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."
Right for the wrong reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember reading somewhere that another opponent, possibly the same in the blurb, had the same complaints about the heliocentric system. While he believed it to be true as well, he found Galileo's reasons as to why were erroneous, and fought over these 'wrong reasons'.
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That "Other Opponent" happened to the the Pope.
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:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein
Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but anyone who is making a mistake and insulting people over it = an ass.
Galileo Galilei was an ASStronomer!!!
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Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Galileo was friends with Urban the VIII, but it was Paul the V that the controversy began (Urban suceeded Paul). Actually, the controversy was not about the actual science but more politics. There were already theories of heliocentricity from both Copernicus and Kepler who preceded Galileo. The standard for science back then was based on an Aristotlian system. In proving his work, Galileo relied on Copernicus, and while heliocentricity was more or less accepted in the scientific community and many in the Catholic Church, there was much dispute about the great distances between starts that Copernicus theorized to deal with the abscense of parallax shifts. The problem for Copernicus was one of crude instruments, but because his theories were not universally accepted by the astronomical community of the time, Galileo, basing his proof on Copernicus failed the Aristotlian rigor needed to for proof.
Galileo disagreed and took it to the Church assuming that since the Jesuits agreed with him, the Pope would, too. But the Pope sided with general astronomers of the day and said that he was free to teach his theory but it was not a proven fact. Luther basically said the same thing to Kepler 10 years earlier, but the Lutherans don't get in trouble for it.
Even after Galileo was placed under house arrest for publishing his work as fact instead of theory (which is what the dispute was about), the Church provided housing for him, built him an observatory, fed him, provided servents for him, paid him to do research and a host of other things. It was probably the most comfortable house arrest in history.
Anyway, there were large egos involved and Galileo refused to change his position and said that he was correct and the Church was wrong. While history has shown his theory to be correct, it is for the wrong reason. Copernicus was wrong on the parallax shifts and if they had better instrumentation he would have seen the shifts. So in a way both sides were correct at the time. The heliocentric model was correct, although that was never really disputed, but the Church was correct in that it failed the rigors of scientific proof.
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It was probably the most comfortable house arrest in history.
Yeah, after they very nearly burnt him to death, they generously agreed to keep him fed while locking him up for life. Bleeding hearts that they were.
While history has shown his theory to be correct, it is for the wrong reason. Copernicus was wrong on the parallax shifts and if they had better instrumentation he would have seen the shifts. So in a way both sides were correct at the time. The heliocentric model was correct, although that was never really disputed, but the Church was correct in that it failed the rigors of scientific proof.
BS, BS, and more BS.
From the original Papal Condemnation of Galileo: [umkc.edu]
"We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in trial, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine—whic
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Yes, the church condemned him, based on scripture, that's all the church, by its own rules could condemn somebody on. However, where do you find that he was going to be burned? Even in the English translation of the sentence, it talks about imprisonment for three years. Basing one's arguments solely on the the wording of the sentence is a bit like Galileo basing his proof on Copernicus' argument. You would think with the plethora of detailed documentation around Galileo and the Catholic Church one would no
Yeah well... (Score:2)
I wouldn't take up sky-diving with that attitude.
Sometimes you just got to things right the first time.
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Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
Galileo's not the only Great Man of Science to gain his fame out of sheer assholery. Louis Pasteur, for example, "proved" the nonexistence of spontaneous generation by falsifying his notes and by forcing a prominent critic, Felix Pouchet, to withdraw from experimental competition by a combination of intimidation and biased "independent" panels. Later science proved that Pasteur had the right general idea, of course, but in his specific experiments facing off against Pouchet (the famous "swan-necked flasks") he was actually mistaken. Had Pasteur not been such an asshole, Pouchet would not have withdrawn from competition and would have won.
It just goes to show that sociopaths running the world is not a new phenomenon.
Re:Right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Galileo was NOT incorrect about why ice floats. He was incorrect about why a wafer of ebony floats while a ball of ebony does not. From TFA:
Delle Colombe’s basic premise was that ice was the solid form of water, therefore it was more dense than water. He argued that buoyancy was “a matter of shape only,” Caruana explained. “It had nothing to do with density.”
