Harry Marks wrote:Galileo's evidence was not "nearly zero" for those who chose to look at it with any care. Jupiter's moons were clearly moons, and followed orbits which, like those of the planets, were slower when further away. The phases of Venus and Mercury showed them to be circling the sun, and had a shape which, like the shadow of the earth in an eclipse, which suggested the round earth to the Ancients, also showed them to be spherical bodies. The appearance of Saturn's rings, like Jupiter's moons, showed these planets to be immensely distant, which also gave some idea of the relative size of the sun and the earth.

As with so many big changes of outlook, we see Galileo with the benefit of hindsight. This conversation about Galileo arose from a difference about what we mean by ‘observable reality’, which Murmur defined as "that which is discovered via the scientific method, and is most likely true". For Galileo, it was obvious that the sun was the focus of the solar system because otherwise you had no way to explain what a planet was. There is no force imaginable that can make a planet or the sun do a loop the loop as required by both the Ptolemaic and Tychonic models. Galileo could see this intuitively, but he lacked both Kepler’s elliptical framework and Newton’s theory of universal gravitation which would become essential parts of the puzzle to explain to lay audiences why geocentrism was absurd. It is often the case in mathematics that a great genius makes an intuitive leap to a conclusion without showing the working. That is probably the case for Galileo.

Harry Marks wrote:The contest between Galileo and the church has often been characterized as one of "revealed religious truth" versus "evidenced facts". In fact there was a larger contest which was at once more mundane and, viewed socially, more significant. The contest was in the mind of the Pope, who had been a patron of Galileo's scientific enterprise and joined with others in (pseudonymously) publishing the surprising results of them. When the case came for judgement in Rome, the main opponent of Galileo was a monastic order, with one monk in particular having opposed Galileo and been ridiculed for it. As a nobleman and relatively high-ranking churchman, the pope had been able to indulge his taste for "cutting edge" thought and art. But as Pope the pressures on him, in the middle of the Reformation when the momentous issue of might vs. right was in the balance, led him to choose the politically expedient path of avoiding offense to a monastic order, a major power that he could not afford to make an enemy of. Galileo had counted on his former patron's continued willingness to daringly side with science, but neglected to look at the world from his patron's changed point of view.

Harry, your characterization of church intrigue as a "larger contest” than “revealed religious truth" versus "evidenced facts" is revealing. It illustrates the common problem that the urgent is prioritized over the important. The shift from magical delusion to empirical science involved in Galileo’s discovery was epochal and tectonic, while the curial pressures and tactics are now largely forgotten, except that there is still a legacy of the church failing to see the big picture in problems like child sexual assault.

Harry Marks wrote: Scientists are still sometimes in the position of muttering "Nevertheless the facts are on my side" as they are driven from the room by people more concerned with the pressures of everyday life and power politics.

Yes, and the debate about climate change is a classic case in point. Scientists fail to see that politics is about myth, about telling a simple persuasive charismatic story that can capture the imagination of the general public. The evidence connecting emission reduction and global warming may make excellent scientific sense, but the political polarization involved in energy pricing means large vested interests have an interest in obscuring the data. The same was true in Galileo’s day, and at the time Christianity was first established in the ancient world.
Popular thinking is entirely mythical in nature, reliant on simple images which can be used to deflect vast reams of technical evidence. The evidence has to be distilled to its important essence. Galileo was actually quite good at that. In the preface to The Starry Messenger in his superb collection Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Stillman Drake writes that Galileo wrote for the general public who shared insatiable curiosity about evidence, spurning the scholarly elite by writing in vernacular Italian rather than the obscure obsolete Latin of the church. Galileo engaged constantly in public debate until the church metaphorically chopped out his tongue. Drake notes that Galileo opened the modern discussion of method and criteria of truth. That is why moronic obscurantists have never forgiven Galileo and try to slander his reputation with hosts of lies.
The debate sparked by Galileo was not primarily about evidence of heliocentrism, but about method in philosophy, and how the primacy of observation made scholastic methods redundant. Because of Galileo, the great thinkers of the scientific enlightenment were able to regard monkish virtues with disdain. Drake says Galileo was his own populizer, using his considerable literary talents to present his discoveries and opinions persuasively and attractively. Perhaps his devastating sarcasm of calling the Pope a simpleton was the last straw, cheered by the masses but infuriating to fuddy-duddy priests and bishops.

Harry Marks wrote: I think the Pope was pretty clear that the evidence was on Galileo's side.

