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.

Copernicus is another iceberg!

To be fair, most of who/what we've discussed in class has been relatively similar to an iceberg. We all came to class with a little bit of information on a handful of various philosophers and astronomers (well everybody else did, I didn't know much at all, haha) and we read a little and come to find out that there really was more than that.

Well, maybe not in Copernicus's case given how, as the title so appropriately asserts, timid he was.

Anyhow, I seem to be more interested in the personalities of all these various movers and shapers in the world of astronomy. Which is all fine and dandy but somewhat irrelevant nonetheless. I guess their personalities make me better understand their ideals and motivations and make them less lofty and in many ways less respectable. I mean, I'm not trying to break people down or anything, but it's always nice to be able to feel like you can disagree with somebody who was as influential as, say, Plato or Aristotle.

My biggest thing with the Copernicus section is the idea that, jeepers, would somebody else have pushed the idea of geocentrism if Giese and Rheticus hadn't been around to reassure Copernicus that his ideas were valuable? Or what if Rheticus hadn't been so devoted to write the narratio prima? I guess that's not really a good question, because the same could be said about anything in history. What if so-and-so hadn't done such-and-such?

Let me come back to reblog about it. The reading hasn't sunk in quite yet.

Meanwhile, the whole church thing reminded me of Brad Neely and his brilliance. Let me apologize for how absolutely crude he is, but you must admit, it's pretty witty:

Take... Wait, what take are we on?

In the readings (wow what a lame way to start a blog), I found it interesting not in the fact that the Church and Aristotle were challenged (or rather that somebody challenged them...) (because I mean you figure that that's going to happen anyway) but how the laws that they managed to set so nearly in stone were contradicted. From cadavers to free will, this working from the first step forward with me learning about astronomy and how things came to be is all very fascinating.

Anyway. Aristotle's ideas needed to be challenged for the simple fact that they weren't true. They weren't based on legitimate empirical evidence and I think these discoveries resulted in not just a change of ideals but a change in the way we come about these ideals. Or maybe I'm just looking too far into something that isn't really there. I don't know. This is how I see it. Every time something that we take for granted and true is broken down by legitimate evidence, it challenges us to look further into anything else that we might take for truth. And that is always a good place to be in.

As it pertains to this class, at least they're sort of trying. Or I mean. At least somebody is trying to challenge these things. I wouldn't say that Galileo was exactly inspired by the notion to challenge things because, just from the little bit I read of Galileo's daughter, he seemed always the kind of rebellious guy to go around telling people that tradition is silly, etc., and I mean maybe some of that was his background (what with his father, right, challenging Pythagoras's music theories?). Anyway, I think just the whole mentality of things needing to be challenged and being challenged and changing thus was starting to heat up, whether or not the Church liked it. So there.