Niels Harrit - legal to call him a looney

[ka9q]

Well, it became obvious to anyone who'd read the book which system he favoured.  That, you'll forgive the reference, he wasn't "just asking questions."

No, he was actually answering them...

Thanks to Jason for a fascinating story, though I flinch at the highly subjective word "arrogant". The term is still a favorite of those on the losing side of a debate unable to answer the factual arguments from the other side. It's often lobbed at scientists who shoot down creationism and 'intelligent' design, for example.

I know it was a very different time, but it's still been several centuries since arrogance was universally considered a valid reason to deprive someone of their freedom. And sometimes those on the losing side of an issue even deserve to be ridiculed, especially those in positions of undeserved authority accustomed to a monopoly on what might also be called arrogance. Like, say, the medieval Church.

"One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." - H.L. Mencken

[gillianren]

I was watching a list of the hundred most influential people of the millennium, back in fall of '99, and number two on their list was Newton.  And all I could think about was how angry he'd be that he wasn't number one.  Sometimes, "arrogant" is the right word.  It's just that "arrogant" is not a synonym for "wrong."

[ka9q]

So who was #1 on that list?

[Jason Thompson]

Thanks to Jason for a fascinating story,

You're welcome.

though I flinch at the highly subjective word "arrogant". The term is still a favorite of those on the losing side of a debate unable to answer the factual arguments from the other side. It's often lobbed at scientists who shoot down creationism and 'intelligent' design, for example.

I agree the term is often misused. However, Galileo most certainly reaned its use. It was not just people who opose his views who thought so. He was widely regarded as such at the time and since, and reading his works and letter shows how obnoxiously arrogant he could be.

I know it was a very different time, but it's still been several centuries since arrogance was universally considered a valid reason to deprive someone of their freedom.

Alone it wouldn't have been, but when it is used to ridicule the highest authority in the land you can't expect to escape unscathed.

And sometimes those on the losing side of an issue even deserve to be ridiculed, especially those in positions of undeserved authority accustomed to a monopoly on what might also be called arrogance. Like, say, the medieval Church.

However true that may be, Galileo had enaged in numerous conversations with the Pope about his belief in the heliocentric system. They had debated it at length, and by all accounts quite reasonably. There are no reports of heated arguments and by all accounts the two men were good friends. Galileo had argued his side, the Pope had argued (quite rightly) that the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter, while they show that not everything has Earth as its primary, are not in themselves proof of a moving Earth. The Tychonic system was still held by some as a pretty decent compromise which would also answer the observations. As a way of modelling the movements of the heavens there was no objection to the heliocentric theory. As an actual description of reality there was. Galileo was given an opportunity to present the arguments, instead of which he stuck a knife between the Pope's shoulder blades, publicly ridiculing his arguments and effectively calling him an idiot. That understandably annoyed him. Whether his response was justified is another discussion in itself, but you have to admit Galileo pretty well shot himself in the foot.

[gillianren]

So who was #1 on that list?

Gutenberg.  On the grounds that, without him, we probably wouldn't have heard of most of the others or else that they relied on him for their own advances.  Though that didn't stop them from putting Elizabeth I lower than both Shakespeare and Drake.

Oh, and don't forget that the character who was advocating geocentrism in the book was called "Simplicio."  That's not exactly subtle.  Galileo claimed he'd named the guy after an earlier astronomer, but would you have believed him?

[qt]

Indeed. If ever time travel is invented I'd love to bring Galileo back to talk to some of these people who are using him to defend their crackpottery and watch him dismantle them in style....

He could also possibly get over his arrogance by observing the tact and subtlety with which scientists today usually talk about creationists.

That said, this great division which was the product of Galileo's arrogance is not much in evidence to me.

[ka9q]

That sounds like an interesting list; can you provide a link?

I wonder about the criteria. Should it include inventors of influential inventions? Even though I'm an engineer I'd lean against it. Contrary to popular belief, few if any inventions come from some solitary genius toiling away in his lab, conceiving things no one else would ever have thought of. (The patent system is based on this myth, one of the reasons it's so thoroughly broken.)

The real basis of invention is the underlying science, so Newton certainly deserves his spot. Applications of a new scientific principle usually appear very quickly, often by several people at the same time. The classic example is the telephone, invented nearly simultaneously by Bell and Grey.

So I wonder about Gutenberg. The moveable type printing press was certainly the most influential invention of the last milennia, but if Gutenberg hadn't invented it don't you think someone else would have?

OTOH, Shakespeare probably deserves his spot on the list. Had he never existed, no number of monkeys would ever have written the same set of plays.

[ka9q]

Galileo had argued his side, the Pope had argued (quite rightly) that the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter, while they show that not everything has Earth as its primary, are not in themselves proof of a moving Earth. The Tychonic system was still held by some as a pretty decent compromise which would also answer the observations.

William of Ockham/Occam lived from 1287-1347, so wouldn't educated people of Galileo's time be well aware of his Razor? That's all you really need to reject the Tychonic system given everyone's observations.

[Jason Thompson]

William of Ockham/Occam lived from 1287-1347, so wouldn't educated people of Galileo's time be well aware of his Razor? That's all you really need to reject the Tychonic system given everyone's observations.

Which observations in particular at the time went against the Tychonic system?

The point still stands, however: educated people of Galileo's time knew that ticking off the leader of the Catholic Church was not a good move. Galileo had his ear. They were friends. He'd discussed it all with him and he had a great chance to present his arguments to the world. In doing so he called pretty well the entire church, and the Pope in particular, idiots. For a clever man that was a remarkably stupid thing to do.

