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It was 186 years ago today...

It was 186 years ago today...

Postby john » September 11th, 2008, 2:25 pm

From :

September 11, 1822: The College of Cardinals finally caves in to the hard facts of science, saying that the "publication of works treating of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the sun, in accordance with the opinion of modern astronomers, is permitted."

It represented a major shift in dogma for the Catholic Church, a concession that the Earth, in fact, might revolve around the sun. Unfortunately, it came 189 years too late to do Galileo Galilei any good.

Still, it would take another 13 years, until 1835, before Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems -- the work in which he defends the heliocentric theory -- would be removed from the Vatican's list of banned books.

As a theory, heliocentrism had existed since the ancient Greeks, who were the first to determine that the Earth is a sphere in a sky full of spheres. It remained an unproven theory directly opposed to the geocentric view held by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and embraced by Rome, that the Earth is the center of the universe.

Galileo was greatly influenced by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, who not only posited that the Earth revolves around the sun but that it makes a complete turn on its axis every 24 hours. The Catholic Church, however, considered the theory heresy, and Galileo was convicted by the Inquisition in 1633 and remained under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Nearly two centuries later, however, the weight of scientific evidence was so overwhelming that the College of Cardinals finally reversed itself and allowed the teaching of heliocentrism. Still, it would take another 170 years, until 1992, for a pope -- in this case, John Paul II -- to officially concede that, yes, the Earth isn't stationary in the heavens. Eight years after that, in 2000, John Paul apologized for the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo.
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Postby moogdroog » September 11th, 2008, 3:25 pm

Those darn, anti-science Catholics.

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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby mitchellmckain » September 11th, 2008, 5:14 pm

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Postby Ben2747 » September 11th, 2008, 5:38 pm

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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby moogdroog » September 11th, 2008, 5:45 pm

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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby rusmeister » September 11th, 2008, 7:52 pm

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby mitchellmckain » September 11th, 2008, 11:20 pm

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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby alecto » September 12th, 2008, 10:14 pm

Sentio ergo est.
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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby Kolbitar » September 13th, 2008, 3:39 pm

::September 11, 1822: The College of Cardinals finally caves in to the hard facts of science,

And when were they finally hard facts?

"The real reason Copernicus raised no ripple and Galileo raised a storm, may well be that whereas the one offered a new supposal about celestial motions, the other insisted on treating this supposal as fact. If so, the real revolution consisted not in a new theory of the heavens but in 'a new theory of the nature of theory.'" --C.S. Lewis (originally posted by Stanley)
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

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Postby Lirenel » September 13th, 2008, 9:11 pm

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

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Postby rusmeister » September 14th, 2008, 3:28 am

Chesterton put it something like: "Religion has never really persecuted science. Science does really persecute religion." That's just the gist of it. Point is, lots and lots of noise is made about Galileo (for example) in support of the (largely mythical) idea that faith has always been the enemy of reason. The very terms we are taught in school, especially, "the Dark Ages", "the Enlightenment", "Age of Reason", etc work to shore up the myth that is countered by the hard fact that most learning that survived the collapse of the Roman Empire did so thanks to, uh, religious organizations. Called "monasteries", I think.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Re: It was 186 years ago today...

Postby Robert » September 15th, 2008, 7:08 pm

[I am] Freudian Viennese by night, by day [I am] Marxian Muscovite

--Robert Frost--
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Postby archenland_knight » September 15th, 2008, 9:55 pm

It seems to me that on a C.S. Lewis site, someone should mention that Lewis paid tribute to the old idea of a geocentric universe with a flat earth in the world of Narnia, in which, as it turns out, the sun really did move across the sky and you really could sail to the end of it.
Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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