From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 11:18:41 MDT
On Saturday 31 August 2002 23:56, Dan Fabulich wrote:
> ...
> Basically, the medieval astronomist would have been right from his
> perspective, and wrong from ours. But, you know what? Our perspective is
> *better* than his perspective. (*REALLY*)
>
> In fact, it's so much better that we could probably convince a medieval
> astronomer to switch camps if we just showed him some of the cool evidence
> and experiments that back up our side. It's so easy that he may not even
> have a distinguishable "perspective" at all; he may have our perspective,
> but just be ill-informed.
>
> But if we must assign him his own perspective, then we must assign it and
> then reject it. Medieval astronomy *is* wrong. (WOO! Go team!)
>
> -Dan
>
> -unless you love someone-
> -nothing else makes any sense-
> e.e. cummings
This doesn't actually work. Our approach is simpler, but doesn't disagree
with his approach where they both make predictions. And it's in the testable
predictions* that the truth** of the approach lays. The mental models used
to make the physical predictions are just that, models. There is no truth in
them. There is usefulness, or not. We could probably show him that our
approach was more useful. And he could properly retort "Will it hold off
the inquisition?" In his world, his approach was more useful. Bruno was
burned alive for ignoring this point. Galileo was confined under house
arrest (well, he was already quite old, and the fame may have made up for the
eventual sentence. I doubt that it made up for the fear before the sentence
was passed). OTOH, Galileo was blatantly obnoxious, and lampooned the Pope
in a quite disrespectful way. And Bruno may have had political motivations
behind his sentence. Still, it was wise to walk carefully, and follow the
path of Copernicus.
* A physical prediction is only made "within the bounds of experimental
error". If we are considering the predictions of a Medieval astronomer, then
we need to consider the equipment that he was using when calculating the
experimental error.
** Here I am adopting a rather Popperian meaning for truth, but theories of
the physical universe don't seem to have any other meaning.
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