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Archives

Archive 1
Archive 2
Archive 3
Archive 4
Archive 5


Galileo was not Italian

As you can read from Misplaced Pages Italy was established after the World War II, 500 years after Galileo was dead, and for this reason Galileo Galilei couldn't be Italian. Furthermore, as you can see the controversy concerning Science and Religion, Galileo was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, and still today the Italian State doesn't allow Patents for Public Interest Products and technologies, continuing the ban of scientists and intellectual thought considered hostile to the Catholic Church. The documentation concerning the Italian Patent form is available from any UPICA Office of any Chamber of commerce, or any Italian Consulate. Benattiluca 14:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Removal from "Heretics" category?

Didn't Pope John Paul II absolve Galileo of the charge of "heresy" citing the mishandling of the case, and apologize on behalf of his condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church?

And shouldn't this be reason enough to remove him from the category of "Heretic" on wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.228.228 (talkcontribs)

It's probably better to rename the category. It doesn't conform to NPOV policy. Misplaced Pages doesn't label individuals as heretics. As for the RC church, they aren't the sole judge, and their opinion seems to change over time. "Individuals who have been accused of heresy" would be a better (if more long-winded) title. Jakew 21:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I didn't think that the RC church ever declared that Galileo was a heretic. It merely said that some of his writings may be heretical and against church teaching. Roger 21:57, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I believe you are correct, Roger. Jakew 14:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring the controversy

Long ago there was a discussion, with a consensus among the few participants, of refactoring the Church Controversy and moving it into a separate article. http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Galileo_Galilei#The_Trial._Again.3F The arguments are no less right than they were then; and now the whole thing has been challenged on its quality (and it's about time).

I have started a Procrustean, not to say Draconian, approach. The long and disorganized section has been replaced with a short summary of events, together with a pointer to a new Main Article, Trial of Galileo. That article has been intialized, first with the full old text (to get it into the History) and then with a copy of the summary from this article. It's now fair game for the effort to create a proper, coherent page, based on primary sources where possible. (But all the old text is there to crib from.)

Let us try to keep the section in this article to a minimal length, treating, so far as possible, only of essential factual matters that are generally agreed on. (That'll keep it short!) --Dandrake 01:36, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Character sets

I just had to do a nasty little edit to reverse a change made by an editor's browser (mine, Firefox on a Macintosh) which took all the dash characters and automatically replaced them with some ugly gibberish. If the dashes had been represented by ampersand-n-d-a-s-h-semicolon, giving rise to "–", this wouldn't have happened.

I don't know whether people are trying to "simplify" the text by replacing those ugly html strings – character provided by their browser's particular character set; or some damn officious browser is going that for them; but it stinks. You CANNOT assume things about how other people's browsers will handle character sets, but you can and must assume they'll handle plain html.

Oh well, even if such things are done right, that wouldn't solve the problem with the multilingual stuff at the bottom of the article.Dandrake 23:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

No one questions it- must be true.

My question is in response to the following:

"However, Galileo did perform experiments involving rolling balls down inclined planes, which proved the same thing: falling or rolling objects (rolling is a slower version of falling, as long as the distribution of mass in the objects is the same) are accelerated independently of their mass."

Galileo "proved" that falling objects accelerate at the same rate independent of their masses. However, the above should not be confused with the concept that objects will hit the ground at the same time. When Galileo mythically or not dropped objects from the tower of Piza the Earth actually moved on a micro scale a sliver of an atom towards the object.

I suppose that just because we can't measure this movement doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Please comment.

Michael McNett 03:16, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the connection between the 2nd and 3rd sentences of the third paragraph there. I mean, if you drop two objects together, and they accelerate in exactly the same way, then they'll hit the ground together whether or not the Earth moves up a little to meet them, no?
Anyway, it's true that the Earth does move toward the falling object; Newton's law of gravity implies that, and Relativity doesn't change the conclusion. In fact, Newton's laws of motion, even without his specific formulation of gravity, require that dropping the ball won't cause the center of mass of the Earth-ball system to move; hence, if the ball falls, the Earth must rise by an amount given by the ratio of the masses. Naturally, Galileo didn't apply this reasoning; it's amusing to speculate what he'd have said if asked whether the Earth moved in that experiment.
Hmm, maybe I now see what you're saying: If you drop 2 objects of different masses from different points at the same time -- or drop them at different times and time the fall of each very carefully -- then the heavy one will hit the ground faster, because both accelerate at the same rate, but the heavy one lifts up the Earth a trace faster. This is true in principle. Like the parabolic trajectory, the equal time of fall makes some assumptions that are true to a really really good aprroximation. The trajectory assumes a uniform gravitational attraction, while in fact the acceleration is slower at higher altitude, making the trajectory really the tip of an extremely elongated ellipse; the equal time of fall assumes an effectively infinite mass for the Earth. Each of these approximations is a whole lot closer to the truth than the explicit assumption of no air resistance, though. Dandrake 02:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


