Galileo - Take 2
alwaysaskingquestions
Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
attracted much discussion.
It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
controversy.
A few general points:
1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
more acceptable?
2) I have tried to cover what appear to be all the essentials of the case
but am concerned that at 3500 words it has become a bit longish for a FAQ so
I'm open to suggestions on parts that can be reduced or left out; equally,
of course, if there are any important issues that I have missed, these
should be pointed out.
3) I have pulled the various points from a wide range of sources which to
some extent duplicate each other and this makes notation cumbersome. I'd
appreciate any suggestions on how I should handle this, I'm thinking of
maybe just a 'further reading' list at the end covering both online and
printed sources; suggestions for items to include on this are welcome.
====================================
1) Introduction
--------------------
The conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo was a pivotal moment in
the history of science and religion - although the events happened almost
400 years ago, the Galileo incident still invariably raises its head in any
debate about the present day relationship between science and religion.
It has been pointed out that those seeking to use the Galileo incident to
argue that the Catholic Church is inherently anti-science fundamentally
undermine their argument by having to go back 400 years to find such a
significant example. Nevertheless, the incident still causes so much
controversy that as recently as 1979 , Pope John Paul II felt the need to
commission a new investigation into it resulting in a formal apology from
the Church.
For such an important event, there are many widespread fallacies about
exactly what happened - for example, the popular image of Galileo being
tortured by the Inquisition and imprisoned in a dungeon is totally mythical.
This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
happen.
2) Historical Context
----------------------------------------
In seeking to understand any historical event, it is necessary to take
account of the context in which the event took place.
2.1) Scientific Context.
The concept of heliocentralism - that the earth and the other planets rotate
around the sun - had been around from ancient times but was not given any
real scientific credibility until 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus published
his "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres).
Whilst this publication by Copernicus - followed 62 years later by the
publication of Johann Kepler's "First Law of PlanetaryMotion" - did lead to
the first serious scientific debate and an increasing acceptance of
heliocentralism - it remained a hypothetical debate centred on complex
mathematical calculations; the first physical evidence didn't come until
1610, when Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of
the moons of Jupiter.
2.2) Church Context
The Catholic Church has always shown great interest in and made many
important contributions to science.
In the early 17th century, however, the higher levels of the Church
hierarchy had much more important things (from their point of view) to worry
them. Apart from the Vatican's key role in the political turmoil that was
happening in Europe, the Church itself was still reeling from the aftermath
of the Reformation. This latter issue had two aspects that can be argued to
have come to bear on its treatment of Galileo:
a) The Protestant Churches had been increasingly attacking the Catholic
Church for not placing enough reliance on Holy Scripture in its theology;
this was not a particularly auspicious period for any scientist to
challenge, or even appear to challenge scriptural interpretation.
b) Apart from the general politics than inevitably arise in any large
organisation, there were particular strains within the Church from the
ongoing effects of what is sometimes called the 'Counter-Reformation', the
movement by progressives for internal reform of the Church, partly but not
wholly in response to the challenge from Protestantism. The impact of these
politics are reflected in the fact that the initial conflict hostility from
the Church was generated not by the Hierarch but by two Dominican priest and
the fact that even though Pope Urban appeared to retain a lot of goodwill
towards Galileo, he refused to interfere in the investigation by the Holy
Office.
3) Sources of Conflict
---------------------------
When Copernicus published his work in 1543, the Church did not oppose the
theory; on the contrary, Copernicus had been reluctant to publish his work
because of his fear of ridicule from his scientific peers; it was the Church
who encouraged and persuaded him to do so to the extent that he dedicated
his revolutionary book to the man whom he claimed made his research
possible, Pope Paul III.
In a similar vein, when Kepler first published his work on elliptical
orbits, he was rebuked by his Protestant friends and colleagues but received
support from the Jesuits.
In 1610, Galileo burst on the scene in 1610 with his startling discoveries.
Looking through the new telescope he had developed, he made some discoveries
which shook the foundations of the traditional Aristotelian cosmos. First,
he saw that the moon was not a perfect sphere, but pocked with mountains and
valleys like the earth. Second, and more astonishing, Jupiter had at least
four satellites. No longer could it be said that heavenly bodies revolve
exclusively around the earth. Finally, he observed the phases of Venus, the
only explanation of which is that Venus moves around the sun and not the
earth.
The response to these discoveries ranged from enthusiastic to downright
hostile. The leading Jesuit astronomer of the day, Christopher Clavius, was
initially sceptical; but once the Roman College acquired an improved
telescope, he saw for himself that Galileo was right about Jupiter's moons,
and the Jesuits subsequently confirmed the phases of Venus. These men were
not ready to jump on the Copernican bandwagon, however; they adopted as a
half-way measure the system of Tycho Brahe, which had all the planets except
the earth orbiting the sun. This accounted quite satisfactorily for
Galileo's discoveries. Still, Galileo was the man of the hour; in 1611 he
made a triumphant visit to Rome, where he was feted by cardinals and granted
a private audience by Pope Paul V, who assured him of his support and good
will.
Despite this acclaim, there were scientists who still challenged Galileo's
findings on the basis that he had no conclusive proof. He appeared unable to
answer the strongest argument against it, which was advanced by Aristotle.
If the earth did orbit the sun, then stellar parallaxes would be observable
in the sky. Galileo was not able with the best of his telescopes to discern
the slightest stellar parallax. This was a valid scientific objection, and
it was not answered until 1838, when Friedrich Bessel succeeded in
determining the parallax of star 61 Cygni.
Galileo did give the correct explanation for this in 1632 when he published
his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" and identified the
potential vastness of the universe; there is no record, however, of him
using this argument in the early days of the debate.
Galileo did little to enhance his reputation with the sceptics when he later
advanced an argument that the tides were evidence of the earth's rotation -
a similar effect to sloshing a liquid inside a glass; this was quickly
disproved by other scientists, mainly on the basis that his theory would
produce one high tide per day, not two.
He also got involved in two side arguments with the Jesuits, the first about
comets - which he lost - and the second about sunspots which he won;
unfortunately, Galileo had become very belligerent in defending his theories
and launched a personalised attack on one of the leading Jesuit scientists
which alienated the order from him.
Despite the lack of scientific proof for his theories, Galileo insisted that
they were conclusive and dismissed all objections to them, again effectively
dismissing his opponents as fools.
Coincidental with Galileo's promotion of his theories, some members of the
Dominicans, reacted to the increasing acceptance of the Copernican world
view, and began to preach against it. In 1613, Father Nicolo Lorini, a
professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, inveighed against the new
astronomy although he was quickly rebuked for this.
Galileo felt that he had to answer these theological objections that the new
science contradicted certain passages of Scripture. There was, for example,
Joshua's command that the sun stand still and Psalms 92 ("He has made the
world firm, not to be moved.") and 103 ("You fixed the earth upon its
foundation, not to be moved forever."), not to mention the famous verse in
Ecclesiastes. These are not obscure passages, and their literal sense would
obviously have to be abandoned if the Copernican system were true.
In late 1613, Galileo addressed this problem in his famous Letter to
Castelli. In its approach to biblical exegesis, the letter ironically
anticipates Leo XIII's encyclical, Providentis-sumus Deus (1893), which
pointed out that Scripture often makes use of figurative language and is not
meant to teach science. Galileo accepted the inerrancy of Scripture; but he
was also mindful of Cardinal Baronius's quip that the bible "is intended to
teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." And he pointed out
correctly that both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the
sacred writers in no way meant to teach a system of astronomy.
The Dominican protest continued, however. In December 1614, Thomas Caccini,
who has been described as "a meddlesome and ambitious Dominican priest",
preached a fiery sermon in Florence denouncing Copernicanism and science in
general as contrary to Christian faith in an attack clearly aimed at
Galileo.
Caccini and Lorini were by no means representative of the order as a whole -
The Dominican Preacher General, Father Luigi Maraffi, wrote Galileo an
apology, saying "unfortunately I have to answer for all the idiocies that
thirty or forty thousand brothers may or actually do commit". Nevertheless,
they had succeeded in putting theological objection into the public domain.
About a month later, Lorini, despite his earlier reproof, made another
appearance on the scene. He had acquired a copy of Galileo's Letter to
Castelli and was incensed to find that Galileo - in Lorini's opinion - had
taken it upon himself to interpret Scripture according to his private
lights. He sent a copy to the Inquisition in Rome - one, moreover, which had
been tampered with to make Galileo's words more alarming than they actually
were. The Consultor of the Holy Office (or Inquisition) nevertheless found
no serious objections to the letter and the case was dismissed.
A month later, Caccini appeared in Rome uninvited, begging the Holy Office
to testify against Galileo. Arthur Koestler writes that "Caccini beautifully
fits the satirist's image of an ignorant, officious, and intriguing monk of
the Renaissance. His testimony before the Inquisition was a web of hearsay,
innuendo, and deliberate falsehood."
The judges of the Inquisition did not buy his story, and the case against
Galileo was again dropped. But the Letter to Castelli and Caccini's
testimony remained on the files of the Inquisition. Galileo's friends in the
hierarchy, including Cardinal Barberini, the future Urban VIII, warned him
not to force the issue. But Galileo only intensified his campaign to get the
Church to accept Copernicanism as an irrefutable truth.
At this point Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, entered the drama. Bellarmine was
one of the most important theologians of the Catholic Reformation and has
been described as "an expansive, gentle man who possessed the sort of
meekness and good humor that is the product of a lifetime of ascetical
struggle."
As Consultor of the Holy Office and Master of Controversial Questions, he
was unwillingly drawn into the Copernical controversy. In April 1615, he
wrote a letter which amounted to an unofficial statement of the Church's
position. He pointed out that: 1) it was perfectly acceptable to maintain
Copernicanism as a working hypothesis; and 2) if there were "real proof"
that the earth circles around the sun, "then we should have to proceed with
great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to
teach the contrary..."
Bellarmine, in effect, challenged Galileo to prove his theory or stop
pestering the Church. Galileo's responded with his theory of the tides,
which purported to show that the tides are caused by the rotation of the
earth. Even some of Galileo's supporters could see that this was patent
nonsense.
Determined to have a showdown, however, Galileo came to Rome to confront
Pope Paul V. The Pope exasperated by all this fuss about the planets
referred the matter to the Holy Office. The Qualifiers (i.e. theological
experts) of the Holy Office soon issued an opinion that the Copernican
doctrine is "foolish and absurd, philosophically and formally heretical
inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many
passages..."
This verdict was fortunately overruled under pressure of more cautious
Cardinals and was not published until 1633 and Galileo's infamous second
trial.
A milder decree, which did not include the word "heresy", was issued and
Galileo was summoned before the Holy Office. A report was put into the files
of the Holy Office which states that Galileo was told to relinquish
Copernicanism and commanded "to abstain altogether from teaching or
defending this opinion and doctrine, and even from discussing it." There is
a still unresolved controversy over whether this document is genuine, or
whether it was forged and slipped into the files by some unscrupulous curial
official.
At Galileo's request, Bellarmine gave him a certificate which simply forbade
him to "hold or defend" the theory. When, sixteen years later, Galileo wrote
his famous Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems, he technically did not
violate Bellarmine's injunction. But he did violate the command recorded in
the controversial minute, of which he was completely unaware and which was
later used against him at the second trial in 1633.
In 1623, Galileo's troubles with the Church seemed to come to and end when
his friend and log-time supporter Cardinal Barberini was elected Pope Urban
VIII
Urban gave several private audiences to Galileo, during which they discussed
the Copernican theory. Urban, however, has been described as "a vain,
irascible man who, in the manner of a late prince of the Renaissance,
thought he was qualified to make pronouncements in all areas of human
knowledge." At one audience, he told Galileo that the Church did not define
Copernicanism as heretical and would never do so. But at the same time, he
opined that all this quibbling about the planets did not touch on reality:
only God could know how the solar system is really disposed.
Urban's goodwill towards Galileo during this period was reflected in his
bestowing of a pension of 60 scudi per year upon Galileo's son in 1627 and a
pension of 40 scudi per year on Galileo himself in 1630.
In 1624, Urban gave permission for Galileo to produce a work presenting the
arguments for and against heliocentralism but warned him to be careful not
to advocate heliocentrism. He also asked that his own views on the matter be
included in Galileo's book.
Galileo finally completed this work in 1930 - his famous "De revolutionibus
orbium coelestium". In the book he presented most the arguments in the form
of a dialogue between Salviati, a clever intellectual, making the arguments
for heliocentralism and the case against presented by Simplicius who, as his
name suggests, is a much less intelligent person who is often caught in his
own errors and sometimes comes across as a fool.
This approach made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as
an advocacy book; an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the
Copernican theory.
To add insult to injury, Galileo put the words of Pope Urban VIII into the
mouth of Simplicius. Most historians believe taht Galileo did not act out of
malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope
did not take the public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias. Galileo had
alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters and was called to
Rome to explain himself.
The publication of this book directly led to Galileo's final infamous
appearance at the Holy Office - commonly known as 'The Inquisition' - in
1933.
