Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio Audiobook

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• 
  fritzreg
  March 1st, 2022
  

  

  Great uploads Thanks for sharing this and the other books!

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  ISeededForDays
  March 1st, 2022
  

  Thanks!

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  pbcaddy
  March 1st, 2022
  

  425 years later and nothing has changed. Religion is a pox on humanity. Illogical and pure fantasy. Suckers.
  Thanks for the upload!

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  erouting
  March 1st, 2022
  

  I’m an atheist but I also believe in being historically accurate.

  Galileo wasn’t put on trial for holding views in conflict with the church, common though that fiction is. He was put on trial for stabbing the pope (his personal friend and source of research funding) in the back politically and generally being a complete jerk.

  The church, at the time, was open to his ideas and agreed to let him publish his book after he presented his ideas to the papacy and inquisition. The issue was that he constructed that book as a dialog between himself and the pope/church in which the pope was presented as an incompetent buffoon. He also mocked his friend, the pope, in public for not seeing a metaphor the same way he did. Galileo isn’t the martyr to scientific truth he’s presented as, he was a troll and he was put on trial for being a troll, scientific “denial” was the only choice he left the pope to save face.

  The way his ideas were presented in that book, if you agreed with his ideas you would be at odds with the church and buy into his caricature of the pope. Which made no sense because, again, the pope had no issue with his ideas until Galileo made it personal. The conflict between religion and science we see today largely arose because of Galileo’s poor behavior. Before that point in time the ideas of Thomas Aquinas held sway, which were much more favorable to scientific endeavor.

  The lesson from Galileo’s life isn’t “stand up for what you believe in” its “don’t troll your friends after they go out on a limb as a personal favor for you and help to finance your research.”

  I first heard about this in the Teaching Company’s history of science lectures (good listen, highly recommend) and then actually downloaded his book and read it. If I were the pope I’d have felt pretty hard done by on a personal level.

  Again, I’m an atheist, I resent religion, but I value historical accuracy too and claiming that the church was trying to censor scientific truth, in this specific instance, is far wide of the mark.

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  caesar963
  March 2nd, 2022
  

  Yeah but, the factual historical record is never as emotionally comforting & “secksy” as the contrived stuff.

  It does seem to repeat the same old canards, endlessly refuted, from the pop-science section. Galileo was never in danger of execution or had “his life in the balance” (Get to the choppah, G-man!). The proceeding lasted an hour. And thereafter he continued to publish, and indeed, to worship freely; living for a time with senior Church figures, who were also friends & admirers. Often these simplistic, black ‘n white tales ludicrously extend & inflate the affair, with no basis in fact.

  It’s quite accurate that his personality was somewhat “alienating” to say the least. (He wouldn’t return emails or texts in a timely fashion, etc.)

  As to the controversy, the priest-astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus (he built his own observatory), had already formulated a similar heliocentric model yrs before. Heliocentrism was never a heresy. It was so hot back then.

  The originator of Atomic theory, Jesuit Fr. Roger Boscovich, used the same theories - uncontroversially - in his great work, which does go to indicate that the Galileo affair involved a personality clash.

  In addition, Galileo could not account for the stellar parallax shift issue, which was of principal concern in terms of presenting definitive proofs.

  A major issue of the controversy was, of course, the background noise of the Reformation. It was comparable to the Cold War, with significant tensions forming the climate of the time. Protestants launched broadsides against Catholicism for being more committed to reason, in the Church-created university system & elsewhere, than literalist interpretation.

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  pryderi
  March 2nd, 2022
  

  

  It was of course regrettable that the Church tried to murder Galileo for telling the truth, but more regrettable that we still have bigots convinced that this is the only way to deal with honest people.
  Livio’s book deals with the Galileo affair from his initial arrest around 1633 to the censorship of Bishop Pio Paschini’s evaluation of the case (taking us up to the 1980s).
  It is essential reading for science deniers everywhere.
  One can hope.

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio
• 
  caesar963
  March 2nd, 2022
  

  …QED, natch. More evidence of the factual historical record never being as emotionally comforting & sexxy as the contrived stuff.
  Historically (inter alia) illiterate bigots need it to be “troo” for ideological purposes, so they cling. Such denial is more important than truth for ‘em. They “murder” truth (see immed above internet “skullershippe”).

  Copernicus published prior to this; & the originator of Atomic theory, Fr. Boscovich, published subsequently, using the same theories, entirely uncontroversially.
  But such hateful bigotry as above seems invincible.

  Reading the record of the actual proceedings doesn’t even take that long. Seek out a simple explanation of stellar parallax shift. The scales fall. However, that’d be like Kryptonite, wouldn’t it? Tracts seem ever preferable.

  Galileo and the Science Deniers - Mario Livio

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