Los Angeles Times said:
errrr…
Those first two were either Buridan or Oresmes, actually, in 14th century France. Buridan also formulated Newton’s first law of motion, and—unlike Newton—specifically denied that God had to periodically intervene in planetary motion. Oresme invented “Cartesian” coordinates roughly 300 years before Descartes.errrr…
what things?
He was a pretty good scientist. Invented the experimental method, showed that gravitational acceleration did not depend on the weight of the object, discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter (showing that not everything revolved around the Sun), he even attempted to measure the speed of light. He is generally in the top ten of greatest astronomers (and scientists) of all time.
Pretty good going.
Galileo was the first to prove the gravitational acceleration, supposedly by dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There are many cases of discovery that someone else had earlier discovered or proved something in science, but unless you get your discovery out there, nowadays by publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, that doesn’t count. If we go with that Leonardo da Vinci would have several discoveries to his name in various fields.
Galileo’s model of heliocentricism involved the planets moving in perfect circles. That is why Galileo’s model failed experimental verification at the time. One of the things that was most dificult for the geocentric model to explain was planetary retrograde, how Mars, for example, seems to move backward in it’s orbit. We know now that it’s because the Earth is ‘passing’ it in it’s orbit.errrr…
what things?
He was a pretty good scientist. Invented the experimental method, showed that gravitational acceleration did not depend on the weight of the object, discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter (showing that not everything revolved around the Sun), he even attempted to measure the speed of light. He is generally in the top ten of greatest astronomers (and scientists) of all time.
Pretty good going.
Again, Galileo proved nothing in regards to Copernicus. He only theorized, his experimentation and prediction was way off from the Aristolean model then in existance.
Oh, right, because the University of Paris—chief educational institution of the Western world—wasn’t “out there”.
We had no proof. We had observational evidence, but we didn’t have probes sitting in orbit of Mercury and watching it, and the Earth, go around the Sun.
What, nobody had yet noticed that the Moon orbits the Earth?errrr…
what things?
He was a pretty good scientist. Invented the experimental method, showed that gravitational acceleration did not depend on the weight of the object, discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter (showing that not everything revolved around the Sun),
Definitely in the top ten scientists. Not in the top ten astronomers. His real achievements were in mechanics and other branches of science.
Obviously the Church favored Geocentrism considering the fact that any book advocating Heliocentrism was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and Galileo’s work was censored. It might not have been Church doctrine on paper but it certainly was in practice.
That depends on how you view it. There is no defined center in an infinite universe but the Earth would appear to be the center from the perspective of those of us standing on it because it is a defined point from which we view infinity in all directions. If someone were standing on the Sun and looked out into the cosmos then that would appear to be the center of the universe from the point of view of the observer.
If it wasn’t church doctrine on paper, it wasn’t church doctrine at all. Being a doctrine of the Catholic Church is like being an official NFL rule: a thing can’t unofficially be one.
There isn’t a defined center to this universe, either, and it’s not infinite (just unbounded).
I know that the planets don’t move in circles, it’s a fairly important thing for professional astronomer to know.Galileo’s model of heliocentricism involved the planets moving in perfect circles. That is why Galileo’s model failed experimental verification at the time. One of the things that was most dificult for the geocentric model to explain was planetary retrograde, how Mars, for example, seems to move backward in it’s orbit. We know now that it’s because the Earth is ‘passing’ it in it’s orbit.
The Aristolean model had a lot of complex mathematics that allowed one to compute when a planetary retrograde would occur. Galileo’s model failed completely.
That is the nature of science that Galileo forgot. Theory —> Experimental Verification —> Revise.
Why should anyone buy into a theory that sounds good, but fails on it’s predictions even more so than the current model.
If Galileo’s methodologies were used in modern science, he never would get published.
What he should have done was do what Cardinal Bellarmine suggested; to consider it to be just a theory and not as a description of nature, which it was not.
But Galileo was too tied to the concepts of circles and never got his theory to work, it fell to Kepler years later to accomplish that.
One other point, one of the predictions of Galileo’s theory would be that stellar parallax would occur ( that there would be a varience in measured angle for a particular star as the Earth moved around the Sun.) That failed too, but mostly because no one at the time could appreciate the incredible vast distances that were involved. It fell until the 20th century for instruments with sufficent accuracy to be built.
Again, Galileo proved nothing in regards to Copernicus. He only theorized, his experimentation and prediction was way off from the Aristolean model then in existance.
Also, the Aristolean model did not prohibt the existance of moons. It was easily recognized that the laws of planetary motion apply only to planets (by definition). Any Greek throwing a ball or riding a charitot recognized that not all motion invovled movement around the center of the Earth
Galileo’s theory was that they moved in circles, and refused to believe that they didn’t even in light of Kepler’s work.
He did theorize. The two branches of physical study are Theoritical, where the scientist makes theories. These theories will have distinct features ( existance of a particular particle, a certain stellar effect…etc)
I was referring to the distance to the STARS, the magnitude of the distances to those were unknown in Galileo’s time
**Guy Consolmagno, Head of Vatican Observatory, Will Not Deny GeocentrismGeocentrism has never been Church doctrine, nor has heliocentrism. Geocentrism and heliocentrism are both incorrect as neither the sun or the earth are the center of the universe.
Another swing and a miss at religion for the main stream media.
What kind of proof are you looking for? Yes, in mathematics you can prove theorems, but of course, the axioms remain unproven assumptions. In empirical science you present a hypothesis and find evidence for it by repeatable, observable experiments. i don’t see where you would prove your hypothesis in an absolute sense in empirical science because there is always room for a slight improvement later on.
If you simply draw curves, you can set up a scheme where the earth is the center of the universe. However, you are going to run into problems as soon as you try to take into account the gravitational forces of the sun and the planets. And as well, it is extremely dubious to have the entire huge universe of stars rotating about the tiny earth once every twenty four hours.
No, it was not. The Church did not withhold approval for printing books advocating Heliocentrism, only books which stated that Heliocentrism was a proven scientific fact, which it was not. As soon as it was proven, all these books were promptly removed from the next edition of the Index.
You were excommunicated if you disobeyed on this. Sending people to hell for reading a book seems pretty physical.
Excommunication is not sending a person to hell.