[ka9q]

Which observations in particular at the time went against the Tychonic system?

You miss the point. Occam's Razor does not require observations inconsistent with the Tychonic system. The observations are consistent with both the Tychonic and heliocentric systems, so the mere fact that the Tychonic system is considerably more complex is enough to reject it.

In other words, the Tychonic system fails because of its gratuitous complexity. The Pope presumably wanted to retain it for purely religious reasons but religion has no place in science, period. (Not everyone knew that then or even now, but that doesn't make it any less true.)

Now if new observations consistent only with the Tychonic system had appeared, then its extra complexity would no longer be gratuitous. It would be justified, at least until some other hypothesis also consistent with the evidence were to appear with some of that complexity removed.

[gillianren]

That sounds like an interesting list; can you provide a link?

Astonishingly, I can, despite the fact that the "official" link is just to study questions.  http://www.wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus170/biography100  Note that I take no responsibility for the vagaries of spelling, capitalization, and so forth on this page.

I wonder about the criteria. Should it include inventors of influential inventions? Even though I'm an engineer I'd lean against it. Contrary to popular belief, few if any inventions come from some solitary genius toiling away in his lab, conceiving things no one else would ever have thought of. (The patent system is based on this myth, one of the reasons it's so thoroughly broken.)

I don't think "no one else would have done it" should be the point, so I'm fine with inventors' making the list.  (Though few did.)  I think the fact that they did do it is sufficient.

The real basis of invention is the underlying science, so Newton certainly deserves his spot. Applications of a new scientific principle usually appear very quickly, often by several people at the same time. The classic example is the telephone, invented nearly simultaneously by Bell and Grey.

Sure, but let's then discuss calculus, shall we?

So I wonder about Gutenberg. The moveable type printing press was certainly the most influential invention of the last milennia, but if Gutenberg hadn't invented it don't you think someone else would have?

Sure.  But they didn't.  If someone else had, someone else would have that spot.  (Millennium.  "Millennia" is plural.)  Leaving aside that there are some people on the list that I don't consider all that influential (Caruso?  Really?) and that I quibble with some of their placement, there are very few people who I'd say could not have had what they did done by someone else, and most of those are artists.  There is only one Mozart, and while some of the changes in music were inevitable, they wouldn't all have come from a single person.

OTOH, Shakespeare probably deserves his spot on the list. Had he never existed, no number of monkeys would ever have written the same set of plays.

Sure.  But we never would have heard of him had the Puritans succeeded in closing the playhouses, which they didn't, because Elizabeth I stopped them.  Ergo, she is more influential than he is.  It seems I'm wrong and Drake isn't even on the list, but she created an England with room for a Drake and a Shakespeare.  The first English colonies in the New World were founded during her reign.  She's too low on the list.

[Jason Thompson]

So I wonder about Gutenberg. The moveable type printing press was certainly the most influential invention of the last milennia, but if Gutenberg hadn't invented it don't you think someone else would have?

Of course, but then if Neil Armstong hadn't been first out of the LM in July 1969 someone else would have. Does that take away his historical significance?

It doesn't matter that someone would have done something or invented something or discovered something: The point is that one person did and deserves the credit for such. You could make the same argument for new scientific principles: if Einstein hadn't come up with special and general relativity don't you think someone else would have?

[Jason Thompson]

You miss the point. Occam's Razor does not require observations inconsistent with the Tychonic system. The observations are consistent with both the Tychonic and heliocentric systems, so the mere fact that the Tychonic system is considerably more complex is enough to reject it.

The Tychonic system is not considerably more complex. In fact it is beautifully elegant in explaining the motions of the heavens and explaining why no-one can tell that the Earth is moving. At the time Kepler's elliptical orbits were not widely accepted, and all three systems, Ptolemaic, Copernican and Tychonic, were absurdly complex, with equants and epicycles and so on. Putting Earth in the middle with everything else going round the Sun is one little bit of added complexity on a system that is already swimming in it, and the motion of the Earth required for the Copernican model was not only against religious dogma but against every sense. Remember also that the notion of light speed and the idea that stars were trillions of miles away (hence the lack of detectable parallax at the time) had not been widely accepted or understood either, so what we now think of as the absurd notion that those distant stars are whipping around at speeds many times that of light in order to make one revolution around a static Earth in 24 hours was not such an absurd notion then.

You could just as easily apply occam's razor to the answer to the question 'why don't we detect the motion of Earth directly?' Option one: because we, the air, the water, and everything else are moving along with it through a vacuum that leaves no trail to provide any evidence of our motion that we can detect, and that the stars are actually many orders of magnitude further away than we ever thought possible so we don't detect parallax, and that basically our entire understanding of the world around us is wrong, or option 2: Earth isn't moving. I know which seems simpler to me. I'm an educated man, but I lack the tools necessary to detect the evidence of Earth's motion, and if I didn't know how far away the stars I see every (clear) night are, I'd lack half the framework I needed to conclude that a rotating universe is a ridiculous notion.

[twik]

In doing so he called pretty well the entire church, and the Pope in particular, idiots. For a clever man that was a remarkably stupid thing to do.

Unfortunately, scientific smarts and political (or even interpersonal) smarts do not seem to have any direct correlation. Which is why we don't see a world ruled by scientists (although many rulers have had scientific interests).

In this case, it was particularly unwise to write a treatise treating the religious authorities as simpletons, when they are actually smart enough to read the work and understand that is what you are doing. If he'd been dealing with stupider people, he might have gotten away with it.

[allancw]

I got lost in all the wordage: is there anyone here that supports Harrit? I mean, even one person?