Friday, February 15, 2008

Happy Birthday Galileo

Lest everyone forget, February 15 is his 404th birthday and Galileo lives! His accomplishments will be remembered 1000 years from today. He lived in at time like today, when mainstream science tried to explain the Universe in epicycles (Inflation and "dark energy"). Galileo was also born into a Renaissance in learning sparked by the new technology of the printing press (The internet). Scientists ignored what today seems basic, that Earth circles the Sun (The speed of light can change.) Though persecuted in his lifetime, Galileo found many supporters like Johannes Kepler. Galileo's books and ideas became popular among many, which made him a threat. Achievements like Galileo's make the trials worthwhile.


Anonymous a quantum diaries survivor said...

Hi Louise,

the physics department where I work is named after Galileo. As you walk up the entrance stairs, you face a brass incision with his head and the sentence, which I love:
"Io stimo piu' il trovar un vero
benche' di cosa liggiera
che il disputare lungamente delle massime questioni
senza conseguir verita' nissuna"
(I value more finding the truth, even on a trivial matter, than discussing at length on the highest matters without obtaining any truth).

We owe Galileo for the scientific method most of all. He really was the first real scientist of the history of man. We had great thinkers before him, but he was the one who understood how rigorous the investigation of nature had to be in order to shed any light.


10:33 AM  
Blogger Pioneer1 said...

Louise cites two similarities with Galileo’s and our own time: scholastic and legal explanation of nature and ignorance of basic rational observations to uphold ancient dogmas. This observation proves that the same scholastic hierarchy is still present in our own time. Only its name changed.

Galileo as an amateur researcher fought scholastic Doctors of Philosophy. The same Doctors of Philosophy now call themselves physicists. Same profession still exists under a different name.

Physicists still perpetuate these things by hiding and corrupting knowledge in order to monetize it for their own profit. Along the way they appropriated Galileo and turned him into a Newtonian god in the service of Newtonism.

10:14 AM  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home

Locations of visitors to this page