What people get wrong about about galileo and heliocentrism

[Lemmingwise]

You're sitting on the toilet, using your greasy fingers to type important discussions that will change the world forever.

You're discussing climate change, covid, adhd, antidepressants and you're told by some braindead npc to trust the science, trust the system. Or perhaps some more benign "how could they lie about this?".

Well you can't let their autism beat your autism. The weak should fear the strong. So you bring up galileo.

Persecuted by the catholic church, one of the dominant political powers of their time, to suppress the truth. Would you have told him to trust the system too?

It's a clever ploy. We're all very proud of you. Everybody started clapping.

I think everybody has come across the example of galileo as an example of majority being wrong in the face of one revolutionary scientist, right?

---
Scientific observation

But it's also a nonsense discussion inthe first place isn't it? Geocentric and heliocentric models are not about truth in the first place. They're orientation points, much like inches vs. cm is.

We still use geocentric model to calculate how to keep satellites in orbit.

The heliocentric model makes calculating and orienting our solar system easier. But you could technically pick any point and reorient the rest against it, right?

----

Historical observation

We are kind of repeating an enlightenment era myth in regards to persecutec galileo, aren't we?

Who funded galileo's treatise on heliocentric model? Catholic church. And whenhe wrote a discussion between "symplico", the spitting image of the pope, except a little more of a simpleton much like his name, to defend the geocentric model did he expect to receive no repercussions for lambasting his employer?

It's not like they burned him at the stake. He wasn't tortured (too old at time of his court). He was commanded to teach heliocentric model only as a theoretical model.

And this is what really gets me reading back on this. The results he gets, keeping his job, being allowed to teach it, though with some limitations.... did he have more intellectual freedom under the catholic church even as he satirized them, than we do today?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

And this is what really gets me reading back on this. The results he gets, keeping his job, being allowed to teach it, though with some limitations.... did he have more intellectual freedom under the catholic church even as he satirized them, than we do today?

Yes.

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

Is there any way you could reframe this in the context of a soyjack vs Chad comic, or failing that an Average X Fan vs Average X Enjoyer meme? Thanks to the internet I've lost the ability to read paragraphs, or as I call them, legacy formatting.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Is there any way you could reframe this in the context of a soyjack vs Chad comic, or failing that an Average X Fan vs Average X Enjoyer meme? Thanks to the internet I've lost the ability to read paragraphs, or as I call them, legacy formatting.

Maybe that's all the pope wanted from galileo, to not have it all framed as a theatrical dialogue.

The medium is the message.

 

[Harvey Danger]

I think everybody has come across the example of galileo as an example of majority being wrong in the face of one revolutionary scientist, right?

I've never heard this, actually. Galileo is almost always brought up as an example to LOVE SCIENCE because religious people are zealots.

The modern myth is that modern scientists are doing proper science, so we should trust them. If you told the people who LOVE SCIENCE that science has become a religious cult, they'd reject the idea out of hand. And the problem is they'll always be able to find someone, somewhere, doing proper science, and use it as a counterexample.

At this point you have to point out logical fallacies, group effects, the ontological metataxonomy of knowledge, and a side discussion of behavioral economics (as it pertains to funding incentives). Their eyes glaze over before you ever get back to examining their middlebrow, emotional attachment to the illusion of being informed.

TL;DR You can't argue someone out of their faith.

Geocentric and heliocentric models are not about truth in the first place. They're orientation points, much like inches vs. cm is.

Well, no, they have vastly important differences in how gravity works and physical objects interact. The orientation is more important than the model only if you're plotting a short term physical path, where other bodies' gravity do not outweigh the earth's effects. But you'll never get an accurate path if you don't get the model right--small errors add up fast.

Also centimeters are gay.

We are kind of repeating an enlightenment era myth in regards to persecutec galileo, aren't we?

Yes, because humans aren't scientific; they're human. History repeats because history is not scientific, it is the recorded pattern of human behavior (sliding along an axis of time).

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

What people get wrong about about galileo and heliocentrism: Pretty much everything. The church held to the heliocentric model due to the best SCIENCE of the day, much of it inherited from the Greeks. It had relatively little to do with Biblical interpretation. Galileo was right, but only by accident. His conclusions were unwarranted based on the best data available at the time. It wasn't until quite a bit later that better telescopes brought more accurate observational data to support heliocentrism.

 

[Red Hood]

Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Figaro!

 

[Dom Cruise]

One of the thing that bothers me about "trust the science" is this arrogant idea that we already have it mostly figured out already, instead of the to me far more likely case that we're just getting started on understanding the nature of reality.

So when people dismiss something like the spiritual because there's no "evidence" well, 200 years ago there wouldn't have been any "evidence" for atoms and yet they existed all the same, who's to say what we'll have evidence for in another 200 years?

Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Figaro!

MAGNIFICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

MAGNIFICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Beat me to it, damn it. I'm just a poor boy from a poor family

 

[HunterHearstHelmsley]

Identifying exactly why Galileo was “persecuted” is much useful than correcting people on the exact manner of his “persecution” as it disarms the entire narrative. Calling the Pope a idiotic retard and teaching theory as fact was his sin, not merely disagreeing with the religious establishment. This misinformation was put forth by Protestants originally but atheists are happy to carry the torch of Catholophobia into the modern age.

Nonetheless, there are numerous other stories of scientists who were ridiculed by their contemporaries being vindicated by time. The most famous is Ignaz Semmelweis.