. . .
And Galileo’s primary argument for floating ice was correctly based on Archimedes’ density theory, wherein an object in water experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of water it displaces. Because ice is less dense than liquid water, it will always float on liquid water.
. . .
On the third day of the debate, delle Colombe stole the show with a crowd-pleasing experiment, Caruana said. Delle Colombe presented a sphere of ebony to the audience. The sphere was placed on the surface of the water, and it began to sink. Then delle Colombe took a thin wafer of ebony and placed it on the surface of the water, where it floated. Because the density of both the wafer and the sphere of ebony were the same, delle Colombe announced that density had nothing to do with buoyancy and that an object’s shape was all that mattered.
. . .
Galileo argued that the thin volume of air, above the wafer but below the surface of the water, had somehow united with the ebony wafer. Thus, the density of the hybrid ebony-and-air object was the average of the density of ebony and the density of air. This average density was less than the density of liquid water, thus the ebony wafer (plus air) could float on water.
Thus, according to the article, Galileo was absolutely correct about why ice floats. He only gave an improper explanation of why his opponent's ebony show didn't disprove his explanation, and thus this article was a waste of time, and, honestly, I feel a bit misled. After actually reading TFA (which is rare for me, I will admit) I ended up more convinced that Galileo was a freaking smart dude, way ahead of his time, which was exactly the opposite of the purpose of the article. It seems like they would have been better off writing about Newton and his supposed quest for alchemy.
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He was also correct about heliocentricism but wrong as to why as he based a large portion on Copernicus' theory for the non observance of parallax shifts of starts which modern science has shown to be wrong (actually as soon as better equipment was available, Copernicus was shown to be wrong in this area). So what is it called when you get the right answer but for the wrong reasons?
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Thank you. That was the only reply I needed to understand this article.
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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.
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Why should the Pope being insulted have anything to do with whether the earth moves around the sun? 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?
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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
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It's not Ad Hominem if it's both true and relevant. Since it's been established that it's probably true, this is where you attack the relevance.
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It can lead to confirmation bias -- looking only for evidence that proves the other guy wrong, instead of maintaining scientific integrity.
Re: More false history (Score:3, Informative)
Before you complain about that it is very much around today present the same amount of scientific research against a popular mainstream thinking and the scientist of today will call for you to be fired and blacklisted.
Re: More false history (Score:4, Interesting)
present the same amount of scientific research against a popular mainstream thinking and the scientist of today will call for you to be fired and blacklisted
[sigh] I may regret asking this, but would you care to present any actual examples? Note: some guy screaming "help, I'm being oppressed!" doesn't count.
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I'm a scientist. I make a bit of a habit of going around telling people with mainstream ideas they're wrong. Nobody has called for me to be fired and blacklisted.
Mods, parent isn't informative. It's repeating a tired old myth that's believed by people who don't have any idea how modern science works and for some reason would like very much to believe it's just like religion.
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Why should the Pope being insulted have anything to do with whether the earth moves around the sun?
Who said it did? OP certainly didn't. He merely asserted that Galileo was an asshole. Which I don't think is much of a stretch.
The fact is that while Copernicus should be (and is) credited with the heliocentric model, he was careful to assert that it was purely a model that made calculations easier (none of the epicycle nonsense required). He never claimed it was a fact; he merely described it as a useful tool. But, if Galileo hadn't come along to turn the whole thing into a political issue, it's quite poss
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Why should the Pope being insulted have anything to do with whether the earth moves around the sun? 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 provide an example of Galileo's "evidence-free assertions": in an earlier work of his [wikipedia.org], he asserted that comets were simply optical illusions, without much evidence to back up his claim, largely to score some points off a rival, and attempt to curry favor with the Pope (the same Pope which he later insulted, notably). His rival actually had a mathematical argument in favor of his position on comets, which (beyond the fact that the guy was, y'know, actually correct) did kind of mean he was doing better sc
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The first rule of dealing with medieval absolute monarchs is... ...don't insult medieval absolute monarchs.
