My Sociology Textbook Had This to Say About Galileo

"About 400 years ago, the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo (1564-1642) helped launch the Scientific Revolution with a series of startling discoveries. Dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, he discovered some of the laws of gravity; making his own telescope, he observed the solar system and found that earth orbited the sun, not the other way around.

For his trouble, Galileo was challenged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had preached for centuries that earth stood motionless at the centre of the universe. Galileo only made matters worse by responding that religious leaders had no business talking about matters of science. Before long, he found his work banned and himself under house arrest."

This was under the title of "Does Science Threaten Religion"

This is being taught in a university setting. Even if it isn't a history class this is pretty messed up.

The textbook is Society: The Basics by Macionis et al.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Y8XfTUgCRlc
galileowaswrong.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Yikes, that's shockingly incorrect. It's not even misconstrued, it's just a blatant lie.

Are you in a class where this is being taught? You should probably have a word with the head of the department or something.

As someone who knows nothing about this time period what actually happened?

Not him, but I doubt people actually care if it's 100% factual, I'm sure they're simply happy that the students know he existed, and was responsible for x,y, and z discoveries, that were important because a, b, and c.

didnt like pythagoras hypothesize that the earth was not the center of the universe and revolved around a central flame back in like 500bc?

yeah but non-Mediterranean Euros are notoriously slow-witted

First, the 'dropped objects' meme was discovered somewhere else, long before him. In Asia, I think. Doesn't sociology adore diversity?
Second, somewhere else in Asia/Greece, they imagined a heliocentric model.

Third, the author is an American so it is obvious that he just has a typical anti-Catholic bias.

Fourth and finally, religion ought to threaten science. Science ought to be bleeding and shredded across the pavement. Science has a debt that it has failed to pay.

"The Church did not condemn scientific inquiry - in fact, most people at the time that we would call "scientists" (a term not used until 1833, when it was first coined by William Whewell) were also churchmen. And it was not even a problem for someone to show that a traditional interpretation of Scripture or a teaching of the Church had to be reinterpreted by reference to a new understanding of the physical world. The Church taught that divine revelation and the revelations of reason all came from the same ultimate source and so if they seemed to be in conflict, it was our understanding that was the problem. As quoted above, Cardinal Bellarmine noted to Galileo that if heliocentrism could be objectively demonstrated then the scriptures that seemed to support geocentrism should and would be reassessed. Though he added "but this is not a thing to be done in haste". The problem was that Galileo and the minority of scholars who accepted heliocentrism at that stage had not objectively proven heliocentrism, since there were still several objections that they had not fully answered and which were not answered until long after Galileo's death (the stellar parallax problem was not definitively answered until 1838). The further problem - and the one that caused Galileo to be investigated by the Inquisition in the first place - was that the post-Reformation Catholic Church took a dim view of non-theologians interpreting the Bible. No-one had paid much attention to heliocentrism until Galileo began re-interpreting scripture to show that it could conform to the Copernican model. This was what brought the whole issue to a head and sparked the Galileo Affair.

After Bellarmine's ruling in 1616 Galileo had to agree that he had not proven heliocentrism. He agreed not to present the Copernican model as objective fact, since he could not prove it to be such. He agreed only to explore it and teach it as a calculating device for astronomical purposes. In 1632 the Pope asked Galileo to write a book presenting both the Copernican and Ptolemaic models, with arguments as to the strengths and weaknesses of both. Galileo produced The Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems, but did so in a way that made it clear he considered the Copernican model superior. He also put some of the arguments used by the Pope into the mouth of a character in his dialogue called "Simplicio" - which in Italian meant "the fool".

Angered by what was seen as defiance of the 1616 injunction, the Pope effectively withdrew his support for Galileo and allowed him to be tried by the Inquisition for breaking his agreement in the way he argued in the Dialogue. The Inquisition found that he had and he was punished for this.

The Church had been already well on the way to taking account of and accepting the implications of the Copernican Revolution. Jesuit scholars in the Collegium Romanum were happily taking Galileo's lead and using telescopic observations to support, critique or adjust Copernicus' ideas and they and other Catholic scholars were engaging with astronomers across Europe, including Kepler and Brahe, in the debates about the various models under discussion at the time.

It was petty academic jealousy by other scientists that dragged Galileo's work into the scrutiny of the Inquisition and it was the personalities involved and the politics of the time that meant this escalated into his condemnation and a condemnation of Copernicanism generally."

Sociology students are already horribly student enough, dubsman, they don't need to be preaching lies about religion and science too.

horribly stupid*

Galileo basically skipped peer review and insulted the pope.