Even if you drop two objects at the same time I predict that the earth would tilt (albeit an infintismal measurement) toward the object with greater mass. Therefore the "heavier" object would hit the ground before the "lighter" one.

Picture a pure vacuumed universe. We have nothing but object A (The earth) and B (A bowling ball). If we place them in this universe and instruct no movement upon them they will accelerate toward one another. Object B accelerating much faster (unless your reference point is from object B). The acceleration should be 9.8 m/s2.

Picture another pure vacuumed universe. We intruduce object B (The bowling ball) and object C (The moon). We do the same experiment as before and find that the the objects move together with an acceleration of 1.62 m/s2.

If we do this experiment at the same time with a frame of reference in both universes at B we would find that A and C have different accelerations.

This would appear to contradict Galileo.

True the use of a gravitational constant is useful in advancing our sciences. However, I expect that the theory that objects fall at the same rate onto a heavenly body is flawed in that our experiments are dealing with objects with similar mass and therefore giving an as of yet unmeasurable difference in acceleration.

If we stand on the sun and drop a golf ball and the very heavy planet Jupiter. Jupiter would win Michael McNett 12:07, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

But this discussion is largely irrelevent for the Galileo article, since universal gravitation wasn't yet an issue. If the passage can be changed to indicate something less strong than "proved", that's always a good thing in any history of science article. But we shouldn't try to introduce anachronistic concepts.--ragesoss 18:14, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Epicycles?

"Furthermore, he never accepted Kepler's elliptical orbits for the planets, holding to the circular orbits of Copernicus, which still employed epicycles to account for irregularities in planetary motions."

I strongly believe the epicycles were employed to account for retrograde motion, which was evidence that the planets revolved around the sun (as opposed to the Earth) and not evidence that planets moves in ellipses instead of perfect circles. I could be wrong, however, so I'm reluctant to actually change it. Also, does anyone know of a MATHEMATICAL formula that accounts for the position of an object that is a satellite to a satellite? (eg: the position of the moon around the sun?) User:Tarayani 2:23, 09 Jan 2006 (EST)

Galileo basically never took the time to learn Kepler's system. Epicycles were used in Ptolemy's system to both explain retrograde motion and irregularity (i.e., the fact that the orbits are actually elliptical). Copernicus still used epicycles and deferents, because even though heliocentrism explained retrograde motion in a natural way, it still didn't account for the irregularities of motion. Copernicus rejected Ptolemy's equant, replacing it with the Tusi-couple. Galileo didn't modify Copernicus. As it stands, the sentence is pretty much correct, although it could use more detail.--ragesoss 18:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

His Son

On other sites, it lists the birth of Galileo's son as in 1525. Being as how Galileo was born in 1564, it seems quite impossible that his son was born in 1525. When was his son REALLY born (as in, what year)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.124.63.215 (talkcontribs) 2006-03-22 15:50:45 (UTC) he was born in 1606

Middle finger

What article about Galileo is complete without mention of his middle finger. savidan 02:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Removed from article

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, and mathematician, who was born in Pisa, Italy on the 15th of Febuary, 1564. Although most mathematicians become famous after their death, Galileo was famous through his entire life as a mathematician and astronomer ending on the 8th of January, 1642. His father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a well known flute player, composer, theorist, singer, and teacher coming from a string of doctors so encouraged and forced his first son of seven, Galileo, into the University of Pisa as a medical student. Galileo had no interest in his medical studies so took mathematics and natural philosophy on the side beginning his mathematics career. After much persuasion Vincenzo agreed to allow him to take classes in Euclid and Archimedes. The young mathematician began a career in teaching at the university and writing his first book, The Little Balance which described the Archimedes’ method about finding specific gravities using a balance. Galileo came to Florence in 1583 to study at the University of Florence under the court mathematician Ostilio Ricci. During this time he wrote De Motu describing how to find the rate of descent of falling bodies using an inclined plane. On his recent trips to Florence, Galileo meets a young woman by the name of Marina di Andrea Gamba with whom he never married but had two girls and one boy after his father’s death in 1591.

