Vorkosigan

that the contrast between science and religion is a false dichotomy.

Rationality and irrationality are always dichotomous. I suppose you mean at this point in the 17th century.

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

Thus making them guilty of cafeteria theology, or at least more guilty than the geocentrists, who had nevertheless been round-earthers. I make that comment because what is deemed literal and what is deemed allegorical is often decided on the principle of "when I like it, it is literal, and when I don't like it, it is allegorical." In fairness, Galileo did argue for a version of Gould's NOMA, that the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go, but that is stating that the Bible is not completely accurate in every respect.

Which explains the Bible-waving by various eminent theologians. (sarcasm) And these were supposed to be the big experts on religion, much more than any laypeople, however pious they may profess themselves.

And as to the preservation of pagan learning in Europe, much of it was NOT preserved, and was only rediscovered when it was transmitted to Europe from the Islamic realms starting in the 1200's or so. The Xian Church never dedicated itself to taking up where the pagans had left off in science and scholarship, otherwise we would be at least a few centuries ahead of where we are now.

lpetrich

As to the early-modern scientists being Xians, they would have to have at least professed it in order to have any career that enabled them to do their researches. In those days, people could get burned at the stake for believing in some belief deemed to be heresy, and during the Reformation and the Wars of Religion,

"cuius regio, eius religio"
"whose region, his religion"

Bede's alleged hordes of nonbelievers had as much chance of existing back then as they would have in present-day Saudi Arabia.

Bede

Ipetrich,

Given that I had a class all about seventeenth century non-beleivers tonight, your timing is pretty bad. Heresy ceased to be a secular crime in England in 1677 but the law had not been used since 1612. Charles II himself was not exactly noted for his piety. In restoration England the chattering classes were famously anti-clerical whereas the Royal Society were largely clerics.

Also, scientists tended to be wealthy people who supported their own interests - they didn't need an academic job (or any other sort). Halley ran into some trouble, admittedly, but Newton's unorthodox beliefs were politely ignored.

Your continuing insistance that only biblical literalism is true Christianity is becoming tedious. It makes me an infidel, for a start.

Vork, a question. At what point do you think it became irrational to be geocentrist? I would say after you had absorbed Kepler's model (that actually improved predictions) it became less reasonable, but not actually irrational until Newton.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

NOGO

Religion will sail serenely on no matter what.
One thing all religions agree on is that there is only one true religion yet they all sail serenely on.

Nonesense!
Just because a Christian speaks that does not make it a Christian arguement. A Christian arguement is one which is based on Christian doctrine.

I suppose that once the Roman empire collapsed everyone instantly turned into barbarians.

NOGO

Galileo argued that the story of Joshua ordering the sun to stand still should not be read literarily.

Christian arguing with Christian.

Of course everybody in those days disagreed with Galileo. Fundies, these days, agree with Galileo.

... and religion sails on serenely.

NOGO

Ptolemy build a mathematical model of the universe which allowed him to predict planetary positions.

That is science.

It was all wrong, you will say, but so is Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics is still used because it can predict things correctly in a limited way. So could the Ptolemaic system.

So if Ptolemy can do science without Christianity then surely brilliant people like Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo can do as much.

The rest is just verbiage.

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Vork, a question. At what point do you think it became irrational to be geocentrist? I would say after you had absorbed Kepler's model (that actually improved predictions) it became less reasonable, but not actually irrational until Newton.

Bede, this question does not do what you think it does. It is irrational to believe in salvific schemes, gods, and teleological theories of history regardless of the Earth's place in the cosmos. Those have no place in science, and rational thought will always oppose them.

To literally answer your question, the resistance to Copernicus had a certain irrational quality to it, because people were so heavily invested in the old idea. I'm sure you're aware of the useful conservative function of such attitudes. For myself, I suspect that the appeal of heliocentrism lay in part its obvious opposition to received wisdom -- always an attractive point for certain personality types -- and its aesthetic appeal. So many mathematicians and people with interest in math fell for it, and they described their discovery with words like "entranced" or "captivated." An additional factor was of course the general uneasiness with the problems of Ptolemaic astronomy, and its top-heavy epicycles. I think in our terms today we would recognize this response, especially in physics, where part of the appeal of theories is neatness or beauty.

