It felt like a waste to see my post doubled up so i wrote up a little something to fill the space that was already occupied. . . .
QUOTE: People knew the earth was spherical centuries, perhaps millennia, before anyone came up with anything resembling science
Aristotle believed in a geocentric universe where the sun, moon and planets revolved around the earth in precise circular orbits. Discrepancies, such as planets appearing to change in size and their tendency to stop and reverse their courses (retrograde) were explained in the 2nd century AD, by Claudius Ptolemy. In his theory of "epicycles," each planet revolved around a point in its orbit around the earth, and it was actually the point rather than the planet, which was in a perfectly circular orbit around the earth.
Ptolemy, an Egyptian living in Alexandria around 150 AD, gathered and organized the thoughts of the earlier thinkers. His findings were that the earth was a fixed, inert, immovable mass, located at the center of the universe, and all celestial bodies, including the sun and the fixed stars, revolved around it. It was a theory that appealed to human nature, because it fed man's ego.
This view of the universe was not questioned until the beginning of the 16th century, when difficulties in moon phase calculations arose. The Julian calendar needed help deciding on which date Easter was to be commemorated. This brought about a call from the Roman Catholic Church for calendar reform. In 1514 a Polish mathematician named Nicklaus Kopernig received a papal request to look into the problem. Kopernig replied that nothing could be done concerning calendar reform until the relationship between the sun and the moon was resolved. Kopernig, today known as Copernicus, produced the first feasible model of a heliocentric (sun-centered) system. Over the next several decades, Copernicus’ model was considered fiction, though it was reliable in the prediction of the movements of celestial bodies.
In 1530, Copernicus completed and gave to the world his great work De Revolutionibus, which stated that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly. Up until this time the "accepted view" of the western world was in the Ptolemiac theory that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing. Copernicus died in 1543 and never witnessed the controversy he began. It went against all the philosophical and religious beliefs that had been held during those medieval times. An apostate one might say.
Among those who admired the logic and the accuracy of the Copernican model but could not accept a theory that took such a departure from Aristotelian cosmology was a Dane named Tycho Brahe. In 1582 Brahe developed a compromise between Copernicus and Aristotle. In his model, the planets orbited the sun, but the sun and moon still circled a stationary earth. Thus, giving an explanation to the inconsistencies in planetary movement, yet remaining "legal" according to Aristotle and the church.
Two other Italian scientists of the time, Galileo and Bruno, embraced the Copernican theory unreservedly and as a result suffered at the hands of the church inquisitors. Giordano Bruno called and raised Copernicus. He suggested, that space was boundless and that the sun along with its planets, were but one of many number of similar systems. He even proposed that there might be other inhabited worlds with rational beings equal and/or possibly superior to humans. For such blasphemy, Bruno was tried before the Inquisition, condemned and burned at the stake in 1600.
In 1609 Galileo heard of a "spy glass" which had been designed by a Dutch spectacle maker. He constructed several of his own designs based on the device. By January of 1610 Galileo had built about thirty-power telescopes and used them in several discoveries. He found previously unknown stars, four bodies orbiting Jupiter, mountains and craters on the moon and sun spots. This last discovery, led him to track the spots across the face of the sun, he concluded that the sun itself also rotated on an axis. In December 1610, Galileo watched through his telescope as Venus underwent a series of phases similar to those of the moon. This provided him with another piece of observational evidence in support of Copernicus and contradictory to Ptolemy’s epicycles.
Mostly due to Galileo’s work in support of Copernicus, the Vatican, on recommendation from a group of assembled experts decreed on February 24, 1616, that Copernican ideas were not to be taught or defended. Mainly because Copernicus' ideas were found to be philosophically and formally heretical and erroneous in faith.
Galileo obtained permission to publish a dialogue which discussed the two main philosophical systems of the universe, as approved by Pope Urban VIII in 1630. Soon after it was published in 1632, its sale was suspended and Galileo was ordered to stand trial by the Roman Inquisition. On June 22, 1633, under the threat of torture and death, he confessed to failure to comply with the decree of 1616, and was forced to renounce all belief in Copernican theories. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, which later was commuted to permanent house arrest due to his age and health. He died in 1642.
The complete trial record was not released until 1870, and in 1984 a Papal commission admitted that the church had been in the wrong. Regardless of his lack of acceptance at the time, today Galileo’s influence is felt in all scientific fields because he discarded dogmatic metaphysical principles in favor of precise measurement and direct observation, which is the strongest foundation of the scientific method as we now know it. Furthermore, all of the sciences today rely on what is known as the calculus, which was originally developed by Isaac Newton. Years after inventing calculus, Newton said that in effect much of the work had already been done for him, mainly by Galileo Galilei.
After such a winded statement most will understand the direction that this is heading, discoveries and acceptance take a very long time, what is the "mainstream view" is not always correct nor is the view of the church, always correct. Indeed it does take time for some theories to be proven, but it also takes the courage of a few to stand behind it.
CHUCK
of the X-files Class (the truth IS out there)