(January 11, 2019 at 8:35 am)Brian37 Wrote: Um, no, not everyone knew the earth was a globe. Most laypeople whom were uneducated back then, even if told, refused to believe it. So much so Galileo was put under house arrest because the church didn't like the truth that the earth went around the sun, and not the sun around the earth. A few scientists even before him knew sure, but that does not mean the public accepted their findings at a mass scale back then. Really not that much different today with theists. Many still refuse to accept what science says today.
I think it is in Venice(or somewhere in Europe) there is a clock that depicts the sun revolving around the earth.
The shape of the earth and its position are separate issues. Every educated person knew it was round. And I agree there were uneducated people, who didn't know and probably didn't care.
In the Somnium Scipionus, from the 1st century AD, the earth is described as a sphere. In the Divine Comedy, c1300, Dante describes the earth as a sphere, and even imagines the pilgrim crawling through a tunnel through the earth, and when he passes the mid-point, to keep going in the same direction, he has to turn over and start crawling upwards again. In other words, Dante knew that the earth is round and gravity aims to the center point.
You are right that it took longer to gather the evidence pointing to a heliocentric system.
Quote:It is worth pointing out in the Cosmos series hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, in just about every episode he pointed to world wide history where the powers in charge got scared by questioning and discoveries that challenged or conflicted with their social norms. It is quite common in our species that those who hold power are very reluctant to change and can and do often push back on questioning.
I watched the first episode, and was appalled that Tyson repeated a myth concerning Giordano Bruno. That was either a careless mistake or a deliberate bit of ideological propaganda. It is made-for-TV story-telling (i.e. dumbed down) to say that Bruno was a martyr to science.
It is common in our species to demand a large amount of empirical evidence when you're trying to replace a system that has worked for millennia. Every time a sailor navigated safely by the stars, or an astronomer predicted an eclipse, it increased their credence in the Ptolemaic system. It was reasonable to be skeptical when people with little empirical evidence started challenging that system. When the evidence becomes overwhelming, it is unreasonable not to change.
Suppose a lone theorist proposed a theory today that called our whole paradigm a falsehood. Do you think that everyone would jump on the bandwagon right at the beginning? Or would it be reasonable to demand significant evidence? And if he went out of his way to write personal insults against the authorities, as Galileo did, do you think this guy would continue to get funding or tenure? I agree that house arrest was bad. I'm glad it wouldn't happen today. (But have you seen the house he was in at the time? Not exactly Alcatraz.)
