Talk:Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
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It is not clear to me why the popularity of Tycho's system in the Church is especially relevant. The Church, after all, was not the only group with a vested interest in non-Copernican ideas.
- It is relevant because it makes the story of Galileo versus the Church less good and evil than the popular rendition.
It's fine for the fight not to be Martyr Galileo versus the Evil Church Empire; but if the idea is that Galileo was attacking the Church and being dishonest with the issues, I've already argued against that point. Those points. The concept that Galileo was not launching an assault on the Church deserves a better hearing than it has got from either "side" since White's time; the possibility that he meant what he said can explain a lot. Dandrake 21:07 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Gack! Did I fail to sign my original posting? Mea culpa,
BTW I've heard many times the statement that the Church had moved from Ptolemy to Tycho by that time, but it seems always to have been people citing each other or giving no citation at all. I wouldn't mind seeing a development of this claim based on primary sources, or a citation of a good secondary source as distinct from all the tertiary and n-ary sources. And null-ary source, if I may say so.
In any case, I don't know of any strong Tychonic tendencies among the academic philosophers. Theories that Simplicio was a taunt at the Pope should not distract us from the fact that his role in the Dialogue is that of a conservative philosopher, follower of Simplicius, and not a churchman at all. Colombe and Cremonini, the real-life models for Simplicio, appear to have been much concerned with the Aristotelean perfection of the Heavens, which the Tychonian system tends to disrupt. In fact, Simplicio quotes many times, with approval, a philosopher who was no fan of Tycho: Scipio Chiaramonte, author of the Anti-Tycho.
Galileo's directing no arguments directly at Tycho's system can be thought a sort of intellectual dishonesty, a straw-man approach, if his purpose was to attack the Church. It's another matter if, as the text pretty clearly indicates, he was aiming at fuddy-duddy philosophers who insisted on the inerrancy of Aristotle. (And see the paragraph I'm about to add to the main entry.)
By the way, during the entire difficulty process of negotiating a license for publication of the book, did any Church authority whatever raise any problem about its supposedly treating the Church unfairly by omitting Tycho's system? I've never run into evidence of that, but I could be wrong.
If not, then the whole idea that G omitted T's system in order to make the Church look bad (I think that's the idea) looks like a red herring. It's not as if the problem, if it were one, could have been overlooked because nobody thought of Tycho; the "T" section of an index to the Dialogue will confirm this.
Dandrake 21:19 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Adding the pointer to on-line text was a well-intentioned idea, but that page appears to be a copyright violation; specifically, it's lifted from Dartmouth, which I think has a license to use the text privately, but not to post it or let it be posted publicly. Zapped it pending clarification. Dandrake 22:45, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)