The source of the instigation of the trail is not entirely clear - it has
been suggested that someone - possibly Christopher Scheiner, the Jesuit with
whom Galileo had fallen out over sunspots - had shown the pope the unsigned
memo from the 1616 meeting, forbidding Galileo even to describe the
Copernican system.
Galileo was not initially too concerned about the trail - it was supposed to
be only about whether he had broken a Church Order and he had the affidavit
from Bellarmine stating otherwise. The trial itself, however - possibly
through malicious manipulation by Cardinals opposed to Galileo - quickly
took on the wider agenda of the whole concept of heliocentralism being
heretical and Galileo was finally condemned by the Holy Office as
"vehemently suspected of heresy." The choice of words was technically
indefensible, as Copernicanism had never been declared heretical by either
the ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium of the Church who were the only
ones with the power to do so; three of the ten investigating Cardinals
refused to sign the verdict.
Nevertheless, the verdict stood and Galileo was confined to imprisonment for
the rest of his life - although this was immediately commuted to house
arrest - his 'Dialog' was placed on the index of banned books and he was
banned from writing any further, although this latter ban was not enforced
in practice.
Torture and Imprisonment
-----------------------------------
Most historians agree that Galileo was never subjected to any actual torture
though there is some disagreement as to whether he would have been tortured
if he had refused to recant.
The official order by Pope Urban for Galileo's trail explicitly stated that
he "should be questioned as to his intentions and that he should be menaced
with torture,"
Some historians, generally sympathetic to the Catholic Church, claim that
these words and the showing of torture instruments to Galileo were a mere
formality and that the Holy Office did not even have power to apply torture
in this case but these claims seem tenuous at best.
What cannot be overlooked is that just 33 years previously, Giordano Bruno
had been burned at the stake for his heresy. Whilst Bruno was well known for
his scientific ideas - particularly the concept of multiple universes - he
was burned at the stake for his heretical teachings, not for his scientific
beliefs; nevertheless, Galileo would have been well aware of the Church's
capacity for taking punishment for heresy to the extreme.
Galileo was never imprisoned. In an unprecedented move, Urban agreed for him
to stay in the palace of the Tuscan Ambassador during the preparatory period
for his trial. It is not clear whether this was due to some last vestiges of
goodwill towards Galileo on Urban's part, or sympathy for the fact that
Galileo was now an old and sick man, or whether it was a political gesture
to Cosmo de Medici with whom Urban wanted to maintain cordial relations;
written exchanges between the Pope and the Ambassador suggest the former but
this is not definitive.
During his actual trial, Galileo was confined in the building of the Holy
Office but in a comfortable apartment, not in a dungeon or cell. Although he
was sentenced to life imprisonment, this was immediately commuted to house
arrest; initially, this was in the residence of the archbishop of Siena but
towards the end of 1933 he was allowed to move back to his villa near
Florence where he passed his remaining years until his death nine years
later in 1642.
During this period, notwithstanding the ban on further writings, he did
produce a number of works including "Two New Sciences" which is regarded one
of his finest works, and realised the idea for which he is almost as
popularly famous as his work on the telescope - the application of the
pendulum to clocks.
Aftermath
-----------------------
Galileo was reburied on sacred ground at Santa Croce in 1737. He was
formally rehabilitated in 1741, when Pope Benedict XIV authorized the
publication of Galileo's complete scientific works (a censored edition had
been published in 1718), and in 1758 the general prohibition against
heliocentrism was removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
The Church Apologises
--------------------------------
In 1979 Pope John Paul II expressed the wish that the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences would conduct an in depth study of the celebrated and controversial
"Galileo case". A Commission of scholars for this purpose was established in
1981 and on 31 October they presented their conclusions to the Pope.
Although most of the media reporting on this focused on the Poe's apology
for Galileo, there was a much wider reason underlying the Pope's action in
calling for the case to be re-examined - worried about a perception of
ongoing conflict between the Church and science, he wanted the mistakes made
on both sides to be brought out so that similar mistakes might be avoided in
the future:
Pulling no punches, the Pope described Galileo as "a brilliant physicist .
who practically invented the experimental method" and who "showed himself to
be more perceptive in this regard [scriptural interpretation] than the
theologians who opposed him."
At the same time, he reminded his audience of the Catholic Church's
fundamental position that "There exist two realms of knowledge, one which
has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own
power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and
philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to
be understood as opposition. The two realms are not altogether foreign to
each other, they have points of contact. The methodologies proper to each
make it possible to bring out different aspects of reality."
In other words, it is science's job to look after science, it is the Church's
job to look after theology and both sides must respect the boundaries of
their areas of responsibility.
Timberwoof
"alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
> happen.
What does FAQ mean in this context? Isn't "FAQ" just a modern term for
"Catechism"? Why do you call your document a FAQ when it is not in the
format of questions and answers? If you were to write it that way, would
you actually answer questions that people frequently ask, or would you
post questions that you want people to ask? Could you explain why I
can't get past the inaccuracy of the title?
--
Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com> http://www.timberwoof.com
Level 1 Linux technical support: Read The Fscking Manual!
Level 2 Linux technical support: Write The Fscking Code Yourself!
Perplexed in Peoria
"alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:56ob45F...@mid.individual.net...
> A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> attracted much discussion.
>
> It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> controversy.
>
> A few general points:
>
> 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
> more acceptable?
The POV seems Ok to me. Since I am not expert on what actually happened,
I have just one additional comment.
[snip]
> Whilst this publication by Copernicus - followed 62 years later by the
> publication of Johann Kepler's "First Law of PlanetaryMotion" - did lead to
> the first serious scientific debate and an increasing acceptance of
> heliocentralism - it remained a hypothetical debate centred on complex
> mathematical calculations; the first physical evidence didn't come until
> 1610, when Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of
> the moons of Jupiter.
Actually, it was the observation of the phases of Venus which offered direct
support for heliocentrism. The moons of Jupiter don't really offer direct
evidence one way or the other. However, they do give indirect evidence
because now there are two planets (Earth and Jupiter) with their own
systems of satelites. So the moon is no longer strong evidence that Earth
is special.
[snip remainder]
David Canzi -- non-mailable
>--------------------
>The conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo was a pivotal moment in
>the history of science and religion - although the events happened almost
>400 years ago, the Galileo incident still invariably raises its head in any
>debate about the present day relationship between science and religion.
>
>It has been pointed out that those seeking to use the Galileo incident to
>argue that the Catholic Church is inherently anti-science fundamentally
>undermine their argument by having to go back 400 years to find such a
>significant example. Nevertheless, the incident still causes so much
>controversy that as recently as 1979 , Pope John Paul II felt the need to
>commission a new investigation into it resulting in a formal apology from
>the Church.
>
>For such an important event, there are many widespread fallacies about
>exactly what happened - for example, the popular image of Galileo being
>tortured by the Inquisition and imprisoned in a dungeon is totally mythical.
>
>This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
>happen.
I got bored before I finished reading the introduction. I'll try,
here, to write a better one:
| 1) Introduction
|
| The conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo is often
| cited by people debating whether religion is, or is not, hostile
| to science. There are widespread misconceptions about what
| actually happened between the Church and Galileo. Rational debate
| needs an event so often cited to be understood accurately. This FAQ
| is intended to correct the misconceptions.
This isn't reduced as much as it could or should be. This is
just the point at which I decided I had done enough hard work to
illustrate what you need to do to make a better FAQ.
I have 2 comments about the content of your introduction:
(1) I am not aware of any "widespread misconception" that Galileo
was tortured. I can't recall ever having heard that. Maybe I'm
just out of touch with the vox populi.
(2) If an argument is weak because it cites 400 year-old events,
then the 400 year-old events aren't important enough to write an
FAQ about.
--
David Canzi | Eternal truths come and go. |
John Vreeland
dmc...@remulak.ads.uwaterloo.ca (David Canzi -- non-mailable) opined:
I think there is an assumption of "Inquisition" by many people. It's
sort of expected.
>(2) If an argument is weak because it cites 400 year-old events,
>then the 400 year-old events aren't important enough to write an
>FAQ about.
The usual point is that it took the church 400 years to realize its
mistake and apologize, an argument actually addressed in the article.
--
John.Vreeland (IEEE.org) IEEE/AAAS/NSCE
Two Creation Scientists can hold an intelligent conversation, if one of them is a sock puppet.
bill.m...@gmail.com
wrote:
> "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaskingquesti...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:56ob45F...@mid.individual.net...
> > A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> > Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> > attracted much discussion.
>
> > It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> > have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> > new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> > by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> > controversy.
>
> > A few general points:
>
> > 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
> > more acceptable?
>
> The POV seems Ok to me. Since I am not expert on what actually happened,
> I have just one additional comment.
>
> [snip]
>
> > Whilst this publication by Copernicus - followed 62 years later by the
> > publication of Johann Kepler's "First Law of PlanetaryMotion" - did lead to
> > the first serious scientific debate and an increasing acceptance of
> > heliocentralism - it remained a hypothetical debate centred on complex
> > mathematical calculations; the first physical evidence didn't come until
> > 1610, when Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of
> > the moons of Jupiter.
>
> Actually, it was the observation of the phases of Venus which offered direct
> support for heliocentrism.
This is incorrect. The phases of Venus contradict the Ptolemaic model
but not the heliocentric model of Kepler's boss, Tycho Brahe (the
Tychonic model). Johannes Kepler actually wrote to Galileo pointing
this out (I gather that Galileo didn't like the correction as he
pretty much ignored Kepler after that).
Kepler himself had a much stronger argument in support of a
heliocentric solar system than Galileo's. Kepler showed that by
considering the apparent motion of the Earth from a fixed point on the
orbit of Mars, that the Earth sped up and slowed down in the same way
as the other planets according to their variation of distance from the
Sun. He also showed that the center of the Earth's orbit was between
its' equant and the Sun, just like for any other planet.
> The moons of Jupiter don't really offer direct
> evidence one way or the other. However, they do give indirect evidence
> because now there are two planets (Earth and Jupiter) with their own
> systems of satelites. So the moon is no longer strong evidence that Earth
> is special.
Correct. The first direct evidence of the Earth's motion around the
Sun is probably the phenomena known as the aberration of light as
discovered by the Astronomer Royal, James Bradley.
Bill
>
> [snip remainder]
bill.m...@gmail.com
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 01:13:12 +0000 (UTC),
>
>
>
> >In article <56ob45F2aj3s...@mid.individual.net>,
It appears to be that the only reason that Galileo survived the trial
was his presentation of the letter he had received from the by then,
late Cardinal Bellarmine stating that Galileo was permitted to teach
the Copernican hypothesis as long as he made it clear that it was just
a hypothesis and not literal truth. The existence of this letter was
unknown to his accusers and completely ruined their case against him,
as they then had to prove that Galileo was in fact teaching the
Copernican hypothesis as literal truth.
Bill
Perplexed in Peoria
<bill.m...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1174876090.4...@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
Did you mean to write Brahe's *geocentric* model?
> Johannes Kepler actually wrote to Galileo pointing
> this out (I gather that Galileo didn't like the correction as he
> pretty much ignored Kepler after that).
>
> Kepler himself had a much stronger argument in support of a
> heliocentric solar system than Galileo's. Kepler showed that by
> considering the apparent motion of the Earth from a fixed point on the
> orbit of Mars, that the Earth sped up and slowed down in the same way
> as the other planets according to their variation of distance from the
> Sun. He also showed that the center of the Earth's orbit was between
> its' equant and the Sun, just like for any other planet.
I don't quite understand this. I had understood that Tycho's model had
the planets revolving around the sun, but the sun and moon revolving around
the Earth. Yes, I see how this is an alternative explanation for the phases
of Venus. But, by modifying the Brahe model so that the sun moves in an ellipse
about the Earth, if that even is a modification, doesn't that also serve
to account for the apparent speed-up and slow-down of the Earth. It is really
due to the 'real' speed-up and slow-down of the sun. Every body then follows
Kepler's first two laws. Of course, to get Kepler's third law to apply
to as many cases as possible, you need to switch from the Brahe model to
a heliocentric one. And by then it was probably known that the Galilean
satelites of Jupiter obey a Kepler third law of their own, but trying to
get a version of Kepler's third law to work for Earth's two 'Brahe satelites' -
moon and sun - just doesn't fly.
Of course, Kepler didn't discover the third law soon enough to help Galileo,
and, as I read in the various accounts of Galileo's troubles in this thread,
it is unclear to me that he would have accepted the help.
Anlatt the Builder
The Church screwed up.
Like any human institution, it sometimes does that.
Sometimes the Church supported new scientific developments, and
sometimes it opposed them. Its interest was rarely in science per se,
but in whether science was supporting or refuting its dogmatic
beliefs.
Possibly the Church today - in its comments regarding scientific
information, or in other arenas - is screwing up again. Maybe it's
not. That's why the claims of the Church must be subjected to the same
kinds of scrutiny as the claims of any other human institution.
This is not an anti-Catholic statement. It is merely the logical
conclusion of any honest examination of Church history. It applies to
other human institutions as well. The end.
bill.m...@gmail.com
wrote:
> <bill.m.tho...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:1174876090.4...@e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
Yep. Sorry about that.