Comparing again to the debate on climate change, ten years ago the political consensus was that the science is settled, but as the conservative forces have since assessed the economic implications of the science they have mounted a reactionary propaganda campaign to destroy the consensus. Something similar occurred with the Pope and Galileo. The method of evidence was devastating to the mystique and power of the church. So the engines of propaganda had to be cranked up to oppose use of evidence, despite this counter-reformation attitude of the Catholic Church being entirely vacuous in rational explanatory power.

ant wrote:That's all understood by anyone aware of the historicity of Galileo's heliocentric model.
However, the observation of satellites orbiting Jupiter was not sufficiently convincing evidence that the earth MUST revolve around the sun. That was a much much more difficult claim to prove at the time.

Yes, I understand that it was not easy to prove, and that there was evidence against it - Wikipedia reminded me of the issue of missing stellar parallax, though even at the time they considered the possibility that the stars were just enormously far away.

I believe Galileo may have been resistant to the Tychonic model in part because of his experiments with inertia and motion, which led him to consider inertial motion "normal". We who have ridden on trains [edit from "planes"] and airplanes have an intuition for recognizing that if we are in a moving context we don't necessarily perceive that motion. No one at the time had such an experiential basis for understanding this.

ant wrote: In comparison, Brahe's Tychonic model had more mathematical evidence for it at the time.
It was the Tychonic model that the Church favored for multiple reasons.

It wasn't just the Church who concluded that the sun going around the earth was a more tenable model. But the scientific establishment dropped it after Newton showed how gravity worked. At that point it became clear that other planets circling a sun in orbit around the earth was a specious model - if the earth was heavy enough to be the anchor for the sun's orbit, it would pull the other planets into orbit around it.

It is interesting to reflect on the distortion of the debate that has been introduced by a sort of heroic model of science, relying on hindsight. The attempt to paint the church as anti-science villain is mainly a post-Darwin theme, and much of the distortion arose in that effort.

But we can still be fair-minded enough to acknowledge that Galileo did have the evidence on his side and the superior insight.

Robert Tulip wrote:As with so many big changes of outlook, we see Galileo with the benefit of hindsight. This conversation about Galileo arose from a difference about what we mean by ‘observable reality’, which Murmur defined as "that which is discovered via the scientific method, and is most likely true". For Galileo, it was obvious that the sun was the focus of the solar system because otherwise you had no way to explain what a planet was. There is no force imaginable that can make a planet or the sun do a loop the loop as required by both the Ptolemaic and Tychonic models. Galileo could see this intuitively, but he lacked both Kepler’s elliptical framework and Newton’s theory of universal gravitation which would become essential parts of the puzzle to explain to lay audiences why geocentrism was absurd.

You have stated the case more clearly than I did in my response to Ant, just posted.

Robert Tulip wrote: It is often the case in mathematics that a great genius makes an intuitive leap to a conclusion without showing the working. That is probably the case for Galileo.

I would take it further. Galileo had the experience of process. In science, there is a delightful process in which, as our notion of the nature of a mechanism begins to form, it leads us to look for evidence supporting or conflicting with that notion. The great consistency of natural law means that looking for further evidence brings the mechanism into yet sharper focus. Anyone who has experienced this will not find it easy to forget - nothing is so persuasive of a mental model as putting it to work and seeing it succeed. This means Galileo was not just weighing evidence or intuitively seeing something, he was also in a position of having been overawed by nature itself. How could he even think of setting aside the insight which had led him to ask difficult questions and receive answers consistent with the insight?

Robert Tulip wrote:Harry, your characterization of church intrigue as a "larger contest” than “revealed religious truth" versus "evidenced facts" is revealing. It illustrates the common problem that the urgent is prioritized over the important.

I like that way of viewing it.

Robert Tulip wrote:The shift from magical delusion to empirical science involved in Galileo’s discovery was epochal and tectonic, while the curial pressures and tactics are now largely forgotten, except that there is still a legacy of the church failing to see the big picture in problems like child sexual assault.

I would not consider Brahe or even Ptolemy as cases of magical delusion, but never mind.

Robert Tulip wrote:Yes, and the debate about climate change is a classic case in point. Scientists fail to see that politics is about myth, about telling a simple persuasive charismatic story that can capture the imagination of the general public. The evidence connecting emission reduction and global warming may make excellent scientific sense, but the political polarization involved in energy pricing means large vested interests have an interest in obscuring the data.

Frankly I don't know how they can live with themselves, but the evidence is strong that billions of people have no trouble choosing their views to minimize cognitive dissonance, especially if a conclusion would show them to be guilty of something.

