Galileo: Right On the Solar System, Wrong On Ice 206
carmendrahl writes "Famed astronomer Galileo Galilei is best known for taking on the Catholic Church by championing the idea that the Earth moves around the sun. But he also engaged in a debate with a philosopher about why ice floats on water. While his primary arguments were correct, he went too far, belittling legitimate, contradictory evidence given by his opponent, Ludovico delle Colombe. Galileo's erroneous arguments during the water debate are a useful reminder that the path to scientific enlightenment is not often direct and that even our intellectual heroes can sometimes be wrong."
More false history (Score:3, Insightful)
Galileo Galilei was an asshole. That was the start of his problem. He partially recreated the work of Copernicus (who had no conflict with Catholicism while proving heliocentricity), but then stopped about 3/4 of the way and filled the rest with evidence-free assertions. He never did provide evidence for those assertions (which have since been found to be wrong), but he did write a 'dialogue' to defend his claims where he (accidentally?) used a nickname for the Pope of the time as the name of his ignorant questioner character.
Once the Pope thought he was being directly insulted, things went downhill fast.
Looks like the same pattern with this story about water, no surprise to anyone who actually knows a bit of history.
Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ice floats because it's a witch [qedcat.com].
Re:More false history (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you making ad hominem attacks against Galileo, and throwing out your own "evidence-free" assertions that he made "evidence-free" assertions? What does someone thinking someone else is an asshole have anything to do with their actual science?
To answer the first question: it's pretty solidly researched and can be backed up with manuscripts. If he was that bad when things were written down, he was unlikely to be much better in person (especially considering the written accounts about in-person meetings reflect the other manuscripts).
To answer the second: Nothing -- but this "historical reflection" article doesn't have much to do with science; it's a "history" article, and as such, is open to ad hominem attacks.
Now if the original submission had been submitted under the headline of "new scientific finding proves some of Galileo's theories and disproves others" (and was backed up by research linked in the summary) you'd have a point.
And yet, over the next week... (Score:0, Insightful)
...Slashdot will still publish 5 stories about how Anthropocentric Global Warming is accepted scientific fact and how anyone questioning it is an evil denier...
Re:Copernicus (Score:5, Insightful)
But instead of improving their technology so they could see parallax motion, they spent their scientific energies devising epicycles.
To be fair, they believed the stars to be near enough that any parallax motion would be easily and obviously visible without improved technology. When weighed against having to massively expand the size of the universe, epicycles actually were the simpler concept.
The Modern Way (Score:3, Insightful)
He was ignorant of modern scientific efforts. Nowadays, we take a vote among political activists, come up with a consensus, and ridicule anyone who believes in the minority. We don't need any of that mathematical proof or experimental evidence crap. It saves a lot of time. As soon as you have a majority, you can start belittling everyone else.
We are no longer hobbled by those ancient, useless beliefs, like "the scientific method". Ours is the enlightened age!
Re:More false history (Score:5, Insightful)
The scientific method was in its infancy when Galileo did his research. The fact that he didn't uphold what we'd call an acceptable standard of scientific integrity does not detract from the importance of his methods. He helped get off the ground the idea that experiment, rather than preconceptions (what his contemporaries called "reason") is the way to establish scientific fact.
And yes, from what I know of his life, he does seem like an asshole. So what? Lots of assholes have done good in the world.
Re:Debate with a philosopher? (Score:4, Insightful)
...science was seen as an offshoot of philosophy...
And it remains a descendent: Science research eventually relies upon arguments set forth by Mathematics, which relies upon arguments set forth by Philosophy.
Heck, even the fact that you can have a logical argument relies upon the work of Philosophers. The biggest reason why modern Philosophers are not typically proficient Scientists boils down to the fact that they likely occupy their time reading different books, and thus aren't well-versed in the necessary esoterica.
Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Galileo thought the Earth's motion around the sun caused the tides (not the Moon). That essentially the water was "sloshing" around the Earth as it rotated, and that proved the Earth was moving. Since this is, well, wrong, (basically everyone knew the tides were connected to the Moon, if not why) it's hardly surprising most of the scientists of the day disagreed with him. Well, that and he called his opponents simpletons. Name-calling doesn't tend to win friends and influence people.
Re:The Modern Way (Score:2, Insightful)
Surprising threads (Score:4, Insightful)
Math is reason (Score:2, Insightful)
preconceptions (what his contemporaries called "reason")
What you readily dismiss as preconception was called reason by others because it is rationalism. A priori knowledge absent of empirical evidence. To dismiss it so easily is to ignore the entire works of mathematics. We all know that two of anything added to two of anything else is four. We do not need infinite evidence to prove it with reasonable (there is that root word again) certainty. Math is a noumenon manipulating process. There is no evidence that mathematical objects exist because they do not exist outside of the mind. Yet, despite having no evidence prior to the conception of the thought, only a fool would say any two objects added to any two others are not four.
You say that reason, or as you put it 'preconception', is not scientifically valid for deriving fact. Math exists and is used for scientific quantification of those very facts that you are defending, therefore I must say that there are four lights.