Kepler published this in Harmonices Mundi in 1619. Quite a few years
before Galileo's trial. I gather that Kepler's work had a mixed
reception until long after his death, when the extraordinary accuracy
of his "Rudolphine" tables was well established. A few decades later
Newton and Halley took Kepler's findings as a given.
Bill
<SNIP>
alwaysaskingquestions
"David Canzi -- non-mailable" <dmc...@remulak.ads.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in
message news:eu76n8$d5m$1...@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
> In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net>,
[...]
> I got bored before I finished reading the introduction. I'll try,
> here, to write a better one:
>
> | 1) Introduction
> |
> | The conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo is often
> | cited by people debating whether religion is, or is not, hostile
> | to science. There are widespread misconceptions about what
> | actually happened between the Church and Galileo. Rational debate
> | needs an event so often cited to be understood accurately. This FAQ
> | is intended to correct the misconceptions.
>
> This isn't reduced as much as it could or should be. This is
> just the point at which I decided I had done enough hard work to
> illustrate what you need to do to make a better FAQ.
I agree that there is a lot of editing work to be done, at this stage I'm
only trying to get a broad consensus on the key points.
> I have 2 comments about the content of your introduction:
>
> (1) I am not aware of any "widespread misconception" that Galileo
> was tortured. I can't recall ever having heard that. Maybe I'm
> just out of touch with the vox populi.
>
> (2) If an argument is weak because it cites 400 year-old events,
> then the 400 year-old events aren't important enough to write an
> FAQ about.
I agree with Jon Vreeland's comments.
alwaysaskingquestions
"Timberwoof" <timberw...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote in message
news:timberwoof.spam-9E...@nnrp-virt.nntp.sonic.net...
> In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net>,
> "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
>> happen.
>
> What does FAQ mean in this context? Isn't "FAQ" just a modern term for
> "Catechism"? Why do you call your document a FAQ when it is not in the
> format of questions and answers? If you were to write it that way, would
> you actually answer questions that people frequently ask, or would you
> post questions that you want people to ask? Could you explain why I
> can't get past the inaccuracy of the title?
I'm trying to get the basic facts agreed, then I can work on presentation -
a Q&A format is certainly one possibility.
In the meantime, do you have any Questions that aren't addressed within the
article or any Answers you think are wrong?
Robert Grumbine
Timberwoof <timberw...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote:
>In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net>,
> "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
>> happen.
>
>What does FAQ mean in this context? Isn't "FAQ" just a modern term for
>"Catechism"? Why do you call your document a FAQ when it is not in the
>format of questions and answers?
Quite a lot of the FAQs at the talk.origins web site are not written
in question/answer form. Nor are many of the ones on my site. Sometimes
that just isn't the most useful way to present information.
>If you were to write it that way, would
>you actually answer questions that people frequently ask, or would you
>post questions that you want people to ask? Could you explain why I
>can't get past the inaccuracy of the title?
That'd be in the realm of individual psychology. The Seldon plan
doesn't deal with those.
--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
John Wilkins
> In article <timberwoof.spam-9E...@nnrp-virt.nntp.sonic.net>,
> Timberwoof <timberw...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote:
> >In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net>,
> > "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
> >> happen.
> >
> >What does FAQ mean in this context? Isn't "FAQ" just a modern term for
> >"Catechism"? Why do you call your document a FAQ when it is not in the
> >format of questions and answers?
>
> Quite a lot of the FAQs at the talk.origins web site are not written
> in question/answer form. Nor are many of the ones on my site. Sometimes
> that just isn't the most useful way to present information.
Yes, the term now means a discussion on some often asked about topic.
>
> >If you were to write it that way, would
> >you actually answer questions that people frequently ask, or would you
> >post questions that you want people to ask? Could you explain why I
> >can't get past the inaccuracy of the title?
>
> That'd be in the realm of individual psychology. The Seldon plan
> doesn't deal with those.
Don't be a mule about it.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
macaddicted
> Robert Grumbine <bo...@radix.net> wrote:
>
> > In article <timberwoof.spam-9E...@nnrp-virt.nntp.sonic.net>,
> > Timberwoof <timberw...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote:
> > >In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net>,
> > > "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> This FAQ is intended to present an accurate summary of what actually did
> > >> happen.
> > >
> > >What does FAQ mean in this context? Isn't "FAQ" just a modern term for
> > >"Catechism"? Why do you call your document a FAQ when it is not in the
> > >format of questions and answers?
> >
> > Quite a lot of the FAQs at the talk.origins web site are not written
> > in question/answer form. Nor are many of the ones on my site. Sometimes
> > that just isn't the most useful way to present information.
>
> Yes, the term now means a discussion on some often asked about topic.
> >
> > >If you were to write it that way, would
> > >you actually answer questions that people frequently ask, or would you
> > >post questions that you want people to ask? Could you explain why I
> > >can't get past the inaccuracy of the title?
> >
> > That'd be in the realm of individual psychology. The Seldon plan
> > doesn't deal with those.
>
> Don't be a mule about it.
The man will go to star's end for a pun.
--
macaddicted
fides quaerens intellectum
Pip R. Lagenta
I have no idea what you people are talking about. It's like I'm on
the other side of the galaxy.
>
--
內躬偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,
Pip R. Lagenta Pip R. Lagenta Pip R. Lagenta Pip R. Lagenta
�虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌`偕爻,虜,齯滌
-- Pip R. Lagenta
President for Life
International Organization Of People Named Pip R. Lagenta
(If your name is Pip R. Lagenta, ask about our dues!)
<http://home.comcast.net/~galentripp/pip.html>
(For Email: I'm at home, not work.)
macaddicted
It's nothing to get into a crisis about.
Pip R. Lagenta
What does it matter if I do get into a crisis? My individual
reactions mean nothing.
John Wilkins
Yes, but lots of individual reactions are the foundation of history.
Ye Old One
Hari up and get the puns over with.
--
Bob.
Pip R. Lagenta
Mallow out, man.
Ye Old One
Hober you will get over this soon.
--
Bob.
macaddicted
Perhaps, but personally I blame the First Speaker.
Cory Albrecht
> Ye Old One <use...@mcsuk.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:46:04 -0700, "Pip R. Lagenta"
>> <morbiu...@comcast.net> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:40:33 GMT, Ye Old One <use...@mcsuk.net> wrote:
>>>
Gaias, will you just shut up? :-)
Ye Old One
I think this thread has reached its terminus.
--
Bob.
Dan Drake
<morbiu...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >> > That'd be in the realm of individual psychology. The Seldon plan
> >> > doesn't deal with those.
> >>
> >> Don't be a mule about it.
> >
> >The man will go to star's end for a pun.
>
> I have no idea what you people are talking about. It's like I'm on
> the other side of the galaxy.
>
Tsk. The other *end*, rather. It's more oxymoronic that way.
--
Dan Drake
d...@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
Dan Drake
>
> This is incorrect. The phases of Venus contradict the Ptolemaic model
> but not the heliocentric model of Kepler's boss, Tycho Brahe (the
> Tychonic model). Johannes Kepler actually wrote to Galileo pointing
> this out (I gather that Galileo didn't like the correction as he
> pretty much ignored Kepler after that).
>
Oh boy, the ex post facto psychoanalysis of Galileo goes on apace.
What he really didn't like was that Tycho's theory was a complete kludge
with no physical credibility at all, a fact that he mentioned in print.
Jesuits had to adopt it, once they were ordered not to think seriously
about Copernicus; but, with all due respect for the Society, that didn't
make it a theory that others had to take seriously. In Tycho's system, of
course, and Galileo was not too stupid to see this, the actual motion of
the planets was the same "pretzel" that Kepler complained about as a
feature of the Ptolemaic system. (Needless to say, Kepler also was not too
stupid to see this.)
Dan Drake
Canzi -- non-mailable) wrote:
>
> (1) I am not aware of any "widespread misconception" that Galileo
> was tortured. I can't recall ever having heard that. Maybe I'm
> just out of touch with the vox populi.
So am I. It always seems unnecessary to debunk the idea; but I have it
from one or two students of Hist of Sci, whose word I trust, that they run
into this.
But one thing is certain: I see the idea rebutted far, far more often than
I see it asserted; the latter is practically never. One almost suspects
that some people have an improper motive for repeatedly, tediuosly
debunking an idea held by virtually no one who writes about the matter.
Cf. "straw man".
@alwaysasking: I'm not impugning your motives here. Just suggesting that
in debunking the torture thing, you may be following a convention for
which there's no good reason. Have you actually encountered much of the
"he was tortured" idea; and if so, where? This is not rhetorical; I'm
curious. I may have to retract what I've just been saying.
alwaysaskingquestions
"Dan Drake" <d...@dandrake.com> wrote in message
news:vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-ddYEqZ84dG0Z@localhost...
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 01:13:12 UTC, dmc...@remulak.ads.uwaterloo.ca (David
> Canzi -- non-mailable) wrote:
>
>>
>> (1) I am not aware of any "widespread misconception" that Galileo
>> was tortured. I can't recall ever having heard that. Maybe I'm
>> just out of touch with the vox populi.
>
> So am I. It always seems unnecessary to debunk the idea; but I have it
> from one or two students of Hist of Sci, whose word I trust, that they run
> into this.
>
> But one thing is certain: I see the idea rebutted far, far more often than
> I see it asserted; the latter is practically never. One almost suspects
> that some people have an improper motive for repeatedly, tediuosly
> debunking an idea held by virtually no one who writes about the matter.
> Cf. "straw man".
I doubt that there is a deliberate motive in this - I get the impression
that the rebuttals seem to be just as prevalent among those who are totally
condemnatory of the Church's role as among those who are more sympathetic.
> @alwaysasking: I'm not impugning your motives here. Just suggesting that
> in debunking the torture thing, you may be following a convention for
> which there's no good reason. Have you actually encountered much of the
> "he was tortured" idea; and if so, where? This is not rhetorical; I'm
> curious. I may have to retract what I've just been saying.
I don't see in in any of the written works on Galileo but that's to be
expected - anyone who does any research on it at all will quickly realise
that there was no actual torture.
I have run into it occasionally in general discussions about Galileo but in
fairness, I think the misconception is limited to those with only a
superficial knowledge and/or interest in science - the sort of people who
are likely to have the impression that he spent much of his time dropping
objects off the Leaning Tower of Pisa :).
"Widespread" is arguably an overstatement - it may be that the 'urban
legend' of Galileo being tortured is itself an urban legend - and it's
probably better to take it out of the Introduction.
alwaysaskingquestions
"alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:57mod8F...@mid.individual.net...
Just after posting the above, I chanced upon this AAAS book review which
opens with:
"If you have ever wondered about Galileo and the myths that surround him,
most of your questions will be answered in Maurice Finocchiaro's Retrying
Galileo, 1633-1992. Was Galileo tortured? ....."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/58
In the book itself - which I have not read, only excerpts courtesy of
Amazon's online reader - the author talks about the controversy that
developed in the mid nineteenth century about the Galileo case and states
that "The question of whether Galileo had been physically tortured became a
cause célébre." (p222)
Whether or not what happened in the mid-nineteenth century is relevent to
today is, of course, a different argument.
Finocchiaro also refers to the argument that even if he was not *physically*
tortured, his treatment could be argued to be *moral* torture.
A lovely paragraph by him follows, which I think could apply to many debates
in this ng (not this particular one, I hasten to add!):
"One critic of the physical-torture thesis engaged in such a manipulation of
the documents that he may be described as having tortured the texts. On the
other hand, another such critic was so earnest in his attempt to avoid
one-sideness that he ended up displaying a type of incoherence that could be
labelled tortured thinking."
:)
Tiny Bulcher
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 01:24:06 UTC, "Pip R. Lagenta"
> <morbiu...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>>>> That'd be in the realm of individual psychology. The Seldon
>>>>> plan doesn't deal with those.
>>>>
>>>> Don't be a mule about it.
>>>
>>> The man will go to star's end for a pun.
>>
>> I have no idea what you people are talking about. It's like I'm on
>> the other side of the galaxy.
>>
>
> Tsk. The other *end*, rather. It's more oxymoronic that way.
Puns are the second foundation of t.o.
Dan Drake
<alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Widespread" is arguably an overstatement - it may be that the 'urban
> legend' of Galileo being tortured is itself an urban legend - and it's
> probably better to take it out of the Introduction.
>
Couldn't have said it better myself. And, obviously, I didn't.
Dan Drake
<alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A lovely paragraph by him follows, which I think could apply to many debates
> in this ng (not this particular one, I hasten to add!):
>
> "One critic of the physical-torture thesis engaged in such a manipulation of
> the documents that he may be described as having tortured the texts. On the
> other hand, another such critic was so earnest in his attempt to avoid
> one-sideness that he ended up displaying a type of incoherence that could be
> labelled tortured thinking."
I need to save that one.
alwaysaskingquestions
> On Fri, 6 Apr 2007 11:14:33 UTC, "alwaysaskingquestions"
> <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> "Widespread" is arguably an overstatement - it may be that the 'urban
>> legend' of Galileo being tortured is itself an urban legend - and it's
>> probably better to take it out of the Introduction.