Robert Tulip wrote:Popular thinking is entirely mythical in nature, reliant on simple images which can be used to deflect vast reams of technical evidence. The evidence has to be distilled to its important essence. Galileo was actually quite good at that. In the preface to The Starry Messenger in his superb collection Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Stillman Drake writes that Galileo wrote for the general public who shared insatiable curiosity about evidence, spurning the scholarly elite by writing in vernacular Italian rather than the obscure obsolete Latin of the church. Galileo engaged constantly in public debate until the church metaphorically chopped out his tongue. Drake notes that Galileo opened the modern discussion of method and criteria of truth.

I was not aware that he was in any sense a popularizer, but I find that fascinating. I agree that he had a gift for discerning a simple principle and focusing in on it, as well as expressing it.

Robert Tulip wrote:That is why moronic obscurantists have never forgiven Galileo and try to slander his reputation with hosts of lies.

I think a lot of the modern re-assessment of the debate is just healthy historiography. Myths are obvious targets for academics - a warning to those of us who understand the power of myth and the thirst for it.

Robert Tulip wrote:The debate sparked by Galileo was not primarily about evidence of heliocentrism, but about method in philosophy, and how the primacy of observation made scholastic methods redundant. Because of Galileo, the great thinkers of the scientific enlightenment were able to regard monkish virtues with disdain. Drake says Galileo was his own populizer, using his considerable literary talents to present his discoveries and opinions persuasively and attractively.

One viable line of thought in the debate over the surge of science in the West compared to its plodding pace in China holds that the resistance by Mandarins, heavily invested in their system of monolithic structure of power according to learning, held back science in China. I rather favor an economic model myself, but it is interesting to think about.

Robert Tulip wrote: So the engines of propaganda had to be cranked up to oppose use of evidence, despite this counter-reformation attitude of the Catholic Church being entirely vacuous in rational explanatory power.

Were there really "engines of propaganda" involved? Okay, among the clergy, there was a certain amount of effort to push a point of view, including putting forward the evidence that made Brahe reluctant to embrace heliocentrism. But I have a strong impression (from readings 20 years ago) that heliocentrism was accepted in the Catholic world, just as in the Protestant part, once gravitation became clear. This hardly sounds like a dug in, last stand opposition to letting go of scholasticism in science.

Yes, I understand that it was not easy to prove, and that there was evidence against it - Wikipedia reminded me of the issue of missing stellar parallax, though even at the time they considered the possibility that the stars were just enormously far away.

I believe Galileo may have been resistant to the Tychonic model in part because of his experiments with inertia and motion, which led him to consider inertial motion "normal". We who have ridden on planes and airplanes have an intuition for recognizing that if we are in a moving context we don't necessarily perceive that motion. No one at the time had such an experiential basis for understanding this.

You initially implied that observational evidence of the Jovian satellites orbiting Jupiter was evidence for the heliocentric model per se, when in fact it was simply evidence for satellites orbiting Jupiter. Off the top of my head, I do not believe that's inconsistent with Brahe's model of celestial planetary motion, so it just reaffirmed the Tychonic model (could be wrong. check me if you feel the need).

No observational data supported Galileo's revitalized Copernican model: predicted phenomena from a moving Earth (parallax) could not be observed.

It wasn't just the Church who concluded that the sun going around the earth was a more tenable model. But the scientific establishment dropped it after Newton showed how gravity worked. At that point it became clear that other planets circling a sun in orbit around the earth was a specious model - if the earth was heavy enough to be the anchor for the sun's orbit, it would pull the other planets into orbit around it.

I know it wasn't just the Church that rejected the the heliocentric model and have stated that several times before here on Booktalk.

The Church requested Galileo to speak suppositionally, not absolutely of the Copernican hypothesis. If there was undeniable demonstrable evidence of the earth's motion, at that point the Church's position was to reinterpret scripture carefully in order to remain consistent with scientific evidence.

Here were the primary issues in sum:

1. Galileo’s telescopic “proofs”the Jovian satellites and the phases of Venus were inconclusive.
2. Galileo’s favored “proof”that the tides are caused by the motion of the Earth was wrong.
3. Although Galileo was ultimately correct in hindsight about heliocentrism, he was wrong to claim he had evidence for it
4. Confusion would result if scriptture had to be reinterpreted for each and every possible unproven scientific system


I am pretty well-versed on the complexities of this issue which is largely misunderstood and vastly promoted by certain individuals who have an ax to grind with religion and wish to demonize it each chance they get. Galileo is often used as a poster boy for the entire warfare thesis.