What tripe. Full of backbiting Christian rhetoric to make it appear as if the Catholic Church were far more progressive than it actually was.

>S-scholars were already critiquing and refining Copernicus's ideas, if he hadn't gone against the church he surely would've been vindicated!
>The Pope was just doing his job of condemning the faithless, he wasn't throwing around his political power for virtueless reasons!
>The One Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church is the be-all and end-all of scientific and religious thought at this time! What did Galileo expect if he went against such a vital institution?
>Galileo DIDN'T EVEN PROVE HELIOCENTRISM. The Church was clearly strictly interested only in the absolute truth and reality of the situation, and since he had no evidence, naturally all God-fearing people must still defer to the Ptolemaic model [that the Catholic church worked so many centuries to reconcile with scripture].

And people wonder why the church is a laughingstock in modernity. Its most ardent followers have lacked either vision or humility for the past 500 years.

Educate yourselves heretics

youtube.com/watch?v=Y8XfTUgCRlc

galileowaswrong.com/

Science is irrelevant.

Galileo literally thought that the tides were caused by the earth's rotation and that planets orbited in a circular motion. He was barely a scientist.

>galileowaswrong.com/
Oh this should be good.

Then why didn't the church put him under house arrest for that, instead of a defensible theory? It would've looked a lot better in the eyes of posterity, rather than being one more step into iniquity and triviality.

You are irrelevant.

Wrong, nothing is more relevant than myself.

Yeah, sociology is super fucked up.

I had to take two courses, included one called, "Social Problems" which is exactly what your bases inference tells you it is.

Shocking that it was taught in a University

>current year
>shocking that unis are shit

>For his trouble, Galileo was challenged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had preached for centuries that earth stood motionless at the centre of the universe. Galileo only made matters worse by responding that religious leaders had no business talking about matters of science. Before long, he found his work banned and himself under house arrest."
What is wrong with this statement?

Well for one thing
>which had preached for centuries that earth stood motionless at the centre of the universe
There were almost a dozen competing cosmological theories floating around at the time and the Church put up with and even commended certain heliocentric models. Galileo's theory wasn't the problem, it was that he taught it as a fact without definitive proof and that he called the Pope (his long time friend and benefactor) an idiot.
>Before long, he found his work banned
No idea where this came from. He was just as prolific after he was placed under House Arrest.

>Sociology

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

what a useless post kys faggot

>100 years ago, all Theses were written in Latin
>Today, people are arguing for the legitimacy of Urban Ebonics as a proper dialect

Wikipedia says heliocentrism was formally declared heretical and his and all other heliocentric books were banned.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Strawman: the post

That was Aristarchus of Samos. Proposed the heliocentric model 1800 years before Copernicus.

>The papal Congregation of the Index preferred a stricter prohibition, and so with the Pope's approval, on March 5 the Congregation banned all books advocating the Copernican system, which it called "the false Pythagorean doctrine, altogether contrary to Holy Scripture."

You know that's how science works, right? Old ideas replace old ones as new scientists obtain more evidence through observation and experimentation. Galileo was among the first to show that gravity is a force that acts the same on all objects. Just as important he discovered the nature pendulum, thereby laying the groundwork for classical physics and also paving the way for the construction of mechanical clocks and bell towers, which would replace the sundial as a method of keeping time.

Nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing special about Latin and AAVE isn't just "bad english".

>tides were caused by the earth's rotation and that planets orbited in a circular motion.

Wait, they aren't?

>Fourth and finally, religion ought to threaten science. Science ought to be bleeding and shredded across the pavement. Science has a debt that it has failed to pay.

What debt is that, exactly? I hope you don't mean the failure if science to explain the mysteries of the universe. That is by design. Science is just the process of testing things. It cannot answer things that cannot be tested. Any idea you may have about science supposing to explain the metaphysical is either based in misconception or an intentional and dishonest straw man.

Forgot to add that he also thought up the concept of inertia to explain why objects don't fall off the Earth when it spins

the orbit of the moon around the earth causes tides. planets orbit in elliptical motion, as shown by Kepler using Tycho Brahe's autistic collection of terrestrial data.

But the rotation of the earth itself alone can still cause waves. The moon just does it more often.

Catholics are the greatest historical revisionists ever

>the guy whom Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking called "the father of modern science" was barely a scientist

The things you hear on this shithole...

Scientists come to incorrect conclusions all the time, that one is hardly an unreasonable one.