Opposition to Copernicus became completely irrational after Kepler, in my view, for he removed the main problem with Copernican astronomy, the use of circles to represent orbits. I forget when the observational data finally became irrevocably available (Flamstead??). But after Kepler Ptolemy was dead, for he depended on circles as much as Copernicus. People often fail to notice that. Kepler also had, in some dim way, understood that the sun was the dynamic center of the solar system and drove it somehow. That was a huge advance over Copernicus. Kepler not only supplied the geometry, he also pointed out the motor.

Let's not forget, as Needham noted, that the Catholic Church taught geocentric astronomy in China into the 19th century, leaving Protestant missionaries to introduce the correct system that century. That was hardly a rational act. It's easy to muddy the waters by criticizing ideologues on the skeptical side, or pointing out the debates within the Church (say, Foscarini vs. Bellarmini). I think it is laudable that people are arriving at more balanced and complex views of this process. But had the Church maintained its temporal power over the centuries, Bede, it is highly doubtful that we would have as rich an understanding of the world as we do today. One need only look at the state of inquiry in religious states today, the attacks on genetic research and biology even by the Church, or the plans of right-wing fundies in the US (I am sure you thank god every day you don't live in the US. Just be aware that those people operate on a today-america-tomorrow-the-world principle. You and I may yet be making common cause).

Vorkosigan

NOGO

Certainly part of the picture but I think that there was more to it than that.
Copernicus started with basic principles which he describes at the begining of his book. He then reconstructed the solar system based on those principles.

1) The observed motion of an object is due to the real motion of the object, the motion of the observer or a combination of the two.

1a) The earth spins on it axis
1b) The earth's axis oscillates (Copernicus erred in this case)
1c) The earth moves in a circular path much like the other planets

2) The stars are much father than the planets and that is why we do not observe any stellar parallax.


The arguement for 1a) is that for Copernicus it was easier to believe that the earth spun than to believe that the entire universe spun in 24 hours. 1b) accounts for the fact that observed planets change latitude. 1c) accounts for retrogression. What it all comes down to is to determine which motion or part of a motion is due to the observer and which is real. This is Copernicus' goal. It was not to put the sun in the centre because the sun is a God or some other mysterious reason. Actually his centre was not on the sun at all, so heliocentric is a wrong term it should be heliostatic.

Planetary Retrogression
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn retrogress, that is, they stop, move backward for a while and then continue back on their original path. Ptolemy does not try to explain this motion; he just modelled it. Copernicus' explanation is plausible and elegant but requires 1c) and 2) to work. Planet retrogression can be explained as simple parallax. The planet is observed to move (change direction) when in reality it is due to the motion of the observer.

Note that all the planets are observed to change direction but not the sun. The reason for this is that the sun's observed motion is entirely due to the observer's rotation and is not a combination as with Mars for example.

What I am trying to say is that for somebody like Kepler this is convincing material. Even his early 5 solids model was based on heliocentricity.

So my point of view is not based on anachronistic knowledge as Bede says I try to see things from Kepler's (Maestlin's, Tycho's, Galileo's) point of view. Given what we know as I described above and given that other contemporary astronomers accepted it then it cannot be claimed to be a mystery.

NOGO

Improving prediction is not the main criteria. One can play with the Ptolemaic system and make it as accurate as anything that we have today.

In science what matters most is to explain everything on a few and simple principles which can be verified independently. Explain more with less.

One can derive Kepler's laws from Newton's gravitational laws, explain the solar system but also explain Galileo's rolling balls on an inclined plane. This is the strength of scientific thought. It tries to derive more and more from a few basic principles.

However it is wrong to think that this happened in one step with Newton.

We can see this happening with Copernicus as well.
Copernicus explained planet retrogression based on first principles. This was an important step.

We can also see it at work with Kepler. Copernicus used as many as 48 epicycles to explain the motion of planets around the sun. Kepler used the ellipse. He explained more with less. Copernicus' centre for the solar system was an average of the radius of the earth orbit. The ellipse easily explained why the sun was not at the centre and also why the earth's orbit was irregular.

My contention is that it would have been irrational for Kepler to work from the geocentric model and he didn't. For someone who did not have the information and perhaps not the inclination nor the intellect to study the issue for himself then reliance on authority is the only thing left.