GenMarshall
High Elven ISB Capt & Ghost Agent
How would I change history? Prevent George W. Bush from ever being elected by having the votes go to the other guy! 
How would you change history?
- Thread starter Sharwood
- Start date
Ok, whatever time-period. There was some period where scientific progress was in many ways hindered.
How long did it take before we could say that the Earth was a globe and that it wasn't the center of the universe?
I'm not sure where I got that from the Dark Ages from, but as you can tell I am no master on the subject
But some quote is echoing in the back of my head that goes something like this "If it wasn't for the 800 or so years of the Dark Ages we might be out there colonizing the stars by now".
How long did it take before we could say that the Earth was a globe and that it wasn't the center of the universe?
I'm not sure where I got that from the Dark Ages from, but as you can tell I am no master on the subject
But some quote is echoing in the back of my head that goes something like this "If it wasn't for the 800 or so years of the Dark Ages we might be out there colonizing the stars by now".
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Look no further than the Roman Empire, whose constant cultural repressions and civil war was not so great for anybody; save perhaps the engineers.
The ancient Greeks knew that the earth was round, as did most European civilizations that followed them. Geocentrism was a logical deduction based on the technology available to peoples prior to the 1500s, and is in no way a symbol of scientific backwardness; I mean, should we say that everybody up until the 20th century lived in a "Dark Age" as well because they didn't know that space and time were both dimensions?
If it weren't for the alleged "Dark Ages" you wouldn't have human rights, algebra, the number "0", universities, or the scientific method.
Dude, when my room-mate's 12 year old brother has never even heard of the Roman Empire, despite being quite intelligent and routinely at the top of his class, then I think we're pretty deep into that "Dark Age."
Except that organised Christianity, specifically the Catholic Church, actually preserved existing science and fostered continuing progress in the area. Sure, the Church made mistakes, the most famous of which is in regards to Galileo - although that's also blown way out of proportion - but it was far more favourable to scientific advancement than Rome, which the aforementioned exception of engineering, at which the Romans thrived.
Say what? How do you come to that conclusion? The Crusades vastly increased the speed of absorption of Eastern ideas and science into Europe, not to mention their positive impact on trade. One could make the argument - I wouldn't, certainly not without looking into it much further - that they sped later intellectual and cultural developments such as democracy by doing this.
Except that not one Scandinavian state is Catholic today, and they were among the first nations to switch to Protestant religions. Not only that, but petty kings were spreading their influence across Scandinavia before the arrival of Christianity in full force, they merely didn't succeed in establishing full hegemony over their lands until after Christianity was entrenched.Another example, sure Christianity calmed us scandinavians down in a way, and eventually we stopped our raids on europe- but what was it we traded for really? We traded elected kings to a hereditary rule that ruled with the power of god, with blessing from the pope. Basically, the governing powers had to be aligned with the church or they would be banished. And the righteous successor to a king were their offspring or relatives.
The votes did go to the other guy.How would I change history? Prevent George W. Bush from ever being elected by having the votes go to the other guy!
If you don't know much about a subject, it's probably best not to argue points on that subject. This is why you will never see me arguing theology with Plotinus, for example, or the legal system with Jolly Roger or another of our resident lawyers.
The Ancient Greeks said both, and they likely got part of their knowledge on the subject from Egypt and the Near East, maybe even India. Besides, as LightSpectra said, geocentrism, much like the belief in a flat Earth was millenia before, is actually quite advanced thinking with the available knowledge.
If you're quoting Stargate: SG-1 for accurate historical knowledge, you should probably find a new research methodology, my friend.I'm not sure where I got that from the Dark Ages from, but as you can tell I am no master on the subject
But some quote is echoing in the back of my head that goes something like this "If it wasn't for the 800 or so years of the Dark Ages we might be out there colonizing the stars by now".
That quote, uttered, painfully, by the team's historian, Dr Daniel Jackson, made my brain hurt so much. Fortunately, the show improved greatly from that poor first season.I'm pretty sure the actual quote is: "If it wasn't for the Dark Ages we'd be colonising space by now. It was a period of 800 years with almost no scientific development." God, that makes my brain hurt again in so many ways. It was inserted to explain why a people could be found with significantly greater technology than Earth, despite being descended from enslaved humans. Later, they explained similar advances by the far more apt analogies of wars speeding development, especially of weapons, and primitive people simply taking advanced technology from the Goa'uld and other races, especially when they found abandoned technology.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Little known fact: Galileo wasn't persecuted for his belief in heliocentrism; later in the 16th century, the Society of Jesus proved it to be true (because the astronomical technology became available), and the Catholic Church never persecuted them for it. He was put under house arrest for blatantly mocking the Pope in one of his manuscripts. By today's standards that's rather draconian, though by the standard of the 16th century -- where in any other nation one would've been imprisoned without pause for openly berating the monarchy -- this was highly generous.
It's a "thousand years", and it comes from an episode of Family Guy. You may rest assured that listening to Stewie Griffin is a poor way of learning history.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
You're both wrong, it's from a Three Stooges skit. Moe said it before being hit with a pie.
