Rusting Car Bumper

Agreed. Christians throughout history have often gone outside of their religion because they realized their religion wasn't enough.

This is interpreted by Bede as being caused by Chrsitianity rather than its shortcomings.

We see this throughout philosophy and early science. Take Descatres. He doesn't start with God or Christianity. He starts with trying to find a determinable axiom as a starting point. This understanding preceeds his explaination of god (albeit a poor explanation of god results.)

DC

NOGO

It would not be of much use. Let me explain.

The problem here is that Bede reads stuff but does not understand.

"did not gave better results" and "not any better"
are equated by Bede. This is incorrect.

When somebody says that Copernicus' model gave no better results than Ptolemy what does he mean?
What results is he talking about?

Ptolemy's model has 24 hour orbits for each planet around the earth while Copernicus' model correctly removed them as only apparent due to the observer/earth rotation on its axis. I explained this in detail under Copernicus in a previous post. Ptolemy's model also has the sun and stars rotating around the earth in a 24 hour period.

Clearly Copernicus' model is vastly superior and that is why Kepler was a Copernican believer all of his life.

So how can Bede claim that Copernicus' model is not better than Ptolemy's?

The confusion can be explained as follows.

When one says that the Copernican model gave no better results than the Ptolemaic model one is talking strictly from the earthly point of view. As if the earth did not move. In that limited sense, it is true. But since the observer does moves, Copernicus correctly removed the observer's path and rotation from the paths of other celestial bodies. The Ptolemaic model confused the two.

Bede missed this point altogether. That's what happens when you read things without the necessary background to understanding them.

Bede

Some notes on a few of the comments made on this thread:

NOGO: Copernicus's model predicted the paths of the planets as well as Ptolemy's - no better. It also said the earth was moving when common sense said it obviously was not. It meant the earth was moving relative to the stars which were actually clearly fixed. So, in those days, Copernicus did not look as convincing as he does today with hindsight. To understand this argument you need to the think in early modern terms, not anachronistically.

Coper's moving the sun to the centre is usually put down to his neo-Platonism but the trouble is that neo-Platonism had been around since the pagan Plotinus in the third century and sun worship since year dot. So exactly why he did make the change still remains unclear to historians.

DC: I have no doubt that if Christianity were closed to outside ideas you would be criticising it for that too. Being open and accomadating as well as realising you do not know it all is a virtue both of science and Christians.

Also, read Descartes' Meditations 1 and 2 as you have totally misrepresented his thought. For Descartes, God is the very first thing he says he is certain about after stripping all away apart from his own existance.

Ipetrich: I have read ADW, I have no problem with direct criticism of fundamentalism and Thomas is not rewriting history. As for your comment that only biblical literalism is honest, well that is typical of the fundie atheist mind set. You only understand people as bigotted as you are.

Janaya: If you want to know about history of science, I suggest reading some historians, rather than popular scientists who are (with the exception of SJ Gould) notorious for getting this stuff wrong. Cosmos is particularly well known for its historical howlers.

Yours

Bede

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

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: Bede ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Copernicus's model predicted the paths of the planets as well as Ptolemy's - no better. It also said the earth was moving when common sense said it obviously was not. It meant the earth was moving relative to the stars which were actually clearly fixed. So, in those days, Copernicus did not look as convincing as he does today with hindsight. To understand this argument you need to the think in early modern terms, not anachronistically.

Yes, it is controversial exactly when the right information was in possesion of Europeans to distinguish between the two, but definitely not right away when Copernicus published; it was still possible to object to his system with intellectual integrity, especially since he used perfect circles to fix the planetary orbits. This was obviously incorrect; the planets from earth varied in appearance and brightness in a manner that was predictable but did not seem to square with perfect circles. It took Kepler to account for this and settle the matter with the discovery of ellipses.....

Copernicus actually published his theory much earlier, as early as 1508-1515 he published it as a private treatise to be circulated among friends. As I have noted before, an Arab discussion of Heliocentricity sat on his bookshelf, and of course heliocentric systems had been proposed by Greek thinkers. How Copernicus stumbled on the idea I do not know.

Vorkosigan

Vork,

Thanks for the complement, but I'm intrigued by your attitude. Russell is Professor Emeritus at the Open University (a totally secular institution) and widely respected in the field. Yes, he is a Christian and yes, he is interested in the interaction between Christianity and science. He is also a trained chemist. So, are you saying that as he is a Christian, he cannot do good scholarship? Or are you simply saying he is, like you and I, biased? The first attitude is ridiculous and the second so obvious it doesn't even need stating.

No, but it's bad tactics to use such a source. It's one thing to use a Christian scientist, but quite another to use one who is President of an institution dedicated to reconciling Christianity and Science. Also, there's a whiff of bad faith in not mentioning his position.

Anyway, as Lindberg, Numbers (who is a non-theist) and others have echoed Russell's comments on White and Draper, I don't think that particular point is very controversial.