“Trust the science bro” invariably comes from people do not have the mental capacity to understand, so can only trust. Why should people trust when the media and public health agencies have by and large destroyed their own credibility on reporting scientific facts? They’ve pushed things as “100% proven scientific fact” and backflipped on them. They overplayed their own hands. Nobody without a deep understanding of statistics can really know if a study means anything, which means most people and most scientists can’t. They just have to hope the authors did understand the statistics correctly when conducting the study and coming to their conclusions.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Beat me to it, damn it. I'm just a poor boy from a poor family

HE'S JUST A POOR. BOY FROM A POOR FAMILY SPARE HIM HIS LIFE FROM THIS MONSTROSITY

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Remind me what Kepler figured out again?

 

[Lemmingwise]

So when people dismiss something like the spiritual because there's no "evidence" well, 200 years ago there wouldn't have been any "evidence" for atoms and yet they existed all the same, who's to say what we'll have evidence for in another 200 years?

Assuming things don't exist if we don't have evidence for it is rational.

Ignaz Semmelweis.

So I knew some of the story of the hand-washing that was ignored for almost a century as women kept dying from the bacteria after giving birth due to the doctors not washing their hands after dissecting corpses. I never knew the lad's name. This wikipedia sentence though, fucking hell:

In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later, from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.

 

[Solid Snek]

The heliocentric model makes calculating and orienting our solar system easier. But you could technically pick any point and reorient the rest against it, right?

Galileo was right, but only by accident. His conclusions were unwarranted based on the best data available at the time. It wasn't until quite a bit later that better telescopes brought more accurate observational data to support heliocentrism.

YES. THANK YOU.

I've tried to point this out to people, many people, for years. Even scientific educators, who should know better (or at least have the intellectual curiosity to entertain the idea). And the only response I ever get is "duuurrrrrr sO yoU're saYing yOu hatE SCience?"

The geocentric and heliocentric system are mathematical models that work from a certain frame of reference, full stop. The heliocentric system simplifies the calculations needed to predict orbital behavior within the solar system, and ultimately makes "more sense" given what we (currently) know about gravity, and what we (currently) assume to be gravity's natural place in the hierarchy of cosmic order (in much the same way that the geocentric system made more sense given what we **used** to know about the behavior of the celestial spheres and the primacy of Terra in the hierarchy of cosmic order). But it's not like the geocentric system was "wrong" - it was just inelegant.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Assuming things don't exist if we don't have evidence for it is rational.

If you're working within hard science then yeah, not taking something into account for which you have no evidence for is fine.

But in the broader, philosophical sense saying, as some atheists do, that we know for sure there's no such thing like God and the spiritual and calling those that do believe in those things stupid is arrogance.

 

[Lemmingwise]

If you're working within hard science then yeah, not taking something into account for which you have no evidence for is fine.

But in the broader, philosophical sense saying, as some atheists do, that we know for sure there's no such thing like God and the spiritual and calling those that do believe in those things stupid is arrogance.

There's a meaningful distinction between "assuming something doesn't exist" and "we know for sure x doesn't exist".

 

[Kosher Dill]

But it's not like the geocentric system was "wrong" - it was just inelegant.

This isn't true, the geocentric system in use at the time was wrong, and Galileo did have evidence at the time to demonstrate it.
According to Ptolemaic astronomy, Venus's orbit around the earth was closer than the sun's, and it could never be further from the earth than the sun is. But once telescopes of sufficient power were invented, we could observe the phases of Venus, which are incompatible with this setup. To explain the observed phases, Venus has to orbit the sun. This is what Galileo pointed out.

Of course it's possible to construct some geocentric system that follows modern physics but sets the earth's center as the "0, 0" point of the coordinate system. But that's not a system that was ever used by anyone.

 

[Solid Snek]

This isn't true, the geocentric system in use at the time was wrong, and Galileo did have evidence at the time to demonstrate it.
According to Ptolemaic astronomy, Venus's orbit around the earth was closer than the sun's, and it could never be further from the earth than the sun is. But once telescopes of sufficient power were invented, we could observe the phases of Venus, which are incompatible with this setup. To explain the observed phases, Venus has to orbit the sun. This is what Galileo pointed out.

Of course it's possible to construct some geocentric system that follows modern physics but sets the earth's center as the "0, 0" point of the coordinate system. But that's not a system that was ever used by anyone.

Do the phases of Venus show that geocentricity is wrong? Or do they show that Ptolemaic astronomy, as currently known and practiced in the time of Gallileo, needed some revisions (more epicycles, perhaps)?

Like you say, it is perfectly possible to construct a geocentric system that accounts for modern observations of the Deep Heavens. The fact that such a system was "never used by anyone" is irrelevant - the mere fact that such a system is possible demonstrates the truth of my statement: geocentricity is not wrong, it's simply inelegant.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Do the phases of Venus show that geocentricity is wrong? Or do they show that Ptolemaic astronomy, as currently known and practiced in the time of Gallileo, needed some revisions (more epicycles, perhaps)?

Any revision of Ptolemaic astronomy would still have to put Venus behind the sun sometimes and in front of it other times, as viewed from the earth. Intersecting geocentric orbits (and their corresponding celestial spheres) would not have been considered an acceptable solution.

There were some attempts at saving geocentrism by putting some or all of the other planets in orbit around the sun, and then the Sun-planets system in orbit around the earth, but obviously that didn't work out.

After Galileo, geocentrism was simply an evolutionary dead end - there's no plausible alternate path where the geocentric system continued to evolve until it became "Newtonian gravity with a change of coordinates".

 

[Dom Cruise]

There's a meaningful distinction between "assuming something doesn't exist" and "we know for sure x doesn't exist".

And some atheists take the stance of "we know for sure x doesn't exist"