Re: Part of the canon/flat earth issue

MyNyM wrote:
> "Ahh, yes, the liberal scientists' lies. Well, I know Galileo..."
>
> I'll tell you what, when lies stop showing up in numerous editorials,
> textbooks and so on then I will stop correcting them. It's good that
> you know what you know. That doesn't change the fact that most
> progressives are ignorant and tend towards scientism.
>
> "Did the church not condemn him for heresy, and threaten him with death
>
> by torture or burning if he did not recant his dicoveries?"
>
> I think it is a bit much to think that Galileo was threatened with
> torture or burning. I don't know specifically that there was no such
> threat made or documented, given his friendships with people in the
> Church it seems unlikely. There is no way to prove that he didn't feel
> threatened. I'm sure he did feel threatened in some ways, but almost
> certainly not by burning and the like.
>
> "Did the church not in my lifetime - 400 years late - declare him
> innocent?"
>
> You read that in the Old Press, I suspect. There is always a richer
> text to the story than their simplistic filtering.
>
> "And what was the philosophical reason (the psychological reason was
> probably his abrasive and confrontational attitude) if not the
> conclusion that we are not the literal center of the universe, and by
> implication, not the teleological reason for it all?"
>
> That may be the way the modern mind thinks of it, certainly it is the
> way it writes various myths to comfort itself in acheiving
> "Enlightenment" as opposed to the "Dark Ages." But it is not
> historically accurate given the historical texts that we have to go by.
>
>
> As to the philosophy, note:
> "This connection between the Copernican Revolution and man's
> significance in the universe in a broader sense is very common. It
> blithely identifies Copernicus's "discovery that our world is not
> the centre and axis of the material universe" with man's
> subordination in the scheme of things. Many authors assume that
> pre-Copernican men, living in an earth-centered cosmos, tiny in
> comparison with the vastness revealed by modern science, had an
> exaggerated and arrogant sense of human importance. God, it is said,
> created the universe for man's use, and man is therefore at the
> center of creation. The Copernican Revolution, and subsequently the
> Enlightenment, is supposed to have disabused mankind of its arrogant
> beliefs, instilling an appropriate humility about our place in the
> world and undermining belief in God. The science writer James Newman
> tells this story especially clearly:
>
> 'It will never be known when man first became convinced that he was of
> cosmic importance, but the date this pretension was disposed of is
> pretty clear. The De Revolutionibus Orbiuni Coelestium of Nicolaus
> Copernicus was published in 1543. -. . Nestled in the mathematics. - -
> was a concept that put man in his place in the cosmos, as Darwin's
> concept was to put him in his place on earth. .. . Looking backward in
> Hstor it is easy for us to see that a moving earth and sun-centred
> universe gravely subverted Christian theology. If man's abode was not
> at the centre of things, how could he be king?"
>
> Although this is a common subplot of the Galileo story, it is mistaken.
> There is indeed a connection between the earth's physical
> "position" in the uni erse and its status, but not the one often
> assumed.
>
> Aristotle emphasized the corruption of the earth in comparison with
> everything above the lunar sphere (remember the moon is the first of
> many spheres revolving around the earth). Indeed, in Aristotelian
> thought the earth was so far inferior to the heavens that the latter
> were believed to consist of a higher, finer substance-the fifth
> element, the quintessence. The earth was at the center not because of
> its significance but because it is every where below the heavens. Thus
> the pre-Copernican cosmology that the earth lies at the center of the
> universe is no compliment to earth's occupants. The center is the
> lowest place in the universe, not the most important. The hierarchy of
> perfection stretches up beyond us in concentric circles, rank upon
> rank. Thus the fourteenth-century Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, in
> The Divine Comedy, locates the pit of hell centrally in the "great
> fundaments of the universe, on which all weights downweigh." The
> heavens, by contrast, were everywhere lifted up above the earth,
> incorruptible and divine.
>
> The Copernican system, far from demoting man, destroyed Aristotle's
> vision of the earth as a kind of cosmic sink, and if it did anything,
> it elevated humanity In making the earth a planet, a heavenly body,
> Copernicus infinitely ennobled its status. Galileo exploited this
> changed status of the earth when he had his mouthpiece, Salviati, say:
> 'We seek to ennoble and perfect earth when we strive to make it like
> the celestial bodies, and, as it were, place it in heaven, from which
> your philosophers [ Aristotle] have banished it.'"
> (Six Modern Myths About
> Christianity & Western Civilization
> By Philip J. Sampson :32-33)
>
> It's curious how minds shaped by the writings of charlatans and
> propagandists for scientism come to work. Galileo's own argument is
> the polar opposite of the notion that he was undermining "teleological
> reason." The myths seems to begin with charlatans, who project onto
> the past their own ideas and later their ideas are treated as
> historical fact that makes sense to the modern mind. Indeed, it will
> tend to fit the modern mind perfectly, as it is a projection onto the
> past of its own ideas for the sake of its own comfort and cognitive
> resonance.
>
> "The story is so common that it's tedious to repeat it in great
> detail. As we all think we know, ancient superstition put Earth and its
> inhabitants at the physical and metaphysical center of a small,
> anthropocentric-that is, "human-centered"-universe. The
> benighted masses thought Earth was flat, while the educated elites,
> following Ptolemy and Aristotle, imagined it as a sphere, with the
> Moon, planets, Sun, and stars revolving around it.
>
> Copernicus, according to the popular story, demoted us by showing that
> ours was a sun-centered universe, with Earth both rotating around its
> axis and revolving around the Sun like the other planets. This claim is
> some times accompanied by still more egregious factual errors. For
> instance, Bruce Jakosky explains in The Search for Life on Other
> Planets, "Because of this tremendous change in world view,
> Copernicus' views were not embraced by the Church: the history of his
> persecution is well known." Never mind that Copernicus wasn't
> persecuted and died the same year (1543) that his ideas were published,
> not at the oil-soaked stake but peacefully and of natural causes. Since
> these historical facts muddy the popcorn-movie simplicity of the
> Official Story, with its cast of intrepid, steely eyed scientific
> heroes on the one hand and its one-dimensional villain priests on the
> other, the historical facts are garbled. (Understand, we don't
> believe this is part of a willful conspiracy. Jakosky is a well-known
> and respected scien tist, and the publisher, Cambridge University
> Press, is a respected publisher of astronomy books. Such a mistake
> could only survive the editorial process because a great many
> intelligent people simply assume the stereotype.)
>
> The popcorn movie continues on from Copernicus's persecution with a
> bravura medley of fact and fiction: The messiah Copernicus leaves his
> even less fortunate followers, like Bruno, the first martyr, and
> Galileo, the first saint, to suffer even more hideous consequences. In
> time, however, the brave and unflagging march of scientific evidence
> overwhelms the darkness and idiocy of religious superstition-swelling
> and triumphant musical score followed by cheers and the film's
> credits. The test audience loves it; everyone goes home fat and sassy
> in the knowledge of modern man's incalculable superiority to the
> superstitious fools of a dead and defeated past.
>
> Thus is the story purged of its cumbersome subtleties. The Copernican
> Revolution, we're led to believe, was the opening battle in the
> ongoing war between Science and Religion. Textbooks and science writers
> on the sub ject display varying degrees of reductiveness and aversion
> to detail, but with few exceptions, the central message is the same:
> Religious superstition maintained the myth that Earth and human beings
> are the center of the universe, both physically and metaphysically, but
> modern science has taught us otherwise. Copernicus is the enduring
> symbol of science's unflinching commitment to the facts, even when it
> means displacing humanity from our false sense of uniqueness and
> importance. As astronomer Stuart Clark puts it: "Astronomy leads us
> to believe that the Universe is so vast that we, on planet Earth, are
> nothing more than an insignificant mote." Strangely, some even see
> Copernicus's work as play ing the role of moral teacher. Philosopher
> Bertrand Russell once said, "The Copernican Revolution will not have
> done its work until it has taught men more modesty than is to be found
> among those who think Man suf ficient evidence of Cosmic Purpose."
>
> The intended subtext, of course, is that one will be scientific only to
> the extent that one is nonreligious. To be "religious," in the
> narrow sense intended here, is to believe that there is something
> unique, special, or intentional about our existence and the existence
> of the cosmos. "Science" here has a special definition as well.
> Rather than a search for the truth (scientia means knowledge) about
> nature-based on evidence, systematic study, and the like-science
> becomes applied naturalism: the conviction that the material world is
> all there is, and that chance and impersonal natural law alone explain,
> indeed must explain, its existence.
>
> Toward this end, the official story line comes close to reversing the
> most important historical points. Predominant in that story line is the
> link between our "central" location and our importance in the
> overall scheme of things. As planetary scientist Stuart Ross Taylor
> puts it:
>
> 'Copernicus was right after all. The idea that the Sun, rather than the
> Earth, was at the centre of the universe caused a profound change in
> the view of our place in the world. It created the philosophical
> climate in which we live. It is not clear that everyone has come to
> grips with the idea, for we still cherish the idea that we are special
> and that the entire universe was designed for us.'
>
> Historians of science have protested this description of the
> development of science for decades, but so far their protests have not
> trickled down to the masses or the textbook writers."
> (The Privileged Planet: How Our Place
> in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery
> By Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards :222-225)
>
You seem to be cutting and pasting these from your blog.