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So this isn't about the arguments and questions, but about the name? Isn't that Ad Hominem? You're not arguing with the reasoning but against the person that made the reasoning.
In other words if Galileo had called the character "His Holiness" would that have affected the reasoning presented?
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Also, Galileo was ordered not to publish in Italian for the common man to read until the church approved the work, and to first present his argument to the church in Latin. He did the equivalent of breaking a court order to take his arguments before the public before allowing the church to rule one way or the other, AND afterwords, he claimed before the papal court that he had not meant calling the pope a simpleton to be insulting AND not understood that he was doing an end run around the church's review. T
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not sure how calling out the Pope makes him an asshole. More power to him.
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Cause the Pope had been one of his biggest supporters and protectors. And Galileo had not been able to offer proof of his beliefs. Actually, more so that a number of his arguments in support were disproven (such as the tides sloshing about).
So basically, the Pope said you can discuss, but not advocate for the heliocentric view as a fact. Instead, Galileo, published a book arguing for it, and using some of the Pope's statements by a character named Simpleton.
This is like a venture capitalist saying "Please
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not sure how calling out the Pope makes him an asshole. More power to him.
Because the Pope had previously been friendly toward him and interested in his ideas, and actually asked him to write a book that explained his ideas vs. other systems in an impartial way. The pope further asked that his own questions on the topic be included. Galileo wrote a dialog which (probably unintentionally) came off as mocking the character promoting the geocentric view, who voiced the pope's arguments. So it looked like he was bashing the guy who asked him to explain his ideas.
Once the pope was
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.
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
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A priori knowledge absent of empirical evidence.
Absent empirical evidence, you have no a priori knowledge about a natural phenomenon. Once you've gathered some evidence, you may be able to show that a mathematical model of the phenomenon is reasonable, and make inferences on that basis--but you must have the evidence first. Even establishing that the phenomenon exists is part of the process of gathering empirical evidence. Where Aristotle and the other early natural philosophers went wrong was asserting that things existed with no evidence whatsoever;
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Your own example fails you. It is quite possible to propose a set of axioms that lead to a system where 2+2 is NOT 4. In fact, two of "anything" plus two of "anything" does not always add up to four. Two steps north plus two steps west, for example. Or a sine wave of amplitude 2 plus a cosine wave of amplitude 2. Notice also that these observations lead us into richer areas of mathematics.
Mathematics is useful where it matches up with what happens in the real world, as determined by experiment, NOT bec
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Speaking of false history, Copernicus didn't "prove" heliocenticity. In fact, he only agree to let his work be published on his deathbead because he couldn't prove it.
And as a side note, neither could Galileo, though his use of the telescope was an important piece of the puzzle. But proof wasn't possible until Newton came up with (perhaps invtented, though that's arguable these days, too) calculus (and the idea that planetary orbits aren't perfectly circular).
But yeah, Galileo's real problem with the church
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Well, let's not be so impolite. Nevertheless, I agree that Galileo was strongly driven by his desire to win whatever debate he was involved in. This was a serious character flaw, and a big problem in his dealings with the Inquisition. They allowed him the out of saying that the Earth's motion was merely a convenient hypothesis. That would have been consistent with his argument that the Earth's motion was not detectable by its inhabitants because motion is relative. But he wouldn't take the next obvious step
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Except Galileo Galilei was famed for attacking people rather than their ideas.
And THAT'S why he got into so much flak.
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Debate with a philosopher? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Debate with a philosopher? (Score:5, Funny)
1611 was a different place.
Re:Debate with a philosopher? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Debate with a philosopher? (Score:5, Informative)
At the time, science was seen as an offshoot of philosophy (natural philosophy).
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.
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...they are uninterested in putting on the necessary effort to accomplish this goal...
sounds a lot like...
...they don't spend their time putting effort towards learning the necessary material...
which sounds a lot like...
...they don't likely occupy their time reading the right kind of books...