There are waves which are observed in moonless planets, so he wasn't wrong about that one.

is that so? i guess i believe you

Aside from the moon, waves can be caused by the planet's rotation, the gravitational pull of the sun and seismic activity.

Jesus christ, not even my physics professors still think it was like that. Sociology is shit.

Probably because your physics professor isn't a historian

There would be literally zero problem had he refined his work with Kepler's findings.

The initial Thesis wasn't the issue, it was the fact that he refused to accept not being accepted and wrote a diatribe against the pope.

The accepted model of the Church wasn't even a Biblical one, but an Aristotelian one. It was a Scientific debate.

Okey then, my history of science and mathematics professors also don't spout this meme.

are waves the same things as tides though? i'm not really familiar with what a tide is lol

>The accepted model of the Church wasn't even a Biblical one, but an Aristotelian one

Same thing. Aristotleanism and Neoplatonism had become pretty much a part of Christianity. They accepted it because it was in accordance with what was written in the Bible.

so galileo was basically the first fedora, can anyone shoop one on OP's pic?

>The accepted model of the Church wasn't even a Biblical one, but an Aristotelian one. It was a Scientific debate.
Then why did they call it contrary to scripture when they banned it?

Because they wanted to punish him. It's politics; you can't punish him for being an asshole you hate, so you bust him on trumped up charges of Heresy.

It was the Counter Reformation, the papacy was not in the mood to tolerate people who threw shade at them.

Or maybe the Catholic Church had been committed to an Aristotelian interpretation of the bible since it's foundation and he really was a heretic to them.

They didn't just punish him, but banned any talk of heliocentrism.

>definitive truth
>in science
Galileo's observations through his telescope supported heliocentrism, and the church did think this possibility was heretical.
You guys must stop protecting the church as if it was a beacon of kindness, selflessness, etc. as history has proven otherwise.

Galileo was lucky to not get fucking roasted like Giordano Bruno.

fuck it i did it myself

You're out of your mind. The West didn't even know who Aristotle was until he was reintroduced through Spanish Muslims in the 12th century, and when he was first introduced, people didn't take to him, instead sticking to Plato whose conceptions fit Christianity much better.

Aristotle didn't become super ingrained in Western Christendom until Thomas Aquinas

Aristotle hadn't been super ingrained in Western Christendom for 1000 years, but 500 years instead. Damn, my whole point is gone.

Yeah, and it was scientific dogma, not religious.

It'd be like calling a quantum physicist a heretic because he contradicted Newton.

>The West didn't even know who Aristotle was until he was reintroduced through Spanish Muslims in the 12th century, and when he was first introduced, people didn't take to him, instead sticking to Plato whose conceptions fit Christianity much better.
"no". Plato was not known in Europe until the late 15th century, when immigrants/refugees from the Byzantine East arrived to Italy bringing manuscripts and giving impetus to ancient Greek studies, which previous Italians had attempted to master but could not until Byzantine assistance. The ONLY work of Plato available to the Western Europe in the Middle Ages was the Timaeus. Any other work that was thought to be Platonic was, in fact, Neo-Platonic (e.g. Plotinus, Boethius), which was an entirely different from Classical Platonism. Aristotle's works, on the other hand, existed in abundance and were eagerly copied and studied throughout the Middle Ages.

They took it as a scientific dogma because it agreed with their religious dogma.

The bible is full of verses that indicate a stationary Earth and they cited them when they banned heliocentrism.

>don't really do anything until he talks shit about the Pope through Simplicio
>IT WAS REALLY THE SCIENCE THEY DISAGREED WITH GUISE
Yeah, no.

Yes, and they did that to nail him on a canon charge.
It was no different than nailing Al Capone for his taxes.

If Galileo hadn't acted like a jackass, the Church probably would have come around, like they did with other people who contradicted Ancients.

Vesalius contradicted Galen, and everyone eventually got over it.

Galileo got nailed because he shit talked the pope, and because he failed to properly secure his thesis, which wasn't even correct, just more correct in that it disproved geocentrism.

If the Church would have had an inherent Theological Adversity to Heliocentrism, they would have taken him to trial immediately.

While it's true that Aristotelean cosmology was not a major feature of church teaching until the 12th century. But Boethius did translate two of Aristotle's logic works. So it is not like the early medievals had no knowledge of Aristotle at all.

Anyways, the fact of the matter was that the strongest arguments against heliocentism were never answered by Galileo , and his defaming his benefactor, the pope, treating his theory as if it had decisive evidence for it, and pissing off the wrong authorities, led to his persecution. It was a questionable use of political power, but it was not an issue of scientific fact versus religious faith.