing this as a PR stunt to distract people from the mistakes they're making today.
If I designed a device to automatically lower fresh tinfoil hats from the ceiling whenever the one you're wearing now got worn out, I would make a mint.
Who cares what The Church does with whatever-is-left-of-his-body now? 500 years later?
Catholics care. They care because they believe in the sacrament of forgiveness. They care because they believe that people have immortal souls that can last more than 500 years after someone's death.
Well, then I guess I'll piss you off even further by pointing out that Galileo's views were discredited by actual DATA at the time. The most accurate data they had at his time did not support his interpretation. So no, scientific truth was not buried because of politics, scientific falsehoods (as judged by the scientific community of the day) were buried because of politics. Condemning the house arrest of political dissidents in an era when those unpopular with the rulers were often killed out of hand is as silly as complaining that Attila the Hun failed to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
As to the infallibility question, the doctrine you refer to only applies when the Pope makes a ruling that he declares infallible, not in everyday decisions. Think of this as the difference between Lehman Brothers putting out a stock prediction and claiming to have received information from the future that this will be the price.
Why not? He was one of them. He was employed by them. They were his friends and family. They didn't kill him. He died of natural causes (a stroke in his 70's). They just said that his idea of a heliocentric earth (one of many achievements) was heretical, but well after the fact. And then they admitted that they were wrong. What's not to forgive?