...and you see where I'm going. It's called "boiling it down", in case you were wondering.
But, seriously, what do you have against Philosophy? I'm willing to bet you weren't very appreciative of History class, either.
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Personally I agree with you, see my comment elsewhere in this post regarding my thoughts for bringing back the Trivium and Quadrivium. Sadly, many people believe only in what they are told. They believe appeal to emotion arguments, and have difficulty defending against them since they lack training.
Re:Debate with a philosopher? (Score:4, Informative)
>At the time, science was seen as an offshoot of philosophy (natural philosophy).
This is something that confuses a lot of modern readers who look at the Galileo Affair.
When they see a churchman making "philosophical" arguments against Galileo, they assume it is due to some preposterous navel-gazing argument, not knowing the primary objection to Galileo came from people we'd call scientists today.
Galileo was making claims contrary to the founder of "science", Aristotle, and couldn't answer the counter-objections that scientists raised. The debate was taken to the authorities, the Roman Catholic Church, who told Galileo that they loved his theory, but that he didn't have enough evidence yet (and rightly so) to call it settled science. Contrary to the prevailing belief (and a forged letter claiming this) Galileo was not prohibited from teaching heliocentrism, just from teaching it as accepted fact. The Pope - a friend of his, and who believed his theory but was worried about making sudden changes in society - in fact encouraged Galileo to publish a comparison of heliocentrism and geocentrism, discussing the relative merits of each. Galileo, in typical nerd fashion, wrote a book that said heliocentrism is great, and anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot, including you, Mr. Pope. *This* is what got Galileo subject to house arrest. Not heliocentrism (which was utterly uncontroversial up until Galileo flipped off the pope - Copernicus was well received).
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Yes. Giving the Pope the finger was a bad idea in those days (it's not a GREAT idea now, but you won't see that sort of trouble over it).
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Are you suggesting that a witch and a duck (and by extension, ice) do not have the same weight?
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Until very recent history all Scientists were also considered to be Philosophers. Science still uses Philosophy (the scientific method, rational thought, critical thinking, rhetoric, logic, ethics) all the time. There has been a huge push to try and make Philosophy less attractive to people, and we no longer teach Philosophy at young ages. Personally I believe we should go back to the trivium and quadrivium methods of education with updates where applicable.
Wrong on ice... (Score:4, Informative)
If samzenpus had bothered to read the article, he would know that it explains, very clearly, that Galileo was right on the question of why ice floats. He was apparently wrong in some of the reasoning that he used to explain another effect (a disc of ebony floating on water due to surface tension).
Maybe samzenpus should go back to posting more science fiction...
Yes, they may be wrong once in a while, (Score:2)
but they aren't wrong ALL the time, and that's the best we can do.
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Or we can avoid the logical fallacy of argument from authority [wikipedia.org], and remember that A) being an expert in one field does not make you an expert in others, and B) even experts can disagree. Roger Penrose may be a brilliant and gifted mathematician, but his speculations on the nature of consciousness remain purely speculative, and, until someone comes up with a testable hypothesis, all speculations on string theory remain equally plausible.
Seriously, how is this worth an entire article? This is a tiny, tiny par
Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ice floats because it's a witch [qedcat.com].
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Then why don't ducks melt?
One useful thing I learnt from the article. (Score:2)
Paper-clips float on water, if you place them in flat and very carefully.
I just had to raid the office supplies cabinet and try it...
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Paper-clips float on water, if you place them in flat and very carefully.
I just had to raid the office supplies cabinet and try it...
I hear that super-tankers [wikipedia.org] do too, though I can't test that myself as our office supply cabinet is fresh out.
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Simple deductive reasoning: Super tankers are made of the same stuff as paperclips.
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I would think that paper clips flat because of surface tension, not displacement.
Also, who runs out of super tankers? We have to have several in reserve because people keep nicking them.
Bad Summary, Galileo was Correct On Ice (Score:2)
Galileo was right about why ice floats, it is less dense than water and buoyant force comes into equilibrium with weight when a portion of ice is out of the water.