>>
> Couldn't have said it better myself. And, obviously, I didn't.
Apart from that - what's your overall opinion on this latest draft of the
FAQ/article ?
Dan Drake
<alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> attracted much discussion.
>
> It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> controversy.
Sorry to take so long with comments. In addition to a trip out of town,
I've had something a bit relevant on my plate the past week: working on a
Galileo article of my own. No doubt I'll post about it when it's in shape
for anyone to see. Meanwhile, at least I have a lot of Galileo thoughts
about now, and some new information.
A general first reaction, without having studied it carefully: mostly it's
a good and fair piece. It starts off quite well. But I do have the
impression that as it goes along it gets more like something based on the
Catholic Encyclopedia. Not that that's an evil and mendacious work; just
too far from NPOV, as I expect to lay out, below.
NPOV (Neutral Point of View, a Wikipedia term, for the outsiders here; or
Neutrality, as the new Citizendium calls it, having an aversion to jargon
as one of many good principles) is a bear. Not an adorable little Knut,
either, but a KohlBear, as in Steven Colbert. See, if you don't have a
Colbert aversion,
<http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=84023&ml_co
llection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=s
how&ml_origin_url=%2Fmotherload%2F%3Fml_video%3D84023&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is
_large=true>
In fact, good honest Neutrality is not something I can achieve on issues
that matter. I admire certain peacemakers at Wikipedia, who have achieved
remarkably good articles on controversial matters -- a few of them, in
stark contrast to others that I could name easily. And a propos of
nothing, I would not recommend that anyone read their Galileo article in
search of good information on anything that might be controversial.
But speaking of all viewpoints, I must mention one most interesting
source:
Fantoli, Annibale (2003). Galileo - For Copernicanism and the Church,
third English edition. Vatican Observatory Publications. ISBN
88-209-7427-4
[Citation from Wikipedia]
This is a book that will not be accused of anti-Catholic bias! Nor of
anti-Jesuit bias, not quite the same thing, given that it was translated
by George Coyne, SJ. ("Yeah, and what about Dominicans?" I take no
position.) I'm not really asking anyone to delve into a book that's
obscure and hundreds of pages long, but it gives a detailed account of the
business that is well supported by evidence (and massively footnoted) and
cuts little slack for the Church, beyond recognizing where its hand was
forced by its own laws.
Oh, speaking of Fr. Coyne,
http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje36/text05p.htm
I read it a long time ago & don't remember it clearly, but I recall it as
a well-informed critique of the 1990s clearing of Galileo not going far
enough in taking on the Church's errors.
With that, to the specifics.
>...>
>
> 1) Introduction
> --------------------
> The conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo was a pivotal moment in
> the history of science and religion - although the events happened almost
> 400 years ago, the Galileo incident still invariably raises its head in any
> debate about the present day relationship between science and religion.
>
> It has been pointed out that those seeking to use the Galileo incident to
> argue that the Catholic Church is inherently anti-science fundamentally
> undermine their argument by having to go back 400 years to find such a
> significant example. Nevertheless, the incident still causes so much
> controversy that as recently as 1979 , Pope John Paul II felt the need to
> commission a new investigation into it resulting in a formal apology from
> the Church.
>
> For such an important event, there are many widespread fallacies about
> exactly what happened - for example, the popular image of Galileo being
> tortured by the Inquisition and imprisoned in a dungeon is totally mythical.
[Comments already about this.]
>...>
> 2.1) Scientific Context.
> The concept of heliocentralism - that the earth and the other planets rotate
> around the sun - had been around from ancient times but was not given any
> real scientific credibility until 1543 when Nicolaus Copernicus published
> his "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the
> Heavenly Spheres).
>
> Whilst this publication by Copernicus - followed 62 years later by the
> publication of Johann Kepler's "First Law of PlanetaryMotion" - did lead to
> the first serious scientific debate and an increasing acceptance of
> heliocentralism - it remained a hypothetical debate centred on complex
> mathematical calculations; the first physical evidence didn't come until
> 1610, when Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of
> the moons of Jupiter.
You will be criticized for oversimplifying this. Having already mentioned
that you wanted to keep to finite length, you won't be worried much by the
criticism.
>
> 2.2) Church Context
> The Catholic Church has always shown great interest in and made many
> important contributions to science.
>
> In the early 17th century, however, the higher levels of the Church
> hierarchy had much more important things (from their point of view) to worry
> them. Apart from the Vatican's key role in the political turmoil that was
> happening in Europe, the Church itself was still reeling from the aftermath
> of the Reformation. This latter issue had two aspects that can be argued to
> have come to bear on its treatment of Galileo:
>
> a) The Protestant Churches had been increasingly attacking the Catholic
> Church for not placing enough reliance on Holy Scripture in its theology;
> this was not a particularly auspicious period for any scientist to
> challenge, or even appear to challenge scriptural interpretation.
>
>
> b) Apart from the general politics than inevitably arise in any large
> organisation, there were particular strains within the Church from the
> ongoing effects of what is sometimes called the 'Counter-Reformation', the
> movement by progressives for internal reform of the Church, partly but not
> wholly in response to the challenge from Protestantism. The impact of these
> politics are reflected in the fact that the initial conflict hostility from
> the Church was generated not by the Hierarch
Hierarchy ?
> but by two Dominican priest
priests
> and
> the fact that even though Pope Urban appeared to retain a lot of goodwill
> towards Galileo, he refused to interfere in the investigation by the Holy
> Office.
>
>
> 3) Sources of Conflict
> ---------------------------
> When Copernicus published his work in 1543, the Church did not oppose the
> theory; on the contrary, Copernicus had been reluctant to publish his work
> because of his fear of ridicule from his scientific peers; it was the Church
> who encouraged and persuaded him to do so to the extent that he dedicated
> his revolutionary book to the man whom he claimed made his research
> possible, Pope Paul III.
>
> In a similar vein, when Kepler first published his work on elliptical
> orbits, he was rebuked by his Protestant friends and colleagues but received
> support from the Jesuits.
(I neither vouch for this conclusion nor dispute it.)
>
> In 1610, Galileo burst on the scene in 1610
check the redundancy
> with his startling discoveries.
> Looking through the new telescope he had developed, he made some discoveries
> which shook the foundations of the traditional Aristotelian cosmos. First,
> he saw that the moon was not a perfect sphere, but pocked with mountains and
> valleys like the earth. Second, and more astonishing, Jupiter had at least
> four satellites. No longer could it be said that heavenly bodies revolve
> exclusively around the earth. Finally, he observed the phases of Venus, the
> only explanation of which is that Venus moves around the sun and not the
> earth.
Preemptive quibble: Tycho's system, in which Venus goes around the Sun,
which goes around the Earth, also handles the phases of Venus. But the
behavior of Venus is conclusive against the systems of Aristotle and
Ptolemy. One may argue that this hurts the philosophers more than it does
those who merely want a way to preserve the truthiness of certain Biblical
passages; but obviously I'm getting off target here.
>
> The response to these discoveries ranged from enthusiastic to downright
> hostile. The leading Jesuit astronomer of the day, Christopher Clavius, was
> initially sceptical; but once the Roman College acquired an improved
> telescope, he saw for himself that Galileo was right about Jupiter's moons,
> and the Jesuits subsequently confirmed the phases of Venus. These men were
> not ready to jump on the Copernican bandwagon, however; they adopted as a
> half-way measure the system of Tycho Brahe, which had all the planets except
> the earth orbiting the sun. This accounted quite satisfactorily for
> Galileo's discoveries. Still, Galileo was the man of the hour; in 1611 he
> made a triumphant visit to Rome, where he was feted by cardinals and granted
> a private audience by Pope Paul V, who assured him of his support and good
> will.
I am not at all convinced about this conventional account of the
acceptance of Tycho. I have seen it asserted many times, but not once have
I seen any evidence adduced for it -- that is, before the crucial year of
1616 when heliocentrism formally became too dangerous. Then they picked up
on it, as the only system that would preserve the *new* appearances
without defying the Pope. Fantoli, IIRC, sees no sign of enthusiasm for
Tycho among the Jesuits before then.
> Despite this acclaim, there were scientists who still challenged Galileo's
> findings on the basis that he had no conclusive proof. He appeared unable to
> answer the strongest argument against it, which was advanced by Aristotle.
This, as I have mentioned, is at least an error in faith, if not actual
heresy. Oops, I mean it's badly misleading to the point of real
inaccuracy. Galileo takes up the matter in the Dialogue, and gives the
correct explanation, that the stars may be too far away for parallax to be
discerned.
Yes, you mention that Galileo knew how to deal with it; but "appeared
unable to answer" seems wholly unwarranted. In fact, saying that he was
"unable to answer" the argument is to call Galileo a damn' fool, because
the answer is obvious. Or if not obvious, it was still known to
Aristarchus and Archimedes; and, I think, to Copernicus, who also was not
stupid.
> If the earth did orbit the sun, then stellar parallaxes would be
--MIGHT be--
> observable
> in the sky. Galileo was not able with the best of his telescopes to discern
> the slightest stellar parallax. This was a valid scientific objection,
but an extremely feeble one -- "absence of evidence" applies here--
> and
> it was not answered
with positive evidence
> until 1838, when Friedrich Bessel succeeded in
> determining the parallax of star 61 Cygni.
>
> Galileo did give the correct explanation for this in 1632 when he published
> his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" and identified the
> potential vastness of the universe; there is no record, however, of him
> using this argument in the early days of the debate.
What is the record of its being used by others and Galileo missing the
opportunity to respond correctly? Is there any?
Please note that the Dialogue was his *first* full treatment of the theory
in print, not some afterthought. The religious controversy in 1610-1616
tends to overshadow everything else, and I know lots of documents from
that period; but serious philosophical (scientific) debate on the issues
seems much less well known. If your sources have a sober attack on
heliocentrism from this period, and a poor answer from Galileo, then the
argument above may be valid; if not, it should be dropped.
>
> Galileo did little to enhance his reputation with the sceptics when he later
> advanced an argument that the tides were evidence of the earth's rotation -
> a similar effect to sloshing a liquid inside a glass; this was quickly
> disproved by other scientists, mainly on the basis that his theory would
> produce one high tide per day, not two.
This is another "Galileo was stupid" argument. Given one of the few
absolute certainties in this matter, that Galileo was not stupid, it pays
to approach these with skepticism. One might, for instance, look in the
index of the Dialogue under "tides"; it took me something like one minute
to find where Salviati deals with this objection. Page 432 in the Drake
translation. You may not like his argument; in fact we know that the
theory was wrong; but what your paragraph says is that an objection that's
idiotically obvious was too deep for Galileo to see.
You may skip this paragraph while I hammer on the point that much of the
commentary on this case is from people who parrot each other's arguments
and embellish them at times, without ever bothering to check against
primary sources that are easily available. There.
BTW his insight about tides sloshing in a long basin is entirely right,
and is essential to any practical understanding of tides in the real
world, and was, so far as I know, entirely original with him. However, it
doesn't account for the motive force behind the whole effect of tides.
Galileo's pseudo-inertial theory of the force was just wrong; but then
again, *nobody* had a clear understanding of inertia at the time, and
nobdy-squared had the slightest idea of a gravitational effect. Please
note that Kepler, who is cited as rejecting Galileo's theory, had his own
theory, which in fact was at least as bad in accounting for the phenomena,
and only accounted for one tide a day!
>
> He also got involved in two side arguments with the Jesuits, the first about
> comets - which he lost - and the second about sunspots which he won;
I'd be more cautious here about winning and losing. There are still, or
have been in recent decades, defenders of Scheiner's priority on sunspots;
and in fact, currently Fabricius gets credit for beating them both. In any
case, it's hard to see that there was a "winner" in that debate at the
time. Also, before you repeat anyone's assertions about Who Started It,
you may want to look at the documents from the early stages of the
dispute. I'm just suggesting some skepticism here, not that I've done that
myself, yet; but I do know the virulence of Scheiner's attacks on Galileo
_later_, one of which his superiors in the Jesuit order would not even
allow to be published till both the principals were dead.
As to the comet business, it's hard to see that Galileo lost, since he
insisted all along that he was just presenting hypotheses and not arguing
a case. Hmm, does anyone enjoy irony? But don't prejudge whether that
really was the case without looking at the documents. (I have tried to,
and find them almost impossible to plow through. But I think his claims
actually were much more hypthetical than in the Dialogue.)
> unfortunately, Galileo had become very belligerent in defending his theories
> and launched a personalised attack on one of the leading Jesuit scientists
> which alienated the order from him.
Here is an objection you can expect, and had better be ready to deal with:
This is a defense of the Church? That a bunch of personal vendettas
against somebody who allegedly was too rude can get him tried for heresy?
>
> Despite the lack of scientific proof for his theories, Galileo insisted that
> they were conclusive
Did he, really? In the dogmatic way that this implies? He did say in
letters to his friends that he thought he had a serious physical proof (in
the erroneous tidal theory); but that cuts both ways, indicating that he
knew he didn't have conclusive proof on other grounds, but just plausible
evidence. And I've missed the place where he demanded agreement with his
tidal theory; what I've seen in his writings is a desire to be able to
*present* the argument.