Nor do I. But you should have gone with them first.

As for mis-spelling Shapin, that was unforgivable. ;(

Actually, I only pointed it out in case NOGO went looking for him...

Vorkosigan

Bede

Point taken.

Do you happen to know what Coper's Arab heliocentric treatise was? Toby Huff mentions that the mathematical methods, such as the Tusi couple, developed at Marageh observatory in Persia in the C13th were utilised by Coper. Searching the web (yes, I do it too), I find <a href="http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Al-Tusi_Nasir.html" target="_blank">here</a>:

"Many historians claim that the Tusi-couple result was used by Copernicus after he discovered it in Al-Tusi's work, but not all agree."

But al-Tusi cannot be who you mean as he was a geocentricist and also tried to insist on pure circular motion. Can you add anything?

Yours

Bede

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

NOGO

Really, ok.
Copernicus' model has the path of Venus revolving around the sun while Ptolemy's model has Venus revolving around the earth.

What is your claim here that these paths are the same and one no better than the other? If Venus revolves around the earth then why is it that it is never observed in the middle of the night?


No. no, no.
The stars were thought to move around the earth too and in 24 hours as per Ptolemy's model. This is what Copernicus could not accept. It was easier for him to have the earth rotate in 24 hours than have the whole universe rotate in 24 hours.

Thank you for the advice and I suggest that you follow it as well. I have never said that the Copernican model was obvious to everybody at the time. One thing that a typical person could not overcome was the physical everyday experience that the earth was stable under one's feet. But for someone like Copernicus it was either ther earth or the whole universe that was moving and then common sense would tell you that it is impossible for the whole universe to rotate around the earth in 24 hours.

Which historians are you talking about?
As I explained in my second post in this thread once you remove the 24 hour apparent orbit around the earth the remaining planet movements are orbits around the sun.

It is know that Copernicus chose a point just outside the sun in order to make a better fit of the data. In other words once you have removed the 24 hour orbit as being fictitious the data points to the sun as the centre. Copernicus does not use the 24 hour movement of the planets in his model (as Ptolemy did) that should tell you something.

So your mystery is not a mystery to me.
Show me where you got this????
It is patently and utterly false.

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

Bede

Nogo,

Seen from earth the predicted paths were no better for Coper than Ptolemy.

I was (rather unclearly) talking about stellar parallax which is when the stars move relative to each other as the earth travels through space. This could not be observed, even with Galileo's telescope. Also, the changing brightness of the planets did not match what was expected if they were not always about the same distance from us as Coper's model stated. It was more elegant but faced considerable problems based on observation and science. Given all this, why Coper took the steps he did remains unclear to everyone (except, it appears, you).

Yours

Bede

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

NOGO

It was clear enough for Kepler who used the heliocentric system for all of his own work.

I have also explained to you exactly what Copernicus did. You have not told me what is so mysterious about the copernicus model nor who claims this other than yourself.

Tell me which of these statements do you consider a mystery or incorrect?

1) Copernicus removed the 24 hour movement from the planet orbits. (unlike Ptolemy)

2) The remaining observed movements of the planets are orbits which are all centered near the sun.

3) Copernicus chose a centre just outside the sun as a best fit for circular orbits.

If you accept these three statements then there is no mystery as to why Copernicus chose the sun as the centre of the solar system.

If you do not then the issue becomes a lot easier to argue and we will take from there.

David Bowden

I'll read all the posts shortly. This is in response mainly to the title/topic.

It seems to me that if Christianity were uniquely responsible for the rise of science (or natural philosophy) then science should have risen along with Christianity, and by the fourth century or so been a hallmark of western civilization.

Instead, the ascent of this religion was heralded with the suppression of Plato's and Aristotle's academies in Athens. (Justinian, who performed this sacred act, built a great church to "Holy Wisdom" instead.)

It was Christians who slew natural philosophers for teaching heresies, and not the other way around. Scientific curiosity wasn't endorsed until centuries after the west was Christianized. Medical science didn't fare too well until the Christian church loosened up on autopsies. Interestingly, the rise of science seems to parallel the emergence of liberal and secular thought generally, and the limitation of religious powers.

Almost every major scientific advance has been resisted by Christian authority defending its doctrines. Orthodoxy or "the right teaching" (supposedly received from God or articulated by His inspired agents) kept having to change (an admission of imperfect revelation, if nothing else) when Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin and others applied their minds to scientific problems.

To anyone arguing that Christianity is a necessary prerequisite to science, I would like to know: which uniquely Christian teachings or intellectual traditions led to science, which pagan thinking didn't already offer, or which secular thought absolutely could not have come up with had Christianity allowed Greek, Roman or Egyptian intellectual institutions to continue?

What, in short, did Christianity bring to the table that could never have come from any other source?

-David

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: David Bowden ]</p>