The only thing "wrong" presented in article was small matter of shape under extraordinary conditions where surface tension can dominate over lack of buoyancy.
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I'm surprised no one caught onto surface tension, you can see it by slightly overfilling glass, a wibbly wobbly bubble (to use technical terms) held together by surface tension can be made to extend beyond and above the rim
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I'm surprised no one caught onto surface tension
Obiously someone caught onto surface tension, or you wouldn't have been able to make that comment. :)
Chemical and Engineering News? (Score:2)
Galileo argued that comets were optical illusions (they are most definitely physical objects) and that ocean tides were the result of oceans sloshing around from Earth’s rotation (tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational pull).
Did anyone else find it strange that a page called "Chemical & Engineering News" would need to point out that comets are real and that the moon's gravity is a factor in the cause of tides?
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!
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Nah, you don't even need a majority. You just need to claim you have a majority and have friends in the media who'll mindlessly parrot whatever crap you send them.
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Denier (Score:2)
Although Galileo’s explanation for why ice floats on water was closer to the truth than his opponent’s arguments, Galileo also belittled legitimate, contradictory evidence given by his opponent
So did he call him a denier, or claim he was on the payroll of the someone with questionable motives?
Don't bet against Galileo (Score:2)
Although Galileo’s explanation for why ice floats on water was closer to the truth than his opponent’s arguments...
Of COURSE the almighty Galileo was right! (heh)
The Big Issue with Galileo (Score:3, Informative)
Is that he was an arrogant ass and often wrong. The Catholic church did not have issue with Galileo's heliocentric view, in fact, the Catholic church has a method to accept and alter their understandings of such natural actions.
The issue is that Galileo's arguments left doubt. Ironically, there were some contemporaries whose work could have aided Galileo's proof of his view. However, he has pretty much dismissed those individuals and their works as wrong. And done so extremely rudely.
The real issue of Galileo's is that he came out postulating "FACT" while by-passing the equivalent of "peer review" for the day. The pope was actually rather fond of Galileo and his work. But refused to acknowledge Galileo's theories as fact, despite his fondness. Then Galileo chose to be a bigger arse. And wrote a book publicly insulting the Pope. It's funny, as we still have this issue in science today over peer review, and early publication statements.
Do you know what the big punishment was? I've read comments deriding the church for executing Galileo. When in truth, Galileo was given a backhanded patronage. He was put on a house arrest. But pretty much had most of his means taken care of, was free to continue his work. It was essentially a public censure.
Ironically, I was unaware of most of these facts until a few years ago. When reading the 1632 series, I started to research Galileo Galilei.
"The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could be supported as only a possibility, not an established fact."
That is not obstruction of science by the church, pope, nada. That is merely saying "Hey, before you declare something as fact, you need to be able to prove it."
Alas, the failure of science here, is to hide this blemish in the failure of history. So we go and teach how Galileo was persecuted for thinking differently. No, Galileo was in trouble for being a rude arrogant ass who couldn't back up his claims.
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Because he backed down, unlike Bruno, who was burned to death by "his Holiness". Gee, I wonder why?
Galileo was not wrong about ice. (Score:2)
Galileo was not wrong about ice at all! Read TFA and you will see it plain as day, the submitted topic is absolutely wrong. Galileo stated that density is why ice floats, where the person he was debating claimed it was all shape. Galileo was more correct than the person he was debating.
Galileo was wrong with reasoning for an experiment his opponent had, and kind of wrong about the objects shape having the ability to make an object float. Surface tension was unknown at the time, and surface tension while
Wait, no evidence and specious reasoning? (Score:2)
Galileo was the world's first Slashdot poster!
Surprising threads (Score:4, Insightful)
On Falling Faster (Score:2)
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That's why a spider can fall off of a sky scraper and land safely and why a mouse can survive a larger fall than a horse.
Well, that and square-cube law.
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There's an excellent example of different falling rates at the beginning of GoldenEye, [wikipedia.org] where Bond falls faster than a light plane, gets into the cabin and pulls it out of the dive.