> and dismissed all objections to them,
Dismissed? I have a book here that says he _argued_ against the
objections, when he was allowed to. Actually, it's the book in which he
did argue, when he thought he was allowed to.
> again effectively
> dismissing his opponents as fools.
Pretty loose rhetoric. (And actually, a lot of them were fools. The old
story about people who refused to look through the telescope is not purely
invention. Note that Clavius, an old man fixed in his ways, was a non-fool
and came around on specific issues when the evidence came in, while many
others did not.)
>
> Coincidental with Galileo's promotion of his theories, some members of the
> Dominicans, reacted to the increasing acceptance of the Copernican world
> view, and began to preach against it. In 1613, Father Nicolo Lorini, a
> professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, inveighed against the new
> astronomy although he was quickly rebuked for this...
(Note no problems in a long stretch, which is therefore snipped, giving
the subjective impression that I'm objecting to everything :)
>
> Caccini and Lorini were by no means representative of the order as a whole -
> The Dominican Preacher General, Father Luigi Maraffi, wrote Galileo an
> apology, saying "unfortunately I have to answer for all the idiocies that
> thirty or forty thousand brothers may or actually do commit". Nevertheless,
> they had succeeded in putting theological objection into the public domain.
Yes, but it was the Dominicans who in 1616 were calling for a complete ban
on all teaching of Copernican doctrine, against the moderate Bellarmine,
who would allow it as a computational gimmick (called "hypothesis" in
those days).
>
> About a month later, Lorini, despite his earlier reproof, made another
> appearance on the scene....
>...the case against
> Galileo was again dropped. But the Letter to Castelli and Caccini's
> testimony remained on the files of the Inquisition. Galileo's friends in the
> hierarchy, including Cardinal Barberini, the future Urban VIII, warned him
> not to force the issue. But Galileo only intensified his campaign to get the
> Church to accept Copernicanism as an irrefutable truth.
No, this is flatly false. It could not be more clear in his letters of
1615-1616 and those of his friends, not to mention Cardinal Saint Robert
Bellarmine, that he was asking to advocate it, not demanding that the
Church take is as dogma.
>
> At this point Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, entered the drama. Bellarmine was
> one of the most important theologians of the Catholic Reformation and has
> been described as "an expansive, gentle man who possessed the sort of
> meekness and good humor that is the product of a lifetime of ascetical
> struggle."
I fear that your "meekness and good humor", though they may actually be
true, will reduce your credibility in talking about the man who in 1600
had a man burned alive at the stake for refusing to cooperate. (Note I
didn't use Bruno's name or say anything about heliocentrism there. The
stake is enough.) On a tactical basis at least, it may be good to
reconsider this.
>
> As Consultor of the Holy Office and Master of Controversial Questions, he
> was unwillingly drawn into the Copernical controversy. In April 1615, he
> wrote a letter which amounted to an unofficial statement of the Church's
> position. He pointed out that: 1) it was perfectly acceptable to maintain
> Copernicanism as a working hypothesis; and 2) if there were "real proof"
> that the earth circles around the sun, "then we should have to proceed with
> great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to
> teach the contrary..."
"Working hypothesis" is a modern term, and one that leads to error here.
Check this out in the OED: the early use of "hypothesis", as I mentioned
above, was not our modern hypothetico-deductive idea, but a gimmick or
fudge factor or kludge. The idea of heliocentrism as an idea to be pursued
with a view to finding it true or disproving it did not enter into this at
all.
>
> Bellarmine, in effect, challenged Galileo to prove his theory or stop
> pestering the Church.
I already did the rant on "pestering". He was trying to dissuade it from
making a fool of itself by suppressing something that could turn out to be
true and thereby cause embarassment. Of course, he thought that it really
was true. The fact that the Church did suppress it, and it was true, and
it has embarrassed the Church for about 374 years so far and probably will
continue to embarrass it (perhaps quite irrationally, to be sure) for a
long time to come: prima facie evidence that he might have been thinking
more clearly than the Church people, and conclusive evidence that things
_could_ have turned out that way.
But if he had just been sensible and let sleeping dogs lie? After all, his
1616 mission was a failure, leaving things worse than before. But the
hostility of influential people, including Pope Paul V, is well enough
documented to make it much less than obvious that he should have just gone
on working without fear of persecution.
> Galileo's responded with his theory of the tides,
> which purported to show that the tides are caused by the rotation of the
> earth. Even some of Galileo's supporters could see that this was patent
> nonsense.
This is inaccurate, a noted above. Also, so far as I can tell, he barely
mentioned the tidal ideas at that time. And there is a big fat red herring
here: he was not arguing the science with the Pope and the Cardinals! They
were not making a critique of his science, or consulting philosophers
about the arguments; they were talking theology.
>
> Determined to have a showdown, however, Galileo came to Rome to confront
> Pope Paul V. The Pope exasperated by all this fuss about the planets
For the sake of NPOV, here is another view of the exasperation: "This
pope, he [Guicciardini, the Tuscan ambassador] said, abhorred men of
letters so much that men of ingenuity pretended the oppostie of their
beliefs to stay out of trouble." [Galileo at Work, p. 252] A slightly
different take, and a contemporary one, on why it was tactically good to
stay away from the pope; but not one favorable to the poor pope having his
time wasted by some small matter that would embarrass his church for 400
years.
> referred the matter to the Holy Office. The Qualifiers (i.e.
theological
> experts) of the Holy Office soon issued an opinion that the Copernican
> doctrine is "foolish and absurd, philosophically and formally heretical
> inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many
> passages..."
>
> This verdict was fortunately overruled under pressure of more cautious
> Cardinals and was not published until 1633 and Galileo's infamous second
> trial.
> A milder decree, which did not include the word "heresy", was issued and
> Galileo was summoned before the Holy Office. A report was put into the files
> of the Holy Office which states that Galileo was told to relinquish
> Copernicanism and commanded "to abstain altogether from teaching or
> defending this opinion and doctrine, and even from discussing it." There is
> a still unresolved controversy over whether this document is genuine, or
> whether it was forged and slipped into the files by some unscrupulous curial
> official.
A third position exists, under which none of the documents is exactly
quite strictly a lie. The details are at the start of the 1616-1618
chapter of _Galileo at Work_, and certainly are not generally accepted. In
this version, the Dominicans showed up for the meeting with Galileo, where
(it appears) they had no business being, and delivered the strong order in
violation of the terms that the Pope had laid out -- the account given in
the dubious document clearly contradicts what the Pope ordered. Then, this
account goes, Bellarmine assured Galileo that the second order simply did
not happen in any legal sense, being contrary to the Pope's instructions.
BTW the minutes of the Inquisition meeting a few days later say nothing of
the Dominican interposition. The argument is, you might say, Jesuitical.
Take or leave it, but it does resolve the *three* conflicting documents.
As Koko said,
It's like this: When your Majesty says, "Let a thing be done," it's as
good as done - practically, it is done - because your Majesty's will is
law. Your Majesty says, "Kill a gentleman," and a gentleman is told off to
be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead - practically,
he is dead - and if he is dead, why not say so?
Bellarmine: And if the order was given without the Pope's authority, it as
good as didn't happen -- practically it didn't happen.
>
> At Galileo's request, Bellarmine gave him a certificate which simply forbade
> him to "hold or defend" the theory.
Sent him a letter describing the order he'd given to Galileo, which was
simply not to "hold or defend" -- this wording isn't very good, but I
think that it's better to describe it as a letter giving his account of
what was ordered.
> When, sixteen years later, Galileo wrote
> his famous Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems, he technically did not
> violate Bellarmine's injunction. But he did violate the command recorded in
> the controversial minute, of which he was completely unaware and which was
> later used against him at the second trial in 1633.
>
> In 1623, Galileo's troubles with the Church seemed to come to and end when
> his friend and log-time supporter Cardinal Barberini was elected Pope Urban
> VIII
>
> ...
>
> In 1624, Urban gave permission for Galileo to produce a work presenting the
> arguments for and against heliocentralism but warned him to be careful not
> to advocate heliocentrism. He also asked that his own views on the matter be
> included in Galileo's book.
Did he ask that at the time? I haven't found a reference to it, though it
may be true.
>
> Galileo finally completed this work in 1930 - his famous "De revolutionibus
> orbium coelestium".
Oops. That was Copernicus. "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems." A peculiat title, by the way: it was originally a Dialogue on
the Tides, but the Inquisition ordered him to take the tides out of it.
Note, btw, that they didn't consider the argument on the tides absurd; on
the contrary, they considered it a potentially dangerous bit of advocacy.
> In the book he presented most
Most? I think it was more like All.
Oh, maybe I get it: some were in dialogue with smart layman Sagredo. Makes
sense, I guess.
> the arguments in the form
> of a dialogue between Salviati, a clever intellectual, making the arguments
> for heliocentralism and the case against presented by Simplicius
Simplicio. [I would always suspect the diligence of an author who got this
wrong.]
> who, as his
> name suggests, is a much less intelligent person who is often caught in his
> own errors and sometimes comes across as a fool.
His name comes from the distinguished Roman philosopher Simplicius,
admired by Galileo's adversaries such as Ludovico della Colombe, as
Galileo explained in his preface. You may say that was a subterfuge, but
to speak of Simplicio, simpliciter, is -- ok, drop the joke -- *just*
saying Simplicio gives a false impression that he was simply naming the
guy Stupid.
>
> This approach made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as
> an advocacy book; an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the
> Copernican theory.
>
> To add insult to injury, Galileo put the words of Pope Urban VIII into the
> mouth of Simplicius. Most historians believe
NB: taht Galileo did not act out of
> malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book.
I believe that it's important, especially in connection with the statement
that the Pope told Galileo to include his idea, to note that that text was
not in the book as Galileo wrote it and submitted it for the imprimatur.
It was stuffed in on the direct orders of the Inquisition, by order of the
Pope, *after* the book was ready for press. Hence, it was not part of some
plan to craft Simplicio as a mockery of the Pope, as is often claimed.
Also, since the matter of deliberate insult is by not means generally
accepted, as you point out here, the phrase "insult to injury" might be
reconsidered.
> However, the Pope
> did not take the
[alleged] :-)
> public ridicule lightly, nor the blatant bias.
Um, for "blatant bias" how about some phrase referring just to the obvious
lack of the neutrality which Galileo had been ordered to observe?
> Galileo had
> alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters and was called to
> Rome to explain himself.
There is another credible reason for the Pope's deadly pique with Galileo.
It appears that he never knew about the supposed injunction not to *teach
in any way* the Copernican ideas. When he found out about that (unsigned)
minute, he would naturally be furious at Galileo for talking him into
approving of the project without warning him of the order. Fantoli (who
accepts that the order was really given, even if in a way not compliant
with the Pope Paul's decision), considers Galileo at fault for not warning
Urban about the incident; I think this assessment is generally accepted
among those who don't think that that document was simply fake.
I see that you note this just below. But consider that it alone would be
enough to account for any amount of Papal fury, quite apart from
Simplicio. And by the time Galileo presented conclusive proof, or the
very next thing to it, that Bellarmine had not given him any such order,
the workings of the Inquisition and the pride of the Pope (which you noted
above) had made it impossible for anyone to back down.
>
> The publication of this book directly led to Galileo's final infamous
> appearance at the Holy Office - commonly known as 'The Inquisition' - in
> 1933.
>
> The source of the instigation of the trail
trial Sorry, I'm a compulsive proofreader
> is not entirely clear - it has
> been suggested that someone - possibly Christopher Scheiner, the Jesuit with
> whom Galileo had fallen out over sunspots - had shown the pope the unsigned
> memo from the 1616 meeting, forbidding Galileo even to describe the
> Copernican system.
>
> Galileo was not initially too concerned about the trail
!
> - it was supposed to
> be only about whether he had broken a Church Order and he had the affidavit
> from Bellarmine stating otherwise. The trial itself, however - possibly
> through malicious manipulation by Cardinals opposed to Galileo - quickly
> took on the wider agenda of the whole concept of heliocentralism being
> heretical and Galileo was finally condemned by the Holy Office as
> "vehemently suspected of heresy."
Interesintg. I'm not sure I buy this account. But on reflection, it looks
more reasonable than I thought.
> The choice of words was technically
> indefensible, as Copernicanism had never been declared heretical by either
> the ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium of the Church who were the only
> ones with the power to do so; three of the ten investigating Cardinals
> refused to sign the verdict.
>
>...
> Torture and Imprisonment
> -----------------------------------
> Most historians agree that Galileo was never subjected to any actual torture
> though there is some disagreement as to whether he would have been tortured
> if he had refused to recant.
I mention here as background that Fantoli, writing with the imprimatur at
least of influential Jesuits, says that torture would have been proper in
the case of non-cooperation. Further, that after the formal condemnation
at the end of the trial, any backsliding by Galileo would have *required*
burning him at the stake. Just sayin' background; I think your present
treatment is judicious and is doubtless best left as is.
>
> The official order by Pope Urban for Galileo's trail explicitly stated that
> he "should be questioned as to his intentions and that he should be menaced
> with torture,"
>
> Some historians, generally sympathetic to the Catholic Church, claim that
> these words and the showing of torture instruments to Galileo were a mere
> formality and that the Holy Office did not even have power to apply torture
> in this case but these claims seem tenuous at best.
