Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

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Brigit Bara
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Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:13 pm

Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo
Translated with an introduction and notes by Stillman Drake
An Anchor Press Book, copyright 1957 by Stillman Drake

Galileo Galilee
To
The Most Serene Grand Duchess

“Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before in our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors — as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.

Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properly, and which were ill-suited to their purposes.

These men would perhaps not have fallen into such error had they but paid attention to a most useful doctrine of St Augustine’s, relative to our making positive statements about things which are obscure and hard to understand by means of reason alone. Speaking of a certain physical conclusions about heavenly bodies, he wrote: “Now keeping always our respect for moderation in grave piety, we ought not to believe anything inadvisedly on a dubious point, lest in favor to our error we conceive a prejudice against something that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the Old or the New Testaments.…

Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth rotates on its axis and revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis. Possibly because they are disturbed by the known truth of other propositions of mine which differ from those commonly held, and therefore mistrusting their defense so long as they confine themselves to the field of philosophy, these men have resolved themselves to fabricate a shield for their fallacies out of the mantle of pretended religion and the authority of the Bible. These they apply, with little judgment, to the refutation of arguments that they do not understand and have not even listened to.”
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

Sithri
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Sithri » Thu Feb 14, 2019 2:59 pm

The only problem with Galileo was that he preceded Newton. If he had known the universal law of gravitation, he would have had a much easier time instating a Heliocentric model.

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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Sithri » Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:27 pm

Aristotle and Ptolemy aren't dead yet!

The geocentric model can be revived through a physical re-examination of Aristotle's Metaphysics of the concentric shells of the cosmos around the earth through Redshift Quantization, and the revolution of everything around the Earth through Mach's Principle and the Foucault Pendulum. The Foucault Pendulum through Mach's Principle would measure the entirety of the universe's inertia spinning around the earth, and the Pendulum would measure this according to the still earth and revolving cosmos; instead of measuring the earth's rotation in the universe, we would be measuring the universe in its rotation around the earth.
This raises the question, how do things move in gravitational fields? The Sun is no longer at the center of the Solar System with Geocentrism.  However, the Sun is also moving in the universe, supposedly, so this means that the speed of gravitation must be much, much faster than celeritas, the speed of light, which disproves gravity waves as well as gravitons moving at celeritas and denies that the speed of light is the fastest speed according to Special Relativity, at least with regard to fields. Instead of the mass of the Earth having an effect on the rest of the Solar System, the entire mass of the universe is rotating around the Earth. This means that the Sun, while not being at the center of the Solar System, borrows its own mass from the rest of the Universe as well, with Mach's Principle being the Infinite Interdependence of masses in the Universe.
I do not know what law would be used to define the orbit of the planets except that there are concentric shells that move on their own separate from one another with a certain 'frequency' that gives them their orbit.

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Mon Feb 18, 2019 2:46 pm

by Sithri » Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:27 pm
Aristotle and Ptolemy aren't dead yet!

The geocentric model can be revived through a physical re-examination of Aristotle's Metaphysics of the concentric shells of the cosmos around the earth through Redshift Quantization...
Yes sir, Sithri, that is an excellent observation. You just put your finger on one of my greatest fears.

Image

Forgive and ignore one small speculation: can it be coincidence that there is an extremely aggressive psy-op campaign to bring back the fl at earth/tiny sun right now?

This diagram of Aristotle's solar system includes his physics of earth, air, water and fire, in which everything falls to its own place.

Image
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Mon Feb 18, 2019 2:58 pm

Galileo was not only in conflict with the scholastics because of the heliocentric model of the solar system; he was actually contradicting about 5 doctrines of Aristotle, all together.

I do mean to list those in the near future, dealing case by case with the Greek dogmas, along with excerpts from Galileo's own letters.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

Sithri
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Sithri » Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:31 am

Brigit Bara wrote:by Sithri » Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:27 pm
Aristotle and Ptolemy aren't dead yet!

The geocentric model can be revived through a physical re-examination of Aristotle's Metaphysics of the concentric shells of the cosmos around the earth through Redshift Quantization...
Yes sir, Sithri, that is an excellent observation. You just put your finger on one of my greatest fears.

Image

Forgive and ignore one small speculation: can it be coincidence that there is an extremely aggressive psy-op campaign to bring back the fl at earth/tiny sun right now?

This diagram of Aristotle's solar system includes his physics of earth, air, water and fire, in which everything falls to its own place.

