Embellishments make the movie.

May I just say that all the characters seemed just a bit off. Galileo seemed to be made out as this big robust hero who always had his opinions and wasn't ever going to back off of them, not really, whereas, truly (especially after reading Koestler's analysis of Galileo with Kepler), Galileo might have been a little more cautious. Of course for movie's sake, who wants a wishy washy hero?

Secondly, Bellarmine, AKA the writer who got the crap kicked out of him and whose wife was raped by Alex and his droogs in Clockwork Orange, was the stereotypical church head, there to lay down the law about Galileo's ideas and give him an injunction in Rome (whereas, 1. There was no injunction at least that Galileo remembers and if there was an injunction, it wasn't given by Bellarmine, 2. It wasn't in Rome, wasn't it at Galileo's house?). I saw no friendliness exchanged between Bellarmine and Galileo in the movie... that would have complicated things, right?

Thirdly, I didn't read Galileo's daughter (shame on me) but didn't you, Prof. Bary, mention that she died shortly after the 1633 trial? What was she doing still hanging around and cooking goose livers? More importantly, the bit of Galileo's daughter I did read said Virginia never married because Galileo didn't have the dowry, not because her husband to be flipped his lid about Galileo's opinions. More importantly (and this relates to Galileo more than the would be hubby), Galileo's opinions of the poor were, in real life, not very admirable... he looked down on the poor. If I remember right, in the movie, didn't he sort of sarcastically chastise Virginia's fiancé for being such a stuck up rich guy?

Anyway, bottom line is that the whole thing was super oversimplified for sake of antagonizing and protagonizing certain characters (ahemma hem) all for the story. I'd imagine the actual Galileo story on screen would be pretty confusing, disappointing and disheartening for everybody. Too many actual characters... and it would take a semester to get through. :)

Erm.

I spent quite a few hours yesterday and a bit this morning as well on this piece and I for some reason can't grasp the common thread. I feel like there are a lot of different themes going on in this piece, but they don't want to be sewn together in my head and I can't get why. What I get from this piece is merely reiteration of the fact that Pope John Paul, 350 years after the fact, says the exact things that Galileo was saying and that if the church had allowed this 'elbow room' in the first place instead of letting personalities get in the way (I got that little bit from Koestler...), the whole situation probably could have been avoided.

What little of Sharratt's assessment of Catholics I found (not that it isn't there, probably that I just missed it...) is interesting (that they are a bit embarrassed about the whole thing when they ended up quietly "overturning" the ruling)... I don't know who he's talking about though because I know when I was in Catechism School, they read the Bible pretty literally, but perhaps that speaks more to the Catholic company I kept back in the day as opposed to who's really out there on the Catholic front. I mean, how could you not be sheepish about that sort of thing?

The bit I don't get is how the Church can be embarrassed about that sort of thing without trying to avoid it in the future. The whole gay marriage thing is really going right in that direction, what with interpretation of scripture and all.

I don't know how I feel about this piece. Right now it's not settling well and I am having difficulty seeing what light he chose to portray them in post lesson learning, or what have you. I'll come back to it.

Ehh, Potayto, potahto.

I didn't actually notice the egregious miswording that had happened between Galileo's letter to Lorini's copy to the Consultant's report, but rereading what he had had trouble with, indeed I could find no similar wording whatsoever in Galileo's original text (Or was something sort of along those lines actually written and I missed it?). I think it would be interesting to see the original texts and the original wordings, not that I think it's realistic for the purposes of this class, but in the event that a miswording is said to have happened, it's always important to realize that what we are reading is indeed translated anyway. I don't think necessarily that the translator messed up in translating from, what, Italian(?) to English, but granted there are nuances in other languages that don't translate well.

I actually started, just now, to make a case for how possibly somebody miswrote/misread something, but 1) if you're copying, it's sort of hard to miscopy a whole sentence and 2) the consultant DID put it in quotes and cite the page. I'm not really sure what happened there. Where did the miscopying go wrong? Did Lorini fudge something or is Lorini merely a pawn, given a miscopy of the letter because somebody knew he'd write about it?

My big thing about the letters was that the sun was motionless. Did Galileo ever say that? He said, in regards to the Joshua piece, that the sun's motions (the turning on its own axis) controlled the planets motions and so to stop the sun's motions would have been to stop the planets. Where did this idea that the sun was motionless come up? That was my increasing frustration was that they seemed to completely ignore his attempt to reconcile the Scripture with his findings.

How was it that other than some "poor wording" (which as I've seen was not even his own), the Consultant seemed peachy with it but when it came up later, all these old charges got dredged up again? I suppose this is discussion for class.

Letter to the Big D

So, couple the actual letter to the Grand Duchess and McMullin's assessment, and you've pretty much got it all right there.