>
> What cannot be overlooked is that just 33 years previously, Giordano Bruno
> had been burned at the stake for his heresy. Whilst Bruno was well known for
> his scientific ideas - particularly the concept of multiple universes - he
> was burned at the stake for his heretical teachings,
You might note the importance of Bruno's refusal to cooperate
satisfactorily. Fantoli makes a point of this, and I think there's a valid
point -- not a justification of burning people, obviously -- that Galileo
was in no danger of burning *if* he didn't decide to be a Brechtian hero.
> not for his scientific
> beliefs; nevertheless, Galileo would have been well aware of the Church's
> capacity for taking punishment for heresy to the extreme.
>
>...
My compliments on the rest of the section. I can't really work up a
quibble.
>
> During this period, notwithstanding the ban on further writings, he did
> produce a number of works including "Two New Sciences" which is regarded one
> of his finest works, and realised the idea for which he is almost as
> popularly famous as his work on the telescope - the application of the
> pendulum to clocks.
Well, he did have to get the manuscript smuggled out to Holland to get
around the ban on publication of everything he might ever write; but once
it was published, everyone seems to have winked at the importation of the
book, which sold out in no time.
>
> Aftermath
> -----------------------
> Galileo was reburied on sacred ground at Santa Croce in 1737. He was
> formally rehabilitated in 1741, when Pope Benedict XIV authorized the
> publication of Galileo's complete scientific works (a censored edition had
> been published in 1718), and in 1758 the general prohibition against
> heliocentrism was removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
The multi-stage process of erasing all the black marks took till
1830-something. It was an amazingly tortuous process. Big deal, though
some mention of the 19th-century date might be a good defensive move. I
can look up the details if necessary.
>
>
> The Church Apologises
> --------------------------------
>...
Again, your treatment is almost quibble-proof, IMO. But you might want to
look at Coyne's on-line essay to see how the Church's recantation could
have been even bolder.
<gasp> that was long. And my software doesn't seem to have killed it in
midstream!
Hope it's useful, in spite of the verbosity, and the abrasiveness in the
middle part.
Even if it's of little use, I learned several things in doing it, so it's
not a waste!
David Wilson
talk.origins "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> attracted much discussion.
>
> It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> controversy. ...
Unfortunately, you haven't even removed one of the more egregious errors
which Dan Drake has already pointed out to you; namely:
> ... But Galileo only intensified his campaign to get the
> Church to accept Copernicanism as an irrefutable truth. ...
I'm afraid this is poppycock. As far as I am aware there is not a shred
of evidence in any primary source to justify the claim that Galileo
ever indulged in a "campaign to get the Church to accept Copernicanism as
an irrefutable truth." On the other hand, there is abundant evidence
in his letters and essays to indicate that what he was actually trying to
do in the years 1615 and early 1616 was to persuade the Church _not_ to do
what it eventually _did in fact do_---that is, _officially_ pronounce
Copernicanism to be _false_ and _contrary to scripture_.
This is not just my opinion, but is held by every single reputable
Galileo scholar whose works I have ever read (e.g. Michael Sharrat,
_Galileo_, pp.110-116, Maurice Finocchiaro, _The Galileo affair_, p.29,
Stillman Drake, _Galileo_, p.56).
There is every indication from Galileo's writings and behaviour that he
would have been quite content to live with the Church's position on
Copernicanism as it stood in 1610, the year when he first published
tentative support for Copernicanism in _The Starry Messenger_. At that
time the Church had made _no_ official pronouncement at all on the status
of Copernicanism, and Galileo had no reason either to believe or to wish
that it would do so.
And neither was it _Galileo_ who first raised the issue of scripture in
relation to Copernicanism, but rather a small, noisy, and sometimes
unprincipled, group of philosophers and clerics. And it was _they_,
_not_ Galileo, who were mainly responsible for dragging the hierarchy of
the Church into the dispute.
> ... [snip] ...
> In 1613, Father Nicolo Lorini, a
> professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, inveighed against the new
> astronomy although he was quickly rebuked for this. ...
This is inaccurate. In November 1612 Lorini wrote to inform Galileo that
any rumours he might have heard about Lorini having indulged in philosophical
disputes against "anyone" were false. All he had done (he wrote) was to pipe
up in a conversation being conducted by others to observe that the opinion of
"Ipernicus, or whatever his name was" seemed to be contrary to scripture.
There is no evidence I know of that he was _ever_ rebuked, either for this
or any of his later machinations against Galileo. If you know of any such
evidence I would be very keen to be informed of it.
> Galileo felt that he had to answer these theological objections that the new
> science contradicted certain passages of Scripture. There was, for example,
> Joshua's command that the sun stand still and Psalms 92 ("He has made the
> world firm, not to be moved.") and 103 ("You fixed the earth upon its
> foundation, not to be moved forever."), not to mention the famous verse in
> Ecclesiastes. These are not obscure passages, and their literal sense would
> obviously have to be abandoned if the Copernican system were true.
>
> In late 1613, Galileo addressed this problem in his famous Letter to
> Castelli. ...
This is misleading. Before 1613 there had been two scripturally motivated
_written_ attacks on the contents of Galileo's _Starry Messenger_, one by
Lodovico delle Colombe, which started circulating in late 1610 or early
1611, and one by Francesco Sizzi, which was published in the first half
of 1611. Sizzi's scriptural arguments were not directed against
Copernicanism specifically, but Colombe's certainly were. Neither Sizzi
nor Colombe were any more theologians than Galileo was, and he ignored both
of them, just as he also did Lorini's outburst. In fact, he did not start
writing down his views on the scripturally motivated attacks on Copernicanism
until late 1613, when they started to become more dangerous.
Galileo's letter to Castelli was prompted by a more alarming incident which
occurred in December 1613. Cosimo Boscaglia, a professional philosopher
(but again no more a theologian than Galileo), made a scripturally motivated
attack on Copernicanism at a breakfast gathering of members of the Tuscan
royal family with assorted intellectuals, including one of Galileo's former
pupil's, Benedetto Castelli. Since the Grand Duke was Galileo's patron, the
prospect that any of the Duke's family might be persuaded to doubt Galileo's
religious orthodoxy is not something that he could very well have remained
indifferent to.
Galileo's response, however, was quite circumspect. Castelli claimed
to have convinced those present at the breakfast (with the probable
exception of Boscaglia himself) that Boscaglia's arguments were specious,
so there wasn't much point in Galileo's kicking up any more fuss about it,
and he didn't do so. What he _did_ do, however, was write a _private letter_
to Castelli, outlining his views on how apparent conflicts between scripture
and potentially demonstrable physical propositions should be handled.
At first sight this appears to have been a fairly shrewd move on Galileo's
part. At the time, it was apparently a common practice, which Galileo
would no doubt have been aware of, for such letters to be copied and
circulated among friends and acquaintances, and Castelli did in fact do this.
So in this way Galileo was able to supply his friends and supporters with
strong counterarguments to the scripturally motivated objections to
Copernicanism, but without publishing them openly, and thereby greatly
increasing the risk of a hostile reaction from the Church hierarchy.
Thus, for instance, when Galileo later heard that Lorini had sent a copy of
the letter to Rome, with the apparent intention of stirring up trouble, he was
able to protest (somewhat disingenuously) to one of his well-placed friends,
Monsignor Piero Dini, that it was "a private letter, written over a year ago
to my friend, to be read only by him," but who had "let it be copied without
my knowledge."
Nevertheless, in the long run, the letter to Castelli may have done Galileo
more harm than good. Without it, his enemies might never have become
sufficiently brazen to denounce him to the Inquisition, because malicious
accusation of heresy was considered a serious crime.
Note also that the account of Joshua's command for the sun to stand still
was the _only_ passage of scripture which was _specifically_ dealt with
in the letter to Castelli (or in the one to the Grand Duchess Christina, for
that matter), and Galileo did not propose anything other than a _strict
literal_ interpretation of the passage. He argued quite convincingly
that the hybrid Aristotelian-Ptolemaic geocentrism favoured by his
opponents was not at all consistent with such an interpretation, and
presented a speculative, but plausible, version of the heliocentric system
which _was_ consistent with it.
>
> 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
> more acceptable? ...
Unfortunately, it still contains numerous inaccuracies, exaggerations or
instances of tendentious language, as well as factoids for which evidence (as
far as I know) is lacking. I counted 24 instances of things which, in my
opinion, fell into one of these categories. Of these, 19 appeared to me to
be biased in a direction favourable to the Church or unfavourable to Galileo,
2 biased in the opposite direction, and the remaining 3 appeared to me to
be reasonably neutral. If I get time I will post another article to
list those which I have not already dealt with above.
>
> 3) I have pulled the various points from a wide range of sources ...
>
This may be part of the problem. As you are obviously aware, inaccurate
accounts of the Galileo abound, especially on the web. And _those
written by apologists for the Church_ tend to be _just_ as inaccurate as
those written by its arch-critics. In trying to rebut the latter you
appear to have relied much too heavily on the former. You need to do
a lot more reading of the better respected scholars of Galileo.
> ... which to
> some extent duplicate each other and this makes notation cumbersome. I'd
> appreciate any suggestions on how I should handle this, ...
One thing you should do before proceeding is read Galileo's letters to
Castelli and the Grand Duchess Christina. I presume you have not done
this because you do seem willing to respond positively to constructive
criticism and and solid evidence, but I find it difficult to believe that
anyone who has actually read these letters with an open mind would accuse
Galileo of mounting a "campaign to get the Church to accept Copernicanism
as an irrefutable truth".
Stillman Drake's translation of both letters are available on-line at
the URLs
<http://www.disf.org/en/documentation/03-Galileo_PBCastelli.asp> and
<http://www.disf.org/en/documentation/03-Galileo_Cristina.asp>.
If you can read Italian and would prefer the originals you can find them at:
<http://www.disf.org/Documentazione/82.asp> and
<http://www.disf.org/Documentazione/81.asp>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Wilson
SPAMMERS_fingers@WILL_BE_fwi_PROSECUTED_.net.au
(Remove underlines and upper case letters to obtain my email address.
Dan Drake
wrote:
> In November 1612 Lorini wrote to inform Galileo that
> any rumours he might have heard about Lorini having indulged in philosophical
> disputes against "anyone" were false. All he had done (he wrote) was to pipe
> up in a conversation being conducted by others to observe that the opinion of
> "Ipernicus, or whatever his name was" seemed to be contrary to scripture.
>
Thanks for the detailed treatment of these issues. And I'd fogotten about
Ipernicus -- a fine forerunner of the long tradition (that piece in
catholiceducation still annoys me every time I think of it, and it's not
alone) of writing as an expert on things one hasn't bothered to read. A
custom more honoured in the breach than in th'observance.
alwaysaskingquestions
Thanks, Dan.
I've been very busy myself and I want to take time to absorb the points
you've made, hopefully I'll get back on them this week.
.
alwaysaskingquestions
As I've just said to Dan Drake, thanks for a very detailed contribution. I
obviously have a fair bit more work to do on this to get it to a much more
neutral account.
Cory Albrecht
Who the frell are you responding to? What the heck did they say?
Please learn how to quote properly when you respond to somebody else's post.
Dan Drake
[Deliberately, out of sheer spite, not clipping the quoted part properly.]
Sheesh. It was addressed, though publicly, to a specific person as part of
an ongoing thread that for the moment had gone idle. The intended main
target knew what was involved, as did everyone else who, in following the
thread, had seen the fantastically long post in question. Sorry if your
news server has a short retention time or dropped the preceding post
entirely, but it's not, you know, alwaysasking's fault.
Now comes your lecture on how he ought to have responded by e-mail. In
advance, I'll provide my reply: BS.
Incidentally it's surprising that anyone who has been on newsgroups as
long as you obviously have been would be unaware that there's a newsgroup
archiving facility run by a company called Google (it's a new company, not
even in business in the old Usenet days), and if you actually cared about
what the context was, you could find the whole thread there.
Yours for civility and proper use of the Usenet^H^H^H^H^H^H sorry,
Internet, and with apology for feeding an exceptionally silly troll,
Cory Albrecht
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:58:05 UTC, Cory Albrecht
> <coryalbr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> alwaysaskingquestions wrote, On 2007/04/15 14:38:
>>> Thanks, Dan.
>>>
>>> I've been very busy myself and I want to take time to absorb the points
>>> you've made, hopefully I'll get back on them this week.
>>> .
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Who the frell are you responding to? What the heck did they say?
>>
>> Please learn how to quote properly when you respond to somebody else's post.
>
> [Deliberately, out of sheer spite, not clipping the quoted part properly.]
>
> Sheesh. It was addressed, though publicly, to a specific person as part of
> an ongoing thread that for the moment had gone idle. The intended main
> target knew what was involved, as did everyone else who, in following the
> thread, had seen the fantastically long post in question. Sorry if your
> news server has a short retention time or dropped the preceding post
> entirely, but it's not, you know, alwaysasking's fault.
