Galileo And Kepler
To reinforce my anti-corpocracy UCB (Unshakeable Cognitive Burden), I just finished reading “The Age Of Heretics: A History Of The Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management“. It’s the second time in the last few months that I stumbled across the Galileo-Pope Urban story. The first time was in W. L. Livingston’s forthcoming “Design For Prevention”. Here’s a snippet from “Heretics”:
Why does Galileo Galilei have the reputation of a heretic, while his seventeenth-century fellow scientist Johannes Kepler does not? Because Kepler evaded the Church. Galileo sought to change it. The professor from Pisa spent the last third of his life arguing, with increasing fervor, that the Christian doctrines and even Bibles should be rewritten to conform to the realities he had seen through his telescope. Many of the cardinals and Church officials who censured and imprisoned him recognized the validity of the new cosmology and physics that Galileo championed, but they didn’t want to shake up their system too quickly. Too many monks and village priests clung to Ptolemy and Aristotle. The “people” would rebel at any sudden revision of the “truth.” Galileo didn’t care. Like many other heretics, past and present, he thought at first that the truth would set the institution free. He only had to show people what he had seen, and they would naturally adapt. When people doubted observations that to him were obvious, he lost his tact. He made enemies (some said needlessly) of the Jesuits, who fought bitterly to see him condemned, and he closed one of his notorious tracts, the Dialogue on the Great World Systems, with a snide lampoon of the views of Pope Urban VIII. Until then Urban had been his patron and champion. Ten months after publication in 1633, Galileo was on trial in Rome.
Here’s a snippet that is written further along in the book:
Even the Roman Catholic church eventually admitted that Galileo’s cosmology was correct—after 359 years.
Bummer. Behind the illusory cloak of modern civility, irrational and insane institutional behavior hasn’t changed much over the years. Heretics are still reviled by the bozos in power who will do whatever it takes to retain that power, and more importantly, the personal riches that automatically go along with it. Today’s well meaning but unconscious corpocrats are simply much more clever at veiling the methods that they use to annihilate heretics, even when individual heretics arise from their own ranks. Kepler rules!
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This brings up the question of when is it worth it trying to change something that fights back and doesn’t institutionally want to change slow or fast. In Galileo’s case what was he trying to accomplish? Even now 400 years later does it matter that he was right. What if he devoted more time to scientific pursuits than fighting the windmills? Would we be further along scientifically?
Sometimes playing with in the systems rules gets you further. Or you can leave the larger institutions and be on your own or with a smaller group that is easier to influence.
My understanding is that Galileo *did* devote the vast majority of his time to furthering the cause of science. That’s why he was so passionate about effecting change in the dogmatic thinking of the day dictated by the omnipotent church patriarchs. He performed experiments all the time – even in public to the chagrin of the clergy “walking by”. Do you think he woke up every morning and camped out in front of the Vatican with a protest sign for 12 hours a day – do nothing else but whining?
No. But what did he want the Vatican to do? Having them adopt his ideas would have changed what in the world at the time? Sometimes fighting the windmills may seem like the thing to do but working around the obstacles may get the more results.
As the snippet says, he proposed that:
“the Christian doctrines and even Bibles should be rewritten to conform to the realities he had seen through his telescope.”
He wanted people to realize the truth, think for themselves, and not blindly believe in the fairy tales the church was staunchly defending.
I obviously don’t know exactly what, other than erroneous thinking would have changed, but if, equivalently, erroneous flat-earth thinking wasn’t replaced with round earth thinking, people living in the west would still be totally disconnected from the people living in the east. Because of their “stuck” mindsets, people would be too “scared” to travel very far. If that were the case, would that be good for humanity?
Stagnant and outdated mindsets lead to stasis and lack of forward progress. If everyone clung to fixed and unquestioned thinking handed down by a select few, we still might be living in caves. Look at the living conditions of North Korea for a modern case of the effect of suppressing the thinking of a whole nation of people. Extend that case to the entire world and what do you get?