As of now, I am unsure if this is vandalism. However, it certainly was added in in appropriate areas, with repeated lead content and was added twice by 24.8.226.51. I'm not sure if this information is accurate and verifiable, but I'll put it here for the convenience of other editors. AndyZ t 23:51, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The bottom of the church controversy section

"In modern terms, we consider Galileo's views on heliocentricity to be no fundamental advance. The Sun is no more the center of the universe than the Earth is (indeed, the question has no meaning, as apparently all locations can be equally regarded as the "center" of the universe). The Catholic Church held to the prevailing scientific opinion of the day, which was that the Earth was the center of the universe. Thus, for moderns, the key issue of this controversy was not the objective correctness of the theories being debated, but rather the morality of institutions (or persons) using physical force to shape acceptance of scientific beliefs."

This paragraph should be removed. I consider heliocentrism to be a more accurate theory than geocentrism, simply because having the sun as the 'center' of 'our little place' is more accurate than having us at the center. While this is a well articulated arguement i think it should, in no way, be considered canon for the article as it offers one persons' opinion or view on the matter and forms no basis for encyclopedia material.

What's more "accurate" about having the Sun at the center of "your little place" than the Earth? You live on the Sun, maybe? The rest of us are editing from someplace else. Geocentricity is a POV, but so is heliocentricity. Unless you're a plasma being who's gained access to Wiki, I happen to think geocentricity is more natural for both of us. However, the modern view of physics is that the universe doesn't have a center. Unless it's your navel.Sbharris 05:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
True, the universe doesn't have a center, but that doesn't mean that any POV is as good as any other. For any regular periodic motion there is a preferred frame of reference where all fictitious forces disappear. In modern physics this is called the center-of-momentum frame. When this frame is used for the motions of the Earth, Sun, Moon, and planets, all the planets will have elliptical orbits with focal points inside the Sun (or very close to the Sun in Jupiter's case). The Sun is almost motionless in this frame, so "heliocentric" is a perfectly valid label for the most accurate description of the solar system. --Shastra 09:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
So you say that the heliocentric model is more accurate because it more closely approximates the center of momentum frame. How does that relate? Momentum had not even been discovered yet, and Galileo contemporaries would have measured accuracy in terms of how well the models explained the observed planetary motions as seen on Earth against the backdrop of stars. Yes, there are sometimes reasons to prefer the heliocentric but there are also reasons to prefer the geocentric in some situations. Roger 09:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Galileo knew about momentum, but that's not my point. Of course there are reasons where accelerated frames are appropriate. When I pour wine into a glass while traveling on an airplane, a frame that is co-moving with that airplane is the most appropriate for coordinating my movements. But when looking at the motion of the planets, a heliocentric or center-of-momentum frame is the most appropriate. It doesn't matter if you know about galactic motion or not, or if you realize that a co-moving frame works better for local experiments. Galileo understood this principle of switching between viewpoints (he did invent the fundamentals of the Galilean transformation after all), but the Catholic Church authorities had no clue at all. --Shastra 18:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, sometimes the heliocentric frame is more appropriate. And sometimes the geocentered or Milky-Way-centered frames are more appropriate. Modern physics allows you to choose a convenient frame. Roger 19:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This topic may be dead, however the more correct centricity seems to me to be a less relevant issue than that Galileo did much to demonstrate a centricity, any centricity other than a geocentric one. That was a major achivement and break from accepted scientific dogma. 132.79.8.15 18:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed this:

The Catholic Church held to the prevailing theological opinion of the day, which was that the Earth was the center of the universe.