Yes, and in the exposition that followed his and Brian's emergence into the alternate reality, Stewie claimed that the Christian-inspired "dark ages" were the inhibiting factor on scientific progress that had been removed.
Seventeenth century, of course, not sixteenth. The Galileo affair was a little more complex than this (in fact it was horrendously complex), and while his personal attack on the Pope was the occasion for his house arrest (a very stupid attack too, since the Pope was quite well disposed towards Galileo), there were certainly ideological differences which should not be minimised. But you are broadly right. Also, the popular myth of Galileo overlooks two key points:
(a) Galileo was a Catholic. And the vast majority of scientists at the time rejected heliocentrism - quite reasonably, given that there was little evidence for it. So it wasn't a case of Catholics on one side versus scientists on the other. It was a case of most Catholics and scientists (together) versus a minority of Catholics and scientists (Galileo himself and his few followers). To cast the affair as a case of religion versus science is thus quite wrong.
(b) The real issue was not heliocentrism itself but the nature of scientific models. Most thinkers of the time held that models of the universe were merely models, to be used for predictive purposes, and not accurate descriptions of the way things are. We cannot really understand how the universe works - all we can do is hope to come up with the most predictively accurate models of it that we can. Galileo, however, believed that his model of the universe was accurate and precise, that it really represented how the universe is constructed, and that he could prove it deductively, primarily with his theory of the tides (which he thought are caused by the seas sloshing about as the Earth moves through space). Galileo was of course wrong (that is not what causes the tides) and most scientists today agree with the early modern theologians about the nature of scientific theories.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Ah, excuse me, 17th century. I was recently reading a work about the Italian Wars of the 16th century that mentioned Galileo so it slipped my mind.
ParkCungHee
Deity
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Why? They didn't orbit the Sun either.
Vandal Warlord
Nazgûl
Unfortuantaly, no. The Gerocentric model is an earth-centered model, that doesn't nessisarily means that everything revolves around the earth.
Stargate: SG-1 did it in 1995, with the "800 years." I don't know which of our sources he got it from, if either.
Please God I hope you're telling the truth, because that would be AWESOME!
As others have said, finding that other celestial bodies had things orbiting them didn't cause much trouble for geocentrism; it only caused problems for strict Ptolemaism. It did undermine one of the arguments of geocentrists, namely that if something moving has other things revolving around it, then they would get left behind, since this plainly didn't happen in the case of Jupiter. But it didn't undermine geocentrism itself. It is important to remember that one of the most popular astronomical theories of the seventeenth century was that of Tycho Brahe, which many people in the Catholic Church, including many Jesuits, supported. That was a compromise theory according to which the Sun and Moon revolve around the Earth and everything else revolves around the Sun. It also didn't involve any transparent spheres, which both Ptolemy's and Copernicus' systems did. The advantage of this system over Ptolemaism was that it was easier to reconcile with the more precise astronomical observations of the time, including the retrograde motions of the inner planets that you mention, and, most crucially, the phases of Venus which Galileo had observed and which were pretty much impossible to reconcile with Ptolemaism. But it still preserved the geocentrism that many people felt was essential, both for biblical reasons, and also because the available evidence supported it: in particular, there was no observable parallax of the fixed stars, which would be expected if the Earth moves (and which of course does exist, but is far too small to be observed using instruments of the time). So geocentrism could be quite flexible. Nevertheless, as I mentioned, the usual view at the time was that these were only predictive models. If one model was felt to fit the observed data more accurately, it was adopted - hence the popularity of the Tychonic system, which fit the data more accurately than Ptolemaism did (Brahe was one of the best and most careful astronomers of his day).
No one putting forward a heliocentric model was suggesting everything orbited the sun. No one suggested the moon orbited the sun.
Proving that geocentism was wrong is not the same thing as proving heliocentrism is correct.
Ok, have I got this right then.
Copernicus was commisioned by the pope to find a system to enable easier astronomical calculations to predict retrograde motion.
Effectively he said 'If we pretend the sun is at the centre it makes the calculations predicting planetary motion so much easier' he wasn't proposing that this is the way things actually are.
I didn't think Tycho Brahe was either.
A cardinal instructed Galileo to stop suggesting Copernicus was anything other than a model to enable easier calculations.
Also, I don't understand what difference you're making between parallax of the star field and retrograde motion of the outer planets as regards to motion of the earth through space.
I thought the parallax of the star field effect proved that the solar system as whole moves through space. In a heliocentric model the movement of the earth alone is demonstrated by the observable retrograde motion of the outer planets.
If you use a geocentric model no observable effect is going to prove that the earth moves because by definition the earth doesn't move.
