Re: The root of all evil? - Dawkins Documentary

Earle Jones wrote:

*
The burned man was Giordano Bruno. The date was 2-17-1600.

"Bruno was enthusiastic about the Copernican theory that the
planets circle the sun and he believed there are many other planets
around other stars, some of them with life."

"Early on this day, February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno was
compelled to take his last walk. A stake awaited him in the Campo di
Fiora. Dressed as a heretic, his tongue clamped so that he could say
nothing against the church or in defense of his unacceptable views,
he was burned to death.
His case was significant for several reasons. For one, he was the
last victim burned by the Roman Inquisition."

It should be noted that the spherical shape of the earth was well known
to Greek scholars In the third century b.c.e Erastothenes, the manager
of the Library of Alexandria computed the circumference of the earth to
within five percent of its modern value. Prior to that both Plato and
Aristotle were convinced that the earth was spherical. Partly for
empirical reasons and partly for philosophical reasons. None of the
Church bigwigs doubted the spherical shape of the earth.

The issue plaguing Galileo was the motions of the Earth. Galileo
accepted Kopernick's hypothesis that the planets all revolved around a
central point in circular orbits in uniform motion. It turned out the
Kopernick was wrong. The orbits are elliptical and the motion is not
uniform as evidenced by Keplers Second Law. The planets sweep out equal
angles referenced from a focus, in equal times. For a non-circular orbit
such as earth and mars have this means the planets move faster when
closer to the sun and slower when further away. Galileo also believed
that the earth rotated about its axis once a day thus producing a
circular apparent motion for the stars as well as sunrise and sunset (we
still use these geocentric terms, even unto the present day).

Bob Kolker

.

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