I feel like there were more than just a couple of themes, and McMullin actually put these all out like principles that Augustine had written hundreds of years previous and that Galileo just honed in on. Did McMullin say that Galileo wrote/asserted what he did before he knew about what Augustine had written or post? I guess it doesn't matter since they ended up saying the same things anyway.

The most important themes I saw were these, and McMullin did characterize them:

(Principle of Consistency): The proper meaning of Scripture cannot be in true conflict with the findings of human sense or reason.

(Principle of Scriptural Limitation): Since the primary concern of the Scripture is with human salvation, we should not look to Scripture for knowledge of the natural world.

*These in themselves, as McMullin stated, should have been enough for Galileo to just say what he knew and observed and leave it at that. But that's not the ballgame Galileo is playing here and he needed to play by the rules. For that, he put down a couple more themes, just to play nice (I mean, he and Augustine both genuinely believed all of these principles; it's not like Galileo's lying to save himself):

(Principle of Prudence): When trying to discern the meaning of a difficult scriptural passage, one should keep in mind that different interpretations of the text may be possible and that, in consequence, one should not rush in to premature commitment to one of these, especially since further progress in the search for the truth may later undermine this interpretation.

(Principle of Priority of Demonstration): When there is a conflict between a proven truth about the physical world and a particular reading of Scripture, an alternative reading should be sought.

A couple other things to be mentioned was that Galileo didn't believe all the Fathers were in agreement on their interpretations of Scripture. I don't know exactly if that's a theme, but it's worth noting.

Is it satisfying?

So, I missed the last blog entry and I'm really sorry for that. I guess I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn't really feel like I knew how to address it. And that last question of class really threw me off, "Are you satisfied?" or "Is it satisfying?" however it was phrased. Mostly, I wasn't sure what to be satisfied about, but I've just had this clarifying moment while reading Galileo, that what you, Professor Bary, meant by the question was, "Is knowing the big picture satisfying?"

Yes, it's immensely satisfying, thank you for asking. I guess it's satisfying in the way that a mind opening experience can be... and it's been very difficult, I guess, to get to said point in this affair, what with all the reading we've had to do (I'm not complaining, just pointing out the price you must pay to be really knowledgeable).

Now that we're all teary-eyed, let's address the prompt. I'm going to go with #2, the anti-church, anti-Galilean extremes, since it seems most relevant to the mind-opening theme of my blog. I guess I'm really pleased to have been briefed on the history of the church at the time as well as Galileo's relationship to it--which was, for the most part congenial up 'til the Inquisition, etc. That in itself was interesting to read about. I guess I never really thought about Galileo being Catholic or even Christian for that matter so to find out how adamant he was about his work yet how apologetic he was for being so quick with the punches really set a different tone to the idea of the "Galileo Affair."

I never knew there was an anti-Galilean position, much less that Koestler would be profess such a position, but I guess I'm not surprised, ha ha. It's interesting to see how Galileo would be perceived to be in the wrong. Combining Galileo's snarky attitude, his semi-false reasoning on certain arguments (the most important point), and what the world could be perceived to be (IE: people flying off the earth at the equator from sheer speed), it's not a surprise to me that some people did think he was totally off.

So yes. I'm satisfied. [emphatic thumbs up]

Ultimate Mange

I think Koestler finds Kepler to be this sort of stereotypical overzealous and defensive hurt mangy dog like person, but still lovable in a pathetic sort of way nonetheless. From childhood to growing up, Koestler never really writes of Kepler in an unfavourable light exactly. He might point out his shortcomings but ultimately Koestler writes of Kepler redeeming himself in some way.

Copernicus on the other hand seemed to just be this nervous old wishy washy wet rag who never overcame his past and upbringing in the way that Kepler did. Probably I would think Koestler was pretty frustrated with Copernicus whereas you see this zeal written about Kepler that has to indicate some sort of fondness.

I swear I didn't look to the next blog entry.

So I mean last blog didn't exactly answer the blog prompt for Monday (apparently I didn't either. What's wrong with me?)

Anyway. To just sort of restate what I'd said before... or maybe I'm puttin' down the final words about it given that I really finished the chapter this time. Copernicus was not like the rest of the great philosophers (well he's a mathematician). He may rank right up there, but he's the only one who pussed out on his hypotheses and didn't put them right out there with vigor. The irony is that he had the best idea of all of his predecessors but the worst self esteem about them. He knew he was right but that his book was crap. He wanted to keep his hypotheses following Aristotelian physics when in truth that was what was wrong with his hypotheses. He worried too much about being put in a bad place or being looked down upon that he forsook his very student Rheticus, among others. As far as I could tell, he was a wet rag, not this high and mighty God-Man of philosophy.

And I sort of like that. As to why, see previous entry.