Image
What is so fear-invoking about being at the center of the universe? I find it rather edifying.

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nick c
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by nick c » Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:55 am

Aristarchus of Samos (ca 310-230 BCE) deserves some mention in this discussion, he is the earliest known proponent of the heliocentric theory. Both Copernicus and Galileo must have been aware of his work.
The heliocentric theory was not accepted because there was no detection of a parallax shift with available instrumentation. Aristarchus (correctly) speculated that the stars were actually at such a great distance that no shift could be detected. The problem was with the coarseness of the instruments.
So the acceptance of the Ptolemaic system for over a thousand years had a scientific justification. In essence a test was proposed (parallax shift) and the results appeared to falsify the heliocentric theory.

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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Sithri » Wed Feb 20, 2019 11:47 am

nick c wrote:Aristarchus of Samos (ca 310-230 BCE) deserves some mention in this discussion, he is the earliest known proponent of the heliocentric theory. Both Copernicus and Galileo must have been aware of his work.
The heliocentric theory was not accepted because there was no detection of a parallax shift with available instrumentation. Aristarchus (correctly) speculated that the stars were actually at such a great distance that no shift could be detected. The problem was with the coarseness of the instruments.
So the acceptance of the Ptolemaic system for over a thousand years had a scientific justification. In essence a test was proposed (parallax shift) and the results appeared to falsify the heliocentric theory.
How exactly would an ancient person detect the Sun's Parallax? Two sticks in the ground? Or obelisks?

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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by nick c » Wed Feb 20, 2019 5:23 pm

How exactly would an ancient person detect the Sun's Parallax? Two sticks in the ground? Or obelisks?
You misunderstood my post. I did not write "the Sun's parallax". I wrote "parallax shift" with the assumption that it is understood that could only be stellar parallax. Anyway, later in the same sentence I wrote that " the stars were actually at such a great distance that no shift could be detected" which could only refer to stellar parallax.
Parallax Shift
Parallax Shift

And of course, Aristarchus and the ancients in general were capable of making an instrument that was capable of measuring parallax if the stars were much closer, that is why Aristarchus thought they must be very far away - no shift could be detected.
The proponents of geocentrism took this lack of a detectable shift as evidence for geocentrism and the falsification of heliocentrism.

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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Wed Feb 20, 2019 5:43 pm

nick c says, "Aristarchus of Samos (ca 310-230 BCE) deserves some mention in this discussion, he is the earliest known proponent of the heliocentric theory."

I really appreciate the careful way this is worded. Aristarchus is celebrated as the earliest known proponent of the heliocentric theory. But remember no other sources except Greek and Roman writings survive. At least, very very few.

So in this case, I think it is not insignificant that Aristarchus of Samothrace ( c. 220 – c. 143 BC) was a librarian at the Library of Alexandria, and, like so many other Greek writers, summarizing and compiling from the library. Again, very very few books in any language besides Greek or Roman survive.

I personally think there is a very straightforward case to be made that the Etruscans had a heliocentric model. But I cannot commit any time to that wonderful subject at the moment.

I will stick to the original post: Galileo's own words about his conflict with the systems of thought based entirely on Aristotle and Ptolemy, because this was very clear to him -- notice what he said in the letter to the Duchess. This will take just a little time because there were many doctrines of Aristotle that he was disproving and he was not well appreciated for any of that either.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Wed Feb 20, 2019 5:53 pm

Ptolemy not only gave us a system of Greek Astronomy with many mathematical proofs and epicycles, but he also wrote a book on Geography, which was full of errors, and which the educated castes studied and believed for 15 centuries.

My modest proposal is that there is a lesson in this, somewhere.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Wed Feb 20, 2019 11:49 pm

Correction, Aristarchus of Samos lived in Alexandria, Egypt. Thank you.

But the historical pattern remains, and it is this: that originally, the Library at Alexandria housed works from the territories that Greeks had conquered militarily.
"To the library at Alexandria, founded by...Ptolemy [I} and greatly augmented by his son....there soon flocked, in ever-increasing numbers, the keenest scholars of the Hellenistic world. Papyrus was cheap in Egypt, the resources of the Museum were at the disposal of the library, and the enlightened rule of the Ptolemies furnished a mighty impetus to the translation and editing of books. Greek, Persian, Hebrew, and Indian manuscripts were imported from all parts of Greece and Asia....A lost catalogue work, in 120 books, entitled Pinakes, is ascribed to Callimichus. The greater part of the library, estimated as high as 490,000 rolls in the time of Callimachus and 700,000 in the time of Caesar, was housed in the museum..."

