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Entry: The Galileo Myth Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_galileo_myth#15602 Post contents: I think even mildly educated people can grasp this scientific fact: that far more than 99% of the population has little or no grasp of the data necessary to judge most major scientific arguments. Take Mr. Cognate for example. Or me. I thought it was established as fact by scholars that Galileo never said "Eppur si muove." If I remember correctly, that quip wasn't ascribed to him until he had been dead for over two centuries. Is it Mr. Cognate or me that as it wrong, or both of us? I am confident he is wrong about Giordano Bruno. I'm afraid to say I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia, but though I remember not a scintilla of the specific arguments, I distinctly recall reading thirty years ago in Santa Maria in Trastevere a detached and scholarly review of Bruno and his case: and that heliocentrism had nothing to do with it. It might have had something to do with the Trinity, or witchcraft, but Bruno was executed for heresy, and heliocentrism has never been declared a heresy. As to Copernicus withholding his heliocentric theory while he lived, it's the first I've heard of this I'm sorry to confess, but given Mr. Cognate's confusion on other facts, I'd be curious to get the real ones in this story. I somehow doubt it had anything to do with Copernicus's fear of a Fascist Church. My recollection of the Galileo case is that it had not a little to do with private Italian insults about the Barberini Pope's scientific pretensions, but whatever actually happened, the myth of Galileo is not going to give way to something like a scientific fact. That myth fuels remarks like Mr. Cognate's closing sentences, which are the point of the post and, like his errors, are ideological, thus essentially immune to science. A final observation from one who probably couldn't explain heliocentrism as clearly as a your average (Catholic or homeschooled) 4th grader. But despite how smoothly heliocentric presuppositions seem to run, didn't Einstein's theory of relativity, if correct, render the helio/geocentric debate mute? Sent at: 2008 12 02