> In article
> d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
>
>
>
>  chazwin yahoo.com> wrote:

>> On Sep 4, 4:17 pm, Jerry Kraus yahoo.com> wrote:

>>> On Sep 3, 4:41 pm, "Dan Drake" dandrake.com> wrote:

>

>>>> On Tue, 2 Sep 2008 21:59:25 UTC, z snail-mail.net> wrote:

>>>>>> If anyone wants to know a bit more about the development of the work of
>>>>>> Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo it's well worth finding the Koestler book.- Hide quoted text -

>

>>>>>> - Show quoted text -

>

>>>>> according to an article by arthur c clarke, galileo couldn't resist
>>>>> insulting the officials. i don't know if he's right or not,  but he
>>>>> deserves the benefit of the doubt.

>

>>>> Which "he" is the one who deserves the benefit of the doubt here? The
>>>> honored historical figure, or the writer expressing an opinion about him?
>>>> (Surely not actual historians, who don't rate a mention.) One way of
>>>> reducing the doubt would be to read what Galileo wrote. Then you could
>>>> come back with, let's say, three clear instances of his insulting the
>>>> officials.

>

>>>> The first, I know, will be the big famous one, which is actually false or
>>>> at least an unfounded charge. I'm curious to see what the other two will
>>>> be.

>

>>> Galileo was trying to advance his own views at the expense of those
>>> with more power than he had.  This does tend to get one into
>>> difficulties, in general, unless your evidence is overwhelming --
>>> which Galileo's was not, at the time.  He was able to challenge the
>>> existing system, not establish a new one, as Newton did.

>

>> Newton was just one more link in the chain of reason. The heliocentric
>> system already made mush more sense at the time of Kepler and Galileo.
>> All Newton was to do was to describe it all mathematically from a
>> suggestion made by Robert Hooke.
>> Of the 2 systems available the heliocentric one was far and away the
>> most elegant and simple. The church's objections were never scientific
>> but psychological. Psychological in two ways: first, was that it was
>> thought that "divinely inspired" ideology should and could not be
>> wrong; any gainsaying of church dogma was "heretical", and secondly
>> the heliocentric hypothesis moved the earth away from its special
>> position at the centre of a relatively small universe to a subordinate
>> position which (with the evidential lack of stellar parallax evidence)
>> expanded the distance to the nearest star to unimaginable distances.

>
> Or it could be the RCC entered into a contract where they paid
> Copernicus to develop a method to calculate the date of Easter.
> Copernicus delivered a correct, easily calculated method. Implicit in,
> but not necessary to, his method is a heliocentric model. Since
> the project was funded by the RCC, they contended that they had
> the rights; and prosecuted those who used it without permission.
>
> --
> Michael Press