I first learned that the entire popular story about the role of the sublunary
elements and the centrality of the earth was wrong when I studied this in a
History of Astronomy subject I was TAing (it pays to be at least a week ahead
of the students).

That the earth was the centre of corruption was the textbook story -
particularly in Toulmin and Goodfield's and Kuhn's two books. Koestler also
gave this account. So I think that the problem here is not that the textbook
writers get it wrong when discussing the history of astronomy or physics, but
that the textbooks not on that subject repeat a myth like George Washington
and the cherry tree simply because it is a cultural icon.

The idea that moving us from the centre of the earth elevated us was
recognised by geocentrists from the days of Copernicus to Donne, and it
followed the dissolution of Aristotelian physics sometime in the late 12thC,
which, admittedly, took a while to get through until Galileo made such a good
piece of popular propaganda (that term means propagating textual publishing;
only later did it get it's negative connotations. We'd call it "marketing" now).

You can find any number of people with agendas who will repeat the myths and
icons for polemic purposes. You elsewhere attacked Draper, which I applaud
because Draper is entirely unreliable. No matter what the agenda, I abhor
historical revisionism. But this is not, I think, reason to accept or reject
any particular ideology, whether pro- or anti-religion. Just get the history
right. Then argue ideology, which in any case doesn't rely on history.

--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science." Tractatus 4.1122

.

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