Reblog from The TOF Spot, it’s an online version of two articles the good author had previously published, put up in nine parts.
It’s a series of blog posts on the century-long progress from the first seriously-worked out heliocentric mathematical model to the final overthrow of geocentrism.
AKA, that whole Galileo Thing.
Here’s a taste of the first article, use the link at top to easily access them all:
Before you laugh at your ancestors, TOF invites you to prove that the earth is, contrary to your senses, in wild and careening double motion: spinning like a top and whipping around the sun without (somehow) leaving the Moon and Air behind, and without everyone stumbling around like dunkards. You are not allowed to appeal to authority or to the success of NASA, or suchlike things. You’ve got eyeballs and armillaries, and that’s pretty much it. Go. TOF will wait here.
Some people have waaayyyyy too much free time on their hands.
That’s a pretty good summary of the history of science, right there….
If you read nothing else, check out part 3, The Great Galileo-Scheiner Flame War of 1611-13.
It actually made a lot of the “wait, WHY ON EARTH didn’t they do (something sensible)?” stuff make sense.
Heh. Science. I got into an email argument with our village
idiotatheist over heliocentrism. He must be independently wealthy because he likes to pay for billboard messages tweaking Christians over things like “SCIENCE” proved the earth orbits the sun but stoopid Christers thought it was the other way around. When I pointed out Aristotle and Ptolemy weren’t Christian, he got verklempt.