One Gunman, Two Spheres Aha! Astronomy and the history of science -- now you all are playing in the Lunatic sandbox. [Please note: I am replying after being away for 3 weeks. Extracts from previous posts at the bottom. Forgive me if I have missed something or botched a quote extraction while wading through reams of queued mail.] WHAT COPERNICUS AND GALILEO DID Copernicus was not really a Copernican. He proposed a mathematical model that he believed allowed more elegant formulations and more accurate predictions. He was more an astronomical technician than a visionary. Copernicus published a better model when modern (more accurate) observations had revealed some fatal drawbacks for the strictly terrocentric approach--his knowledgeable contemporaries were widely in agreement that the old model was no longer adequate. Copernicus was the first to propose a non-terrocentric model that had any advantages over the classic Ptolemaic model. Copernicus did not abandon epicycles and deferrents. He added needless complexity to his model by forcing some objects to be centered on earth (mostly from habit). But he did oblige people to give serious consideration to the advantages (and implications) of moving the earth out of its former privileged position. Copernicus did not take any positions on cosmology. When he published, however, Europe was in a state of intellectual ferment. Those who came after used his work as a springboard into a revised cosmology that was revolutionary. Perhaps the single most important thing that Copernicus did was inspire Kepler. Kepler completed Brahe s program of detailed and accurate observations and devised an really elegant model (based on ellipses) that completely eliminated epicycles and removed the last traces of terrocentrism. Other scientists found Kepler s data and analysis compelling. After Kepler, there was no way to go back. Galileo did not really do anything to prove Copernicus (or Kepler) was right. His gizmo made even more accurate observations possible and probably sped up the process of conversion to Copernicanism. What he certainly did was to show every merchant and petty nobleman how to look up at the heavens for himself. The primary contribution of Galileo was, perhaps, to popularize the notion that the heavens were not as celestial as most people had thought. As far as the Church goes, scientists were already pretty much starting onto their own track. When the church says the heavens are perfect and anyone with a couple of marks could buy a telescope and see all the heavenly grot and crud, people start to doubt the church. Church attacks on people like Galileo were a sign of failure, not of power. If Kepler and Galileo had been dismissed as crackpots, the Church would have ignored them. MYTH OF THE LONE RANGER Science was not carried out in isolation. In Medieval and Renaissance times, scientists and scholars corresponded voluminously with just about everyone who had reason to be interested. The modern university grew from study groups that gathered around scholars. In particular, Copernicus circulated his ideas for forty years or so before he published _De Revolutionibus_. His basic ideas had been published formally at least twice before, as well. He had had plenty of chances to bounce his ideas off of other experts and to understand and meet their main objections. By the time _De Revolutionibis_ was published, few of his colleagues could have been startled by its contents. Which is not to say everyone immediately cried Hallelujah! and jumped on the bandwagon, of course. The Ptolemaic model had become deeply embedded in cosmology, religion, and all sorts of physics. It took some time for all the ripples of the new paradigm to settle down. But it was pretty clear that after Copernicus and Kepler, the terms of the discussion had changed irretrievably. WEB OF KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF You must understand that science is not a guy in a lab having brilliant ideas and proving them. Science is a complex web of observations, theories, predictions, and approaches. Science is the whole system that allows lots of guys in labs to work together to advance our knowledge and understanding. A new idea is not science until someone can demonstrate how it fits into the web of what we know and until someone relates it to the best theories we have on hand. The result may be to add to the current models, to replace the current models, or to discard (or shelve) the current idea. (A number of notions that looked like dead ends--such as terrocentrism--have been revived when new data or new problems came up.) And most science is the effort to get all the details to come out right--to get better measurements, to try to apply an idea a little outside of how it has been used before, to capture another exotic particle. Normal science is not so much coming up with new ideas as sorting out all the implications of the last batch of new ideas. STORYTELLING Unfortunately, the true nature of science is often hidden by the storytelling inclinations of those who report on it. Real, normal science can be pretty dull. Storytellers want action, simple narrative threads, and Heroes. No one can figure out how to make a hero out of long-winded scholastics such as Buridan and Oresme who made essential advances that inspired Copernicus (such as impetus; possibility of applying the same physical laws to heaven and earth; criticism of Aristotle s proofs re immobility of earth). And Tycho Brahe spent his time getting better decimal places in observations (and remained Ptolemaic). Snoozerama. It is easy and traditional to hang science stories onto the framework of the Misunderstood Outsider who turned out to be right after all, despite a lifetime of rejection and harrasment. But it simply doesn t work that way. OUTSIDER FALLACY -- LONE RANGER VS. LONE GUNMAN It is now quite common to take the Heroic oversimplification one step farther into complete absurdity. Copernicus was an oppressed outsider who fought for the Forces of Good until he prevailed? Well then, the fact that someone is outsider must be proof that he is right. If he weren t really right, why would all those establishment scientists be lined up against him in a persistent conspiracy! ::pause to rub temples:: We want to believe that Galileo was a heroic Lone Ranger of Science. It makes a pleasing story. But most of those who claim to be Lone Rangers are actually just Lone Gunmen. Scientists are plagued by these people. A typical Lone Gunman is fixated on one source or notion. He clings to a tattered manuscript, his own _Summa_, that is obviously filled with errors, irrelevant facts, obsolete notions, gibberish, buzzwords, and nonsense (often dressed up in mathematical formulas that mean nothing). He presses it on people who could validate his hobbyhorse, desperately seeking approval, yet embracing every rejection as proof that he is, indeed, a misunderstood genius. Why do knowledgeable people dismiss the work of the Lone Gunman? Most often because he is really wrong. SOME USEFUL REFERENCES _The Copernican Revolution_, Thomas S. Kuhn _The Discovery of Kepler s Laws: The Interaction of Science, Philosophy, and Religion_, Job Kozhamthadam. _Why People Believe Weird Things_, Michael Shermer _The Flight from Science and Reason_, eds. Gross, Levitt, and Lewis I hold that opinions which are quite erroneous should be avoided. -- Copernicus JS Pereira wrote: What I would ask, is that if this mythic epic is this "evident", why no one with the exception of Rydberg has noticed it? This isn't to say that scholars always have a consensus, far from it, but generally speaking, when a theory is limited to one person, you sort of have to ask why. Tcku (Night Wind) wrote: Do the words Galileo or Copernicus mean anything to you? Unless you a) have the reputation b) get your results published and c) independently corroborated by at least 2 or 3 others, forget it you are just a flake, and so is your theory because no one else has seen it that way. Even when Galileo tried to prove Copernicus' theory with the telescope, he suffered the wrath of the inquisition. So, the "test of the masses" or "everybody knows it ain't so" is no test. Check out the sources, or do the experiments yourself to verify it. HoddMimir (William P. Reaves) wrote: Why did no one else notice that the Earth revolved around the sun before Copernicus? Many scholars have noticed inconsistancies, questioned references, drawn analogies that Rydberg supports, etc. All I could say is that there is a first time for everything. dfreyburg (Douglas Freyburger) wrote: A point in this line of analogy: Rydberg did his work 90 years ago. Ninety years after Copernicus, hadn't almost all scientists accepted the sun-centric model of the planets? I understand that scholars work at a different rate than astronomers, but using Copernicus as a model, Rydberg should already have had his day.