It would be more accurate to say that the Church held to what had been the prevailing scientific opinion for 100s of years. But the article is about Galileo, and the sentence doesn't really fit anyway. Roger 05:14, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I see now that User:JoshuaZ has put the sentence back in, without any explanation here on the discussion page. I still say that the statement is confusing and misleading. It is tacked onto a paragraph, without much relation to the paragraph. It refers to "the day", even tho the paragraph discusses events over a period of 100s of years, and it is not clear when "the day" is supposed to be. It is not clear why the geocentric opinion is said to be "theological". Is it trying to imply that the Church used scientific arguments to reach a theological conclusion, or theological arguments to reach a scientific conclusion, or what? Answering this gets off-topic too much. I suggest removing the sentence. Roger 17:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Sr. F Bacon

I removed the last point in the comparison GG-Bacon (which I tend to think is unnecessary as a whole): it stated that the Baconian method is 'too complicated to be useful for modern scientists', which is untrue. Similar approaches are used especially in 'modern' branches of biological sciences- see molecular biology (knock-in/out, partial gene transfer, RNA interference etc), pharmacology (esp. pre-clinical testing), and (before the shiny magic boxes of mol.bio came around) psychological assessment in broad screening studies. The point naming GG as the father of modern science was valid so I just placed it below the whole thing. Duagloth 09:17, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and remove the chart comparing Galileo and Bacon, as I don't think is it appropriate to the article. A more subtle and informative comparison should be possible merely by reading the entries for both Bacon and Galileo, and there isn't enough space in the article for such checklist comparisons between Galileo and other scientists or philosophers. If there is an intellectually significant controversy about the relative achievement of these two it should be described, without a chart, in more detail (citing arguments appropriately) or given an article of its own. ThaddeusFrye 19:58, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Having done this I do feel a little bad, since some information was lost by this deletion, and someone did work on that chart. I hope someone will add a section on Galileo's "Scientific Method," which might include a paragraph in which G.'s ideas (after being described in their own right) are comparted to those of Bacon or others. Did Galileo describe or employ a "method" as such? It's an interesting question. ThaddeusFrye 20:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Cracow

As far as i know Galileo studied in Cracow. There is no reference to this part of his life in article.

And the Greatest was?

Galileo? Einstein? Newton? Archimedes? Gauss? Someone else? The intros of the articles on Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein quote praise by famous scientists. Of course one can always find a famous guy saying something positive about another famous guy. For symmetry reasons, similar praise could be added to the Galileo intro. For example, in his book A brief history of time, Stephen Hawking writes that Galileo has probably contributed more to the creation of the modern natural sciences than anybody else. Physicists 20:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

"Church controversy"?!

Could someone explain to me why is this section named "Church controversy", as if there's something controversial here. If it is, I'd like to know what exactly is the controversy. More fitting name would be "Persecution by the Church", and the only reason why I'm not changing it on the spot is that this is a featured article. GregorB 13:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, there's controversy. Isn't that why you want to change it? Calling it "persecution" would suggest that Galileo was being unfairly singled out, and it give an anti-Church point of view. Roger 16:29, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
So when Nikolai Bukharin goes to FA status, we'll have a "Show trials controversy" section, because calling it "persecution" would suggest he was unfairly singled out, and we would not want an anti-Stalin POV, wouldn't we? GregorB 17:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
What are you talking about? The article on Nikolai Bukharin does not call his trial "persecution". We try to just give facts, not opinion.
The section doesn't refer to his trial being controversial, it refers to the fact that the dispute between Galileo and the Church was, by defintion, a controversy: there were two positions, with arguments for each side. The resulting persecution is not the main subject of the section, the dispute is. That there is or has been controversy over the interpration of Galileo Affair is not what the section title refers to.--ragesoss 00:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
So, when Galileo was threatened with torture, that was really just a particularly clever argument by the Church? What about the fact that one side - and one side only - risked imprisonment or death for expressing dissent? The Bukharin parallel may appear extreme, but what's the difference? Submit - or else! (True, in Bukharin's case the "or else" part was missing.)
According to Misplaced Pages, persecution is "persistent mistreatment of an individual or group by another group". To say that Galileo and others like him weren't persecuted is to say that they were treated fairly. GregorB 12:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
It sounds like you might want to write an article on the history of free speech, or something like that. I suspect that you'll find lots of people who were subject to some treatment that you consider unfair. It is better for an encyclopedia article on Galileo to just stick to the facts. Roger 17:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
This is interesting, and I quote: "that you consider unfair". Forgive my sarcasm, but I'd thought that putting people on trial for their beliefs is by and large considered unfair - but it seems it's just me. When you say "stick to the facts", I hear whitewash. I'm not interested in writing an article on the history of free speech; I think I've made my point, and the rest is up to Wikipedians. GregorB 21:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Roger, is this your blog? For a moment I thought that whitewash bit was perhaps a little too harsh, but now it appears to me that I got it right. GregorB 21:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Let me guess -- you don't like kigs, popes, fuedalism, etc. I happen to think that it is unfair for someone to be tried without rights to a jury trial and not to testify against himself. What do you want to do -- go thru all the historical WP entries and declare what you think was or was not unfair? Roger 21:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Cultural depictions of Galileo Galilei