>
> Now comes your lecture on how he ought to have responded by e-mail. In
> advance, I'll provide my reply: BS.
Sorry to disappoint you then., but I had no intention of making such a
lecture. In fact "reply by email" never occurred to me, since
talk.origins has a lot of OT posts.
<sarcasm>Besides, that lecture I usually deliver over private
email.</sarcasm>
> Incidentally it's surprising that anyone who has been on newsgroups as
> long as you obviously have been would be unaware that there's a newsgroup
> archiving facility run by a company called Google (it's a new company, not
> even in business in the old Usenet days), and if you actually cared about
> what the context was, you could find the whole thread there.
Yeah, I know about Google's archive. So? Why should I, when reading a
newsgroup with Thunderbird (or any other news client, for that matter)
have to waste my time by going to Google just to find out the context of
somebody's post that did not include any quotes or other indicator to
whom they were responding?
You obviously went and looked at my posting profile on Google to figure
out how long I've been at this. That's means I have at least some idea
of netiquette. Netiquette includes "quote some of what you're replying
to to and indicate who said it so others know what is going on". The
fact that you've been using that email address on USENET at least as
long as I have been using this one would hopefully mean that you know as
much about netiquette as I, if not more.
Slam me for abrasiveness or rudeness all you want, but you know as well
as I that there's nothing wrong with what I complained about.
alwaysaskingquestions
"Cory Albrecht" <coryalbr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d6mdf4x...@bytor.fenris.cjb.net...
Ok, you prefer this:
"Dan Drake" <d...@dandrake.com> wrote in message
news:vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-52GrkslpD1t9@localhost...
Thanks, Dan.
I've been very busy myself and I want to take time to absorb the points
you've made, hopefully I'll get back on them this week.
(Apologies to everybody else for wasting bandwidth)
Dan Drake
<coryalbr...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Why should I, when reading a
> newsgroup with Thunderbird (or any other news client, for that matter)
> have to waste my time by going to Google just to find out the context of
> somebody's post that did not include any quotes or other indicator to
> whom they were responding?
Well, I never said you *had* to. You could ignore it. IPOF, it is poor
etiquette to include so much of a message (a long one, covering a lot of
points, such as this clearly was) that someone completely ignorant of the
context could get a satisfactory idea of what had been said.
>
> You obviously went and looked at my posting profile on Google to figure
> out how long I've been at this. That's means I have at least some idea
> of netiquette.
Well, this is fun. Talk about a shot at a venture when one didn't know one
was shooting.
No, in fact, I merely inferred that someone giving a rather ill-founded
gratuitous bit of instruction on Netiquette was at least claiming to be
experienced in the matter; hence all the old-timer talk in my post. It was
rather a rude joke, since for all I knew I might be addressing someone who
discovered newsgroups quite recently.
> ...
> Slam me for abrasiveness or rudeness all you want, but you know as well
> as I that there's nothing wrong with what I complained about.
>
Ah what we knew or whould have known: a vexed question in the law, and no
less so in real life.
David Wilson
talk.origins I wrote:
> In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net> on March 25th in
> talk.origins "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> > Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> > attracted much discussion.
> >
> > It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> > have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> > new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> > by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> > controversy. ... [snip and rearrange]
> > 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
> > more acceptable? ...
>
> Unfortunately, it still contains numerous inaccuracies, exaggerations or
> instances of tendentious language, well as factoids for which evidence (as
> far as I know) is lacking. ... [snip] ....
> .... If I get time I will post another
> article to list those which I have not already dealt with above.
Dan Drake has now already dealt with many of them in another of his excellent
articles at:
<http://groups.google.com.au/group/talk.origins/msg/a2474f51d7ce3d5e>
There are a few items in the preceding referenced article of mine which require
qualification or correction, which I provide below.
> ... [snip] ....
>
> And neither was it _Galileo_ who first raised the issue of scripture in
> relation to Copernicanism, but rather a small, noisy, and sometimes
> unprincipled, group of philosophers and clerics. ....
>
This was poorly worded. I did not mean to suggest that these opponents of
Galileo's were the very first to raise any scriptural objections to
Copernicanism, merely that they had been raising the issue of scripture in
their attacks on Galileo long before he found it necessary to reply to them.
In fact, Tycho Brahe, Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther had all raised
scriptural objections to Copernicanism well before Galileo began discussing
it; but since they were all Protestants, he probably wouldn't have been much
concerned about them.
However, there were also (at least) two Catholic theologians who had written on
the application of scriptural interpretation to Copernicanism. One of these,
Giovanni Maria Tolosani, writing between the years 1544 and 1547, quite
soon afer Copernicus's book had been published, had strongly opposed it, while
the other, Diego de Zuńiga, in a work published in 1584, had supported it.
Galileo was informed of Zuńiga's work by Cardinal Conti in 1612. Tolosani's,
however, doesn't seem to have been mentioned by any of the participants in the
Galileo affair.
> ... , including one of Galileo's former
> pupil's, Benedetto Castelli. ....
>
Eeek! I have been struck by the dreaded non-possessive plural apostrophe
disease.
>
> .... Castelli claimed
> to have convinced those present at the breakfast (with the probable
> exception of Boscaglia himself) ....
>
And the _possible_ exception of the Dowager Grand Duchess Christina. In
his letter describing the incident, Castelli relates that "Only her Ladyship
contradicted me, but in such a way that I thought she was doing it only to
hear me."
> ... [snip] ...
> Stillman Drake's translation of both letters are available on-line at
> the URLs
> <http://www.disf.org/en/documentation/03-Galileo_PBCastelli.asp> and
> <http://www.disf.org/en/documentation/03-Galileo_Cristina.asp>.
>
I was mistaken about the first of these (the letter to Castelli) being a
translation of Stillman Drake's. It is in fact Maurice Finocchiaro's
translation, as given in _The Galileo Affair_, pp. 49-54 (with one small
ellipsis). The web page itself cites a URL,
<http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/lettercastelli.html>,
at the web site of the School of Law at the University of Missouri - Kansas
City, as its source for the translation. However, the web page at that URL
contains only a brief excerpt from a _completely different_ translation.
> >
> > 3) I have pulled the various points from a wide range of sources ...
> >
>
> This may be part of the problem. ...
I appear to have been mistaken on this point as well. I shall have some
further things to say about it in another article.
David Wilson
talk.origins "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> A few days ago, I posted a proposed FAQ on the relationship between the
> Catholic Church and Science which included a section on Galileo that
> attracted much discussion.
>
> It seems to me that if there is to be such a FAQ that it would be better to
> have a separate one specifically relating to Galileo and I have produced a
> new draft of this below. Hopefully, I have covered most of the points raised
> by other posters without introducing too many new errors or points of
> controversy.
>
> A few general points:
>
> 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this draft
> more acceptable? ...
No. In fact it's completely _unacceptable_ for a reason entirely different
from any of the others so far raised.
As anyone can easily verify, large gobs of your article on Galileo, totalling
(by my estimate) somewhere between one-third and one-half of the whole thing
have simply been copied verbatim, without attribution, from an article
entitled "The Galileo Affair", by one George Sim Johnston. Copies of Johnston's
article have been reproduced at several sites on the web. Here is one URL
where a copy can be found:
<http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/GalileoAffair.html>.
I'm afraid that sort of thing is considered a very naughty practice in
scholarly circles. It's called "plagiarism". I'm also afraid that having
been detected indulging in that practice, you should, in my opinion, be
disqualified from having _any_ of your articles accepted for inclusion on the
talk.origins website for quite a long time.
alwaysaskingquestions
"David Wilson" <see_sig@for_my.address> wrote in message
news:200704212210...@fwi.net.au...
> In article <56ob45F...@mid.individual.net> on March 25th in
> talk.origins "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
[...]
>> 1) Some posters thought that my first draft was far from NPOV, is this
>> draft
>> more acceptable? ...
>
> No. In fact it's completely _unacceptable_ for a reason entirely different
> from any of the others so far raised.
>
> As anyone can easily verify, large gobs of your article on Galileo,
> totalling
> (by my estimate) somewhere between one-third and one-half of the whole
> thing
> have simply been copied verbatim, without attribution, from an article
> entitled "The Galileo Affair", by one George Sim Johnston. Copies of
> Johnston's
> article have been reproduced at several sites on the web. Here is one URL
> where a copy can be found:
> <http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/GalileoAffair.html>.
>
> I'm afraid that sort of thing is considered a very naughty practice in
> scholarly circles. It's called "plagiarism". I'm also afraid that having
> been detected indulging in that practice, you should, in my opinion, be
> disqualified from having _any_ of your articles accepted for inclusion on
> the
> talk.origins website for quite a long time.
I'm afraid that jumping in with size 12 boots and making serious allegations
like that without doing your homework is considered a very naughty practice
in both scholarly and non-scholarly circles.
You may not have noticed the "Take 2" part of the title of this thread. It
arose out of a previous outline FAQ that I had drafted in which I raised the
very article you are talking about and had a lengthy discussion on it with
Dan Drake.
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-k1ioCYrSLndk@localhost
I can understand you not having picked up on that as you weren't involved in
the original discussion but I cannot understand how you can make such
vicious accusations when, in the introduction to this thread, I specifically
said:
"I have pulled the various points from a wide range of sources which to
some extent duplicate each other and this makes notation cumbersome. I'd
appreciate any suggestions on how I should handle this, I'm thinking of
maybe just a 'further reading' list at the end covering both online and
printed sources; suggestions for items to include on this are welcome."
alwaysaskingquestions
> You may not have noticed the "Take 2" part of the title of this thread. It
> arose out of a previous outline FAQ that I had drafted in which I raised
> the very article you are talking about and had a lengthy discussion on it
> with Dan Drake.
> http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-k1ioCYrSLndk@localhost
>
I'm afraid that I struggle a bit with Google Groups refernces - that link
actually takes you to Dan Drake's original post, I raised the article in a
reply to that message which can be found here:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/7225219bd080d9b2
alwaysaskingquestions
> <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm trying to get back to this to get a third draft done. Once again, thanks
for such a detailed response, even if it means I have another load of work
to do :)
I'm snipping most of your post because I have no issue with most of your
points and suggestions except that I don't think the level of detail is
appropriate on things like Tycho - of course, where my condensed version has
the wrong 'flavour' to it, I will adjust accordingly.
A few points I would like your further advice on.
> Fantoli, Annibale (2003). Galileo - For Copernicanism and the Church,
> third English edition. Vatican Observatory Publications. ISBN
> 88-209-7427-4
> [Citation from Wikipedia]
>
> This is a book that will not be accused of anti-Catholic bias! Nor of
> anti-Jesuit bias, not quite the same thing, given that it was translated
> by George Coyne, SJ. ("Yeah, and what about Dominicans?" I take no
> position.) I'm not really asking anyone to delve into a book that's
> obscure and hundreds of pages long, but it gives a detailed account of the
> business that is well supported by evidence (and massively footnoted) and
> cuts little slack for the Church, beyond recognizing where its hand was
> forced by its own laws.
I don't really have an appetite for something that that's "obscure and
hundreds of pages long", I'll see if I can find any useful extracts online
or can you point me to any particularly relevant parts that aren't
adequately covered in my current summary?
> Oh, speaking of Fr. Coyne,
> http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje36/text05p.htm
> I read it a long time ago & don't remember it clearly, but I recall it as
> a well-informed critique of the 1990s clearing of Galileo not going far
> enough in taking on the Church's errors.
Interesting, I don't want to expand that section much more, but maybe a
brief reference to Fr. Coyne's views would be warranted.
[...]
>> At this point Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, entered the drama. Bellarmine
>> was
>> one of the most important theologians of the Catholic Reformation and has
>> been described as "an expansive, gentle man who possessed the sort of
>> meekness and good humor that is the product of a lifetime of ascetical
>> struggle."
>
> I fear that your "meekness and good humor", though they may actually be
> true, will reduce your credibility in talking about the man who in 1600
> had a man burned alive at the stake for refusing to cooperate. (Note I
> didn't use Bruno's name or say anything about heliocentrism there. The
> stake is enough.) On a tactical basis at least, it may be good to
> reconsider this.
I didn't realise Bellarmine was an Inquisitor in the Bruno affair, that
certainly has to be mentioned.
I've found this account which suggests that Bellarmine's handling of Galileo
was a bit murkier than generally presented - is the underlying tone in him
writing to the Chief Inquisitor at Padua a fair indication of him being more
anti-Galileo than is usually suggested, or do you think it was more a case
of Bellarmine being scrupulous in carrying out his duties?
http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/galileogalilei.html
"Cardinal Bellarmine was a leading theologian in the Catholic Church and the
Guardian of Orthodoxy. He had been one of the Inquisitors who had tried
Giordano Bruno, for heretical views on the Immaculate Conception and other
conflicting philosophies. Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. Bellarmine
did not want another such case on his hands, as Bruno had also been a
supporter of Copernicus. So, despite the opinions of the Jesuits he wrote to
the Chief Inquisitor at Padua to ask if Galileo's name had been mentioned in
the recent case of an Aristotelian philosopher who had aroused Church
opposition for his denial of the immortality of the soul. Galileo had no
involvement in the case."