I'm sorry but this is something I have 'learnt' from old books, oh dear
Well, this is moving well beyond my (modest) sphere of competence. I don't think Copernicus was commissioned by the Pope or indeed anyone to devise his system; he did so independently, although he published it after various people, including the cardinal archbishop of Capua, urged him to do so. Whether Copernicus presented his theory as a predictive model concerned only with "appearances" (in the terminology of Bellarmine's famous letter, written during the Galileo affair), I don't know. Remember that Copenicus was working a century before the Galileo affair. His theory was of course controversial, but it was not the subject of official censure, and was very much a minority position until after the time of Galileo. But yes, Galileo was not forbidden from discussing heliocentrism - he was forbidden from arguing that it was definitely how things really are.
The retrograde motion of some of the planets doesn't disprove geocentrism. The Tychonian system explains it just as well as any heliocentric system does. What that motion does disprove, or at least cause serious difficulties with, is Ptolemaism. Astronomers tried to explain retrograde motion within the context of Ptolemaism with the concept of "epicycles" - little circles that the planets might describe within the larger circles of their revolution around the Earth. The more accurate the observations of the phenomena, the more complex these epicycles, with circles within circles within circles, to explain them. Part of the problem of course was that astronomers were working not only with the belief that the Earth is at the centre, but with the assumption that all celestial motions describe circles.
The parallax of the stars that I mentioned is the apparent motion of the stars caused by the Earth moving from one extreme of its orbit to the other (annual parallax). If you compare the star field on two dates six months apart, the positions of the stars will have shifted, because over that six months the Earth has shifted some 300 million kilometres, from one side of the Sun to the other. Of course that is a minute distance compared to the distance of even the closest stars, which is why the change in position is imperceptible without pretty powerful instruments. This is a parallax movement which goes back and forth as the Earth revolves around the Sun. The apparent motion of the stars that is caused by the proper motion both of the stars themselves and by the movement of the Sun and its planets in relation to them is a different issue, and obviously harder to measure since it requires having accurate records of star positions over a long period, whereas annual parallax only takes six months. Anyway, the point is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the fact that no annual parallax was observed seemed good evidence against the notion that the Earth moves; it was acknowledged that such annual parallax would pretty much disprove Tychonianism or any other geocentric model in a way in which retrograde planetary motions wouldn't.
The retrograde motion of some of the planets doesn't disprove geocentrism. The Tychonian system explains it just as well as any heliocentric system does. What that motion does disprove, or at least cause serious difficulties with, is Ptolemaism. Astronomers tried to explain retrograde motion within the context of Ptolemaism with the concept of "epicycles" - little circles that the planets might describe within the larger circles of their revolution around the Earth. The more accurate the observations of the phenomena, the more complex these epicycles, with circles within circles within circles, to explain them. Part of the problem of course was that astronomers were working not only with the belief that the Earth is at the centre, but with the assumption that all celestial motions describe circles.
The parallax of the stars that I mentioned is the apparent motion of the stars caused by the Earth moving from one extreme of its orbit to the other (annual parallax). If you compare the star field on two dates six months apart, the positions of the stars will have shifted, because over that six months the Earth has shifted some 300 million kilometres, from one side of the Sun to the other. Of course that is a minute distance compared to the distance of even the closest stars, which is why the change in position is imperceptible without pretty powerful instruments. This is a parallax movement which goes back and forth as the Earth revolves around the Sun. The apparent motion of the stars that is caused by the proper motion both of the stars themselves and by the movement of the Sun and its planets in relation to them is a different issue, and obviously harder to measure since it requires having accurate records of star positions over a long period, whereas annual parallax only takes six months. Anyway, the point is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the fact that no annual parallax was observed seemed good evidence against the notion that the Earth moves; it was acknowledged that such annual parallax would pretty much disprove Tychonianism or any other geocentric model in a way in which retrograde planetary motions wouldn't.
Thanks for the answers and the link, I can see the difference between parallax/annual parallax,
but I'm still a bit confused about the annual parallax/outer planet retrograde motion issue. Really it seems to just to be faith, if you want to believe that the earth doesn't move you could explain away the evidence of the annual parallax by saying the star field moves and the earth doesn't, and just explain away any mathematical problems as further proof that the whole system is beyond understanding. But I understand what you are saying scientifically.
Anyway, I was wondering since Einstein has this whole arguement has been made redundent as it is perfect legitimate to chose any reference point as everything is 'relative'?
What a fantastic job!
but I'm still a bit confused about the annual parallax/outer planet retrograde motion issue. Really it seems to just to be faith, if you want to believe that the earth doesn't move you could explain away the evidence of the annual parallax by saying the star field moves and the earth doesn't, and just explain away any mathematical problems as further proof that the whole system is beyond understanding. But I understand what you are saying scientifically.
Anyway, I was wondering since Einstein has this whole arguement has been made redundent as it is perfect legitimate to chose any reference point as everything is 'relative'?
What a fantastic job!
Pretty much. After all, the sun orbits the Milky Way so you can't really say the sun doesn't move. The argument that "the sun doesn't move" is just as valid as "the earth doesn't move" - and if you choose the Earth as your reference point, lo and behold, the Tycho model works perfectly fine.
In other words, the mathematical models behind Tycho's and the modern model are effectively the same - save for the final reference point. In essence, I can create a Jovian-centric mathematical model which would be perfectly valid.
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