I've started an approach that may apply to Misplaced Pages's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 15:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

where did he go to school?

i need it for my science report. HELP! =]

Where was he Burried ?

Its says "Galileo was reburied on sacred ground at Santa Croce " presumably he was buried on non-sacred ground before that but that whole piece seems to be missing. I checked the "affair" page as well but not netioned there either

Father of Science?

He is great and all, but would he really be considered as the "Father of Science"??? Considering that there were way more scientists before him, NPOV, right?

I agree. He was a great scientist, but there is no consensus that he is the "father of science". Roger 18:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
He was the first to use the scientific method, namely, he did experiments to verify phenomena, which is the way science works today. This is why he is considered the "father" of science. Icemuon 15:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Galileo was not the first to do experiments to verify phenomena. People have been doing experiments for 1000s of years. Do you think that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids without ever doing any experiments? Roger 22:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, to elaborate, he was the first scientist in thousands of years to question Aristotle's teachings, many of which were not very scientific. Yes, there were others that performed experiments in the meantime but it never caught on until Galileo pretty much made it a standard method of science. This is highly significant. Icemuon 23:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Not correct. Some of Aristotle's teachings were scientific, and some not. The same can be said of Galileo. Many people questioned Aristotle before Galileo. Roger 00:52, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandal

Under "See also", there is some vandalism not in the basic text.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.139.113.156 (talk) 11:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

Vandal(2)

I seem to have eliminated the vandalism from the main text.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.139.113.156 (talk) 11:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

"Although a devout Roman Catholic, Galileo fathered three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba."

I challenge the unsupported statement that Galileo was a "devout" RC. It ought be removed; if the topic of G's religious beliefs, or lack thereof, is to be treated, it must be done more carefully. That phrase is unfootnoted and, I submit, wrong. I suggest that the mere fact that he had three children out of wedlock ought indicate that he was not "devout" in the sense of adhering, especially voluntarily, to RC-imposed prohibitions on action or belief. More broadly, even basic research into G's life will show that primarily he wanted to be free of religious imposition on his life. Freedom FROM religion, not freedom OF religion was his primary reason for his relocation from Pisa to Padua (Venice), where he stayed for 18 years. It was a good choice because the Doge of Venice in 1606 protected G and others from being summoned to Rome by the new Pope, Paul V, to be persecuted and/or murdered. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated the Doge and all officials of Venice; in response, Venice exiled all the Jesuits from Venice. Kepler, a contemporary of G, WAS a practicing Lutheran and often moved to avoid govermental requirements that he become RC. For a readable overview of the impact of churches on various Western scientists, see, e.g., The Scientists by John and Mary Gribbon, Random House 2002.

I don't understand why the church was so upset because Galileo believed in the Copernican theory. Otherwise, thanks, this page has been a great help to me. Please email me why at kool_kitty1995@hotmail.com. --Jazzy 00:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

requesting a fact or a about the secret ban

Article says:

  • His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial and not enforced, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
  1. What is the source (book and page), please? Isn't this a confusion with the 1616 prohibition of any book, past or future, about Copernic and heliocentrism? Besides Galileo published another book after his arrest, and it wasn't forbidden in Italy. Note: this unsourced fact is mentionned on at least 3 pages: Galileo_Galilei and Galileo_affair and Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems
  2. Until then, can an editor please append to this line? Thanks

62.147.38.11 07:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Pages missing in references

I'm a bit surprised that this Featured Article does not cite specific pages in its references. The Harvard referencing style for citing books and articles calls for page numbers in almost all cases. The format is (Author Date:Pages), for example (Drake 1953:12-15); please note lack of comma and spacing.

Perhaps we can add pages as we edit and a really ambitious/heroic/masochistic person with a good library might specify pages for existing references. --SteveMcCluskey 14:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

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