That is, with the books that had been seized by both the conquering Greeks and later the Romans, the library was furnished with the knowledge of the ancient world. But the original books were lost, leaving only Greek glosses and compilations. This leads to the illusion of Greek originality. For example, I like Archimedes as well as any one, but one scholar observed, "In the absence of adequate information about the accomplishments of earlier mathematicians, it is difficult to assess the accomplishments of Archimedes in that field..."

I have said nothing very unusual. It is not uncommon for a conquering empire to both aggressively erase and also take credit for the work of the people they conquered -- we still call them "Arabic numbers", after all, but the system was developed in India.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Thu Feb 21, 2019 12:50 am

I like this map of ancient languages of the Italic Peninsula.

Image

It gives some idea of what it might be like to quantify all of the lost literature/mathematics/etc.
I spend some time in 2013 investigating surviving texts from any of these people, besides the Romans. They certainly were literate, and had their own alphabets, and in some cases, the titles of their books were referenced. But only funerary inscriptions or glosses in other works remain.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:47 pm

Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy



1. Law of falling objects - this violated Aristotle's doctrine that a lighter object would travel much slower than a heavier object

2. Acceleration of falling objects - this violated Aristotle's doctrine that objects fell at a constant rate

3. Path of a projectile is a parabola - this violated Aristotle's doctrine that objects fell in a straight line on earth and in a curve in the heavens

4. Change in the heavens, or appearance of comets - the appearance of a comet in October of 1604 contradicted Aristotle's doctrine of the perfection of the heavens, which did not allow any change or the appearance of new stars or comets

5. Mountains and craters on the surface of the moon - this contradicted Aristotle's doctrine that the moon was a smooth body

6. Moons orbiting Jupiter - shows bodies that do not orbit the Earth

7. Phases of Venus - shows Venus to be orbiting the sun

8. Sunspots - contradicted Aristotle's doctrine that the sun was an immaculate body

9. Floating objects
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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Brigit Bara
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Re: Galileo Galilee vs Aristotle and Ptolemy

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:43 pm

Now the question could be asked, "Was the abandonment of the Aristotleian/Ptolemaic system for the Sun-centered solar system a scientific paradigm shift?"

While most might find the term "paradigm shift" useful to describe any profound change in science, I think that is too broadly applying the "paradigm shift" described by Kuhn.

Or look at it this way. If any change in scientific understanding can be called a paradigm shift, then there is no scientific advancement in understanding that cannot be called a scientific paradigm shift. But the truth is that Kuhn's concept of "scientific paradigm shifts" was a rather more limited process among the experts, and is, in the end, always a top-down -- a "structured" scientific revolution.

Can any and every change in scientific understanding be called a scientific paradigm shift, or is there a kind of process that brings about change in the sciences that -- as Karl Raimond Popper argued -- is not a paradigm shift, but is a natural change brought about in the sciences by many forces, and may even exclude the "practitioners of science" altogether?

I believe that the abandonment of Greek cosmology brought about by Copernicus and Galileo Galilee has many characteristics that are nothing like a "paradigm shift", but were instead partly a change which took place because of the evidence, observations, and the rational criticism which Galileo tirelessly offered to a hostile, entrenched educated class. But what is most essential (and poignant) in Galileo's case is that he was writing many of his observations in Italian, not Latin, which allowed the more general audience to understand and take part in the discussion. It did not take place in an academic corner. And not only that, he appealed to experiment and observation, which also allowed the general audience to partake of the process of discovery.

As more and more telescopes became available, more people could see the contradictions to the Aristotleian philosophy in plain view. Also, this was at a time when the nations of Europe and the British Isles were printing books in their own respective languages. These printing presses were immediately shut down in many, many countries of Europe, but there were places where the printing press enjoyed some degree of freedom. In the end, Galileo's books were translated in countries with more political and economic freedom, and into the common languages of some nations. These are extraordinary pressures which overcame the hegemony of Scholasticism.

Now if the printing press, an increasingly literate and growing middle class in many Northern European countries, the increasing availability of the telescope, and the interest and intelligence of Galileo's readers -- if these all lead to the change in scientific understanding, then I maintain that this was not anything like a "scientific paradigm shift".
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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