Yeeesss... while possible, I don't think I'd use it as an "excellent example." If we're sticking with the Bond universe, I'd go for Moonraker, where Bond slips out of Jaws's grasp by opening his parachute and suddenly falling much slower than Jaws is - mainly because it was a real stunt, not an effect.
Seems like they were both right... (Score:2)
It seems like Galileo's and delle Colombe's arguments both had some elements of applicability over certain regimes.
They just were both so pigheaded that they were unwilling to accept that both of their ideas had partially captured some physics.
Less combativeness and more teamwork might have integrated the buoyancy and surface tension effects into a unified theory in their debate.
Galileo was right, TFA is wrong (Score:2)
Delle Colombe: ice ... more dense than water... buoyancy -- a matter of shape only
Galileo: Archimedes theory, shape of an object does not affect whether the object would sink or float
TFA: Galileo then went too far, had not accounted for surface tension
TFA went too far, in a spoken debate "ice floats because of shape" vs "density" the shape can and should be taken out of equation.
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you are answering straw men and urban legend with more urban legend and straw people. An honest biography will educate you on what Galileo accomplished and what discoveries were uniquely his.
As for heliocentric theory, what Galileo did was use observations by telescope to support Copernicous' theory. He never ever claimed the theory as his own.
Re:Copernicus (Score:5, Informative)
Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BC presented a theory of heliocentrism.
Copernicus knew about Aristarchus: the first version of his manuscript ("De revolutionibus orbium coelestium") contained the lines
Source: http://www.demokritos.org/Aristarchus%20and%20Copernicus-Petrakis.htm [demokritos.org]
Note: According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philolaus [wikipedia.org] Philolaus's theory also had the sun revolving around a "central fire". Aristarchus's theory was the first known heliocentric theory.
Why did science ignore Aristarchus for almost two millenia? One reason the Greeks used: "If the earth revolves around the sun, we should see parallax motion of the stars. We don't see parallax motion of the stars. Therefore, the earth doesn't revolve around the sun." But instead of improving their technology so they could see parallax motion, they spent their scientific energies devising epicycles.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
So Occam's Razor failed.
Re:Slashdot... redefining news. (Score:5, Funny)
...Now we're getting a summary about a debate that happened centuries ago...
First posted in 1611. Don't forget about the dupes in 1650, 1701, 1784, 1823, 1824, 1891, 1911, 1938, and 1992.
Re: (Score:3)
Even if man-made climate change is false, reducing the fucking atmospheric pollution is a good damn idea.
Carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant. And much of the increase in real atmospheric pollution is a result of the Greens demanding that Western nations reduce CO2 emissions, so we shipped all our factories to China, where they burn coal without a care in the world about where the pollution goes.
Re:Unless the subject is climate change (Score:4, Informative)
Greens demanding that Western nations reduce CO2 emissions, so we shipped all our factories to China
This is nonsense. "We" shipped all of "our" factories to China because the labor costs are (or were) vastly lower and improvements in global communications and transport made the distance increasingly less problematic. And do you think CO2 is the only thing that China's factories are spilling out? Their pollution is so bad that the life expectancy in some regions is years below what it should be. Of course there are economic costs to any regulation, of pollutants or anything else, but there are countless examples of the damage that industrialization without any regard of the environmental consequences brings. (China probably isn't the worst; try googling "Magnetogorsk".) The US may not have the manufacturing capacity it once did, but our rivers don't catch on fire either.
Re: (Score:2)
And either one in high enough concentrations can kill you.
Irrelevant. Your BREATH has CO2 in high enough concentrations to kill you, too.
Re: (Score:3)
This is true. And it's one of the reasons people breathe about three times more often than they need to. We get enough oxy in about every third breath. That's all we need to live.
However, we need to get rid of CO2 much more often than that. So we breathe more just to exhale more and wind up taking in more oxygen just because that's part of the cycle.
If you could hold your breath long enough -just by holding it, not with duct tape or ropes or something/someone helping- the CO2 would quickly build up to an