I'd also appreciate your comments on the following paragraph on the same
website about the university professors, particularly Lodovico delle
Colombe:
"The Church was not the only body which Galileo had to fear. There were also
enemies working against him amongst the university professors, whose
reputations and occupations depended on the continuation of Aristotelian
philosophies. There is evidence that one man in particular, Lodovico delle
Colombe was behind the outbursts that certain friars were soon to make on
Galileo."
[..]
In regard to your pointing out grammatical/spelling errors - keep it up! I'm
a stickler for grammar, punctuation and spelling but, like most people, find
them easier to spot when proofreading other people's writings rather than my
own.
David Wilson
talk.origins "alwaysaskingquestions" <alwaysaski...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> in both scholarly and non-scholarly circles. ...
>
In light of your reply, it would appear that the plagiarism in your
essay stemmed from ignorance rather than a malicious intent to deceive.
I should have allowed for that possibility and worded my preceding
article less bluntly. I apologise for not having done so.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of universities, colleges and
other educational institutions in the English speaking world which have
published guidelines and codes of conduct on what they consider to be
acceptable practice in the handling of sources in papers, reports and other
documents. Every one of these I have ever seen has included a paragraph or
two which quite clearly explains that what you did with Johnston's article in
your 'Galileo - take 2' essay constitutes an instance of plagiarism and is
regarded as completely unacceptable.
Here are some instances from four of the most prestigious universities in
England and the US:
Cambridge:
<http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/current/submitting/plagiarism.html>
Oxford:
<http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/epsc/plagiarism/index.shtml>
<http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/epsc/plagiarism/plagfaqs.shtml>
John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard:
<http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/registrar/academic code.pdf>
Yale:
<http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/academics/integrity_plagiarism.html>
Note that the problem is _not_ merely that you relied on Johnston's article
for much of your essay, but that you did so _without proper attribution_.
In particular, when a source is being quoted verbatim, proper attribution
consists of using some quotation convention (e.g. quotation marks, italics
or indented text) to clearly distinguish the words of the quoted text from
those of the person quoting them, and a clear and unambiguous attribution
of _that specific quotation_ to its proper source. A vague acknowledgement
at the end of one's essay that one has merely "pulled the various points from
a wide range of sources" simply doesn't come anywhere near making the grade
as a proper attribution. The articles at the links I have given above all
make this point quite clearly.
> You may not have noticed the "Take 2" part of the title of this thread. It
> arose out of a previous outline FAQ that I had drafted in which I raised the
> very article you are talking about and had a lengthy discussion on it with
> Dan Drake.
>[http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=vhIsdqY67dTD-pn2-k1ioCYrSLndk@localhost
-- correct link, as given in a later article, substituted for an erroneous
one.]
I haven't the foggiest idea why you think this is relevant. Here is all
you had to say when you provided your link to the article:
(from <http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/7225219bd080d9b2>)
" ... [snip material irrelevant to point at issue] ...
As you are obviously knowledgable on the Galileo
affair, can I ask you to have a look at this:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0005.html
It seems to me a pretty fair summary of the actual incident - though
maybe playing down the torture threat too much - and Pope John Paul
II's apology but I would value your comments on it."
All I see here is a request for an opinion on the quality of Johnston's
article. I see no acknowledgement that you were going to lard a subsequent
essay with lengthy, unattributed, verbatim quotes from it. Even if you _had_
given such an acknowledgement, it still would not absolve you from the
responsibility of including the proper attributions _in the essay
where you actually quote from the article_.
At best this suggests that your subsequent plagiarism stemmed from
ignorance rather than a malicious intent to deceive, which, as I acknowledge
above, I should have initially assumed anyway. However, as the FAQ at the
second of the links I have given above makes clear, actions which would be
regarded as plagiarism if done with malicious intent are _still_ regarded
as plagiarism _even if done without it_, and are still regarded as completely
unacceptable behaviour. To quote from that faq:
"However, these excuses [viz. ignorance, or carelesness] offer no
protection against a charge of plagiarism. Even in cases where the
plagiarism is found to have been unintentional, there may still be a
penalty. It is your responsibility to find out the prevailing
referencing conventions in your discipline, to take adequate notes,
and to avoid close paraphrasing."
When there are reasonable grounds for supposing that an instance of plagiarism
is unintentional, I suspect most institutions would try to correct the
perpetrator's behaviour through education, rather than severe punishment.
However I doubt that a plea of ignorance or carelessness would be accepted
for a second instance from the same perpetrator, once he or she had been
warned.
> I can understand you not having picked up on that as you weren't involved in
> the original discussion ...
In fact I _did_ read parts of that subthread, _including_ the copy of
Johnston's article that you had linked to. I had simply forgotten about it
until you pointed out that it was a duplicate of the one I later stumbled
across. But even if I _had_ remembered it, I'm not sure that it would have
made much difference. It would simply never have occurred to me that you had
included unattributed vertabim quotations in your essay from an article you
had previously given a link to, so I might not even have twigged to the fact
that it _was_ a duplicate of the one I stumbled across.
It is true that _if_ I had remembered your link, and noticed that it was
in fact to a copy of Johnston's article, it might have alerted me to the
possibility that your plagiarism was unintentional. In that case, I
might have been prompted to adopt the more conciliatory tone that I
ought to have done in any case.
>
> ... [snip rest of aaq's post] ....
>
In my preceding post, <200704212210...@fwi.net.au>, I wrote:
"I'm also afraid that having been detected indulging in that practice
[viz. plagiarism], you should, in my opinion, be disqualified from
having _any_ of your articles accepted for inclusion on the
talk.origins website for quite a long time."
In the light of your reply I am prepared soften this stance a little.
If you are prepared to educate yourself about what constitutes plagiarism,
acknowledge that what you did in your essay 'Galileo - Take 2' _was in fact_
plagiarism (though unintentional), and resolve _never_ to do it again, I
will remove my objection to any article of yours being included on the
talk.origins website. Until you do that, however, my objection will stand.
alwaysaskingquestions
"David Wilson" see_sig@for_my.address wrote in message
[...]
> There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of universities, colleges and
> other educational institutions in the English speaking world which have
> published guidelines and codes of conduct on what they consider to be
> acceptable practice in the handling of sources in papers, reports and
> other
> documents. Every one of these I have ever seen has included a paragraph
> or
> two which quite clearly explains that what you did with Johnston's article
> in
> your 'Galileo - take 2' essay constitutes an instance of plagiarism and is
> regarded as completely unacceptable.
>
> Here are some instances from four of the most prestigious universities in
> England and the US:
>
> Cambridge:
> http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/current/submitting/plagiarism.html
Which, for example, defines plagiarism as "the unacknowledged use of the
work of others as if this were your own original work".
I did not try to pass this off as original work - whilst the specific
sources have not been cited *in this draft*, I explicitly said that it has
been drawn from a range of sources, that it had yet to be notated, that I
intended to do so but wanted some advice on the best way of doing so. By the
way, if it this article does get to a stage where it is fit for presentation
as a FAQ, as well as citation of the various sources used it will include
acknowledgement of the valuable contributions and corrections made by a
number of contributors to the discussion, particularly Dan Drake but also
yourself for correcting my misunderstanding of the degree to which Galileo
pushed his ideas onto the Church.
If you feel I was wrong not to include some form of notation *in this
draft*, that is a reasonable point but please stop accusing me of plagiarism
unintended or otherwise.
> Note that the problem is _not_ merely that you relied on Johnston's
> article
> for much of your essay, but that you did so _without proper attribution_.
> In particular, when a source is being quoted verbatim, proper attribution
> consists of using some quotation convention (e.g. quotation marks, italics
> or indented text) to clearly distinguish the words of the quoted text from
> those of the person quoting them, and a clear and unambiguous attribution
> of _that specific quotation_ to its proper source.
One of the problems - though I did not point this out at the time - is that
like most sensible posters on Usenet, I stick to plain text which means that
things like italicised text aren't available (though quotation marks
obviously are) and indentation works very badly which is part of the reason
why I used the word 'cumbersome' when talking of notation. This will be less
of an issue if this ever gets to a FAQ stage as it will be presented using
HTML which will allow a much clearer structure for the various quotations
and references..
> A vague acknowledgement
> at the end of one's essay
It wasn't at the end of the essay, it was at the beginning. That is not a
pedantic point, it's an important one - I was explicitly warning readers *in
advance* that this is not all my own work.
> In the light of your reply I am prepared soften this stance a little.
How gracious of you !
> If you are prepared to educate yourself about what constitutes plagiarism,
I don't need to educate myself, I know what plagiarism is. I also fully
appreciate the need for proper notation - you might find it worthwhile to
take a further step back to the original article which sparked the separate
Galileo article, a post by me on "The Catholic Curch and Science - Proposed
FAQ (long)" which was extensively notated - note, I've left Church misspelt
as in the original thread in case you want to look up the thread.
> acknowledge that what you did in your essay 'Galileo - Take 2' _was in
> fact_
> plagiarism (though unintentional),
It was not plagiarism. I put forward a *work-in-progress* for deate and
discussion, not a *finished* article. I can be criticised for not including
citations at that stage and will readily accept such criticism but I totally
reject your accusation of plagiarism.
> and resolve _never_ to do it again,
Do you want sackcloth and ashes whilst I'm at it ?
> I will remove my objection to any article of yours being included on the
> talk.origins website. Until you do that, however, my objection will
> stand.
That's your prerogative. I am asssuming, however, that those responsible for
deciding on whether something is fit and appropriate for a FAQ on TO will
make their judgement on a final article, not on a work-in- progress.
John Wilkins
> "David Wilson" see_sig@for_my.address wrote in message
> news:200704251511...@fwi.net.au...
...
> > In the light of your reply I am prepared soften this stance a little.
>
> How gracious of you !
>
> > If you are prepared to educate yourself about what constitutes plagiarism,
>
> I don't need to educate myself, I know what plagiarism is. I also fully
> appreciate the need for proper notation - you might find it worthwhile to
> take a further step back to the original article which sparked the separate
> Galileo article, a post by me on "The Catholic Curch and Science - Proposed
> FAQ (long)" which was extensively notated - note, I've left Church misspelt
> as in the original thread in case you want to look up the thread.
>
> > acknowledge that what you did in your essay 'Galileo - Take 2' _was in
> > fact_
> > plagiarism (though unintentional),
>
> It was not plagiarism. I put forward a *work-in-progress* for deate and
> discussion, not a *finished* article. I can be criticised for not including
> citations at that stage and will readily accept such criticism but I totally
> reject your accusation of plagiarism.
>
> > and resolve _never_ to do it again,
>
> Do you want sackcloth and ashes whilst I'm at it ?
>
> > I will remove my objection to any article of yours being included on the
> > talk.origins website. Until you do that, however, my objection will
> > stand.
>
> That's your prerogative. I am asssuming, however, that those responsible for
> deciding on whether something is fit and appropriate for a FAQ on TO will
> make their judgement on a final article, not on a work-in- progress.
Sackcloth, ashes, *and* flagellation!
David, you are not being reasonable. Sure, as it stood it looked like
plagiarism, but it was clearly not in the context.
Both of you - go forth and sin no more...
--
John S. Wilkins, Impeccable Savior, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
alwaysaskingquestions
"John Wilkins" <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote in message
news:1hx6c94.9rleid1mu3t14N%j.wil...@uq.edu.au...
> alwaysaskingquestions <alwaysaski...@gmail.com> wrote:
>. Sure, as it stood it looked like plagiarism
I accept that, I should have at least included some notes on sources for
anybody coming cold into the discussion.
> Both of you - go forth and sin no more...
You left out the 'Ego te absolvo" bit ;)
John Wilkins
Only those who stand in vicariously say that...
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
David Wilson
talk.origins j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> David, you are not being reasonable. ...
Well, that certainly took the wind out of my sails. But on reflection
I find I have too agree with you. Thanks for the sanity check (or
maybe insanity check?) I apologise to aaq for my heavy handedness.
> ... Sure, as it stood it looked like
> plagiarism, but it was clearly not in the context.
I'm afraid the 12 years I spent in academia in the dim dark past has given
me a very low threshold of tolerance for the copying of other people's work
without proper attribution. Any occurrence of it that I come across is
liable to set me off on a rant. Hopefully, I will handle it more
appropriately next time, but be sure to keep the buckets of cold water
ready, just in case.
> Both of you - go forth and sin no more...
Not even just a teensy-weensy bit of coveting?
alwaysaskingquestions
"David Wilson" <see_sig@for_my.address> wrote in message
> In article <1hx6c94.9rleid1mu3t14N%j.wil...@uq.edu.au> on April 26th in
> talk.origins j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
[...]
> I apologise to aaq for my heavy handedness.
Readily accepted, particularly in view of the invaluable contribution you
made before you got .... distracted, let's call it :)
> I'm afraid the 12 years I spent in academia in the dim dark past has given
> me a very low threshold of tolerance for the copying of other people's
> work
> without proper attribution.
We all have our flash points; I've just been caught up in a different thread
which touched on one of my flas points and allowed myself to get drawn into
an argument that I'd simply have been better ignoring.
[...]