W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno, part V of V

Proemium : With Sungenis on Settele-Anfossi Affair · W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno : part I of V · part II of V · part III of V · part IV of V · part V of V

I

Sungenis to me and Palm

15/04/15 à 16h53

Re: Expanding on previous reply, including on Bruno

Hans, all good information, of course. But my issue is only with the 1616 and 1633 decrees and why they were worded the way they were, and what Olivieri did to distort their meaning.

II

Me to Sungenis
(answering his last three letters) and to Palm

15/04/15 à 18h18

Re: Expanding on previous reply, including on Bruno

I agree totally on the following first quote:

[In the following I am giving dialogue too, "first quote" = first time it's Sungenis:]

RS

"If just elliptical orbits were banned, then Kepler could have come up with a heliocentric model without elliptical orbits (like Ptolemy's Equant, which did the same thing as Kepler's elliptical orbits).

Riccioli put elliptical orbits into his Tychonian model and it worked just like Kepler's model, and he remained a devoted geocentrist. The Church allowed that without any comment to Riccioli. So it wasn't elliptical orbits, per se, that was the problem, but heliocentrism, which, as I have consistently maintained, was the ONLY issue on the table, that is, whether the sun went around the earth or the earth went around the sun."

HGL

Not only that, but fact that Olivieri could later pretend - falsely, whether he lied or was just repeating the lie - that Galileo's system had, because not involving elliptical orbits, proven contrary to observations (that was what he pretended, right?)

RS

"The point in fact remains, however, that Kepler's Epitome, which taught heliocentrism with elliptical orbits, was put on the Index, so the question is rather moot."

HGL

In ALL probability, the Epitome was put on the index for Heliocentrism. Apart from elliptical identic to Galileo's, i e making fixed stars a thin frame shell of a sphere with Sun in centre or in this case in one elliptic focus of the two perhaps.

RS

"We also now know that putting the planets in elliptical orbits DOES NOT solve the problem of planetary orbits. They are simply too complicated to be solved by mere ellipses. Saturn is the worst. Putting it in a strict elliptical orbit results in it being off by many degrees every year. Mars is also complicated, because it is tilted 7 degrees off the ecliptic plane. Every planet has a problem, and none of them follow strict elliptical orbits. All in all, elliptical orbits are only approximations, not scientific fact."

HGL

Ah, thanks for telling me!

I had no idea of this, neither had probably Olivieri or even Anfossi.

I had heard one thing like it, Kepler's predictions being (with its matching Newtonian explanation) clearly off when it came to Mercury, which Einstein pretended to mend with relativity. So, Mercury is NOT the only issue?

RS

"Hence, this makes Olivieri's thesis all the more suspect, since he was motivated to legitimize heliocentrism by claiming that elliptical orbits were the final solution."

HGL

Suspect from a scientific point of view, but that should already have been apparent from Anfossi's words then.

RS

"But the only reason Sentence 1 said that one could not say the Sun is the center of the world is that the Church didn't want anyone saying that the Sun was motionless, since that would mean the Earth would have to revolve around it. There was no thought about "other worlds" or about whether the Sun could move with respect to the galaxy nor anything of the sort."

HGL

Not totally wrong, not totally right.

Church certainly did not want anyone to say Sun was motionless.

But if real main reason for that had been mainly making the earth move around it, why was position on moving earth just "at least erroneous" when sun's non-movement in centre of universe or world was "formally heretical"?

Also, if the issue in 1616 and 1633 was only between sun and earth, this is because the question of sun being one star like all the others and stars being centres of worlds like the sun had already been settled in 1600. Getting now on to your response on Bruno process ...

RS

"But my issue is only with the 1616 and 1633 decrees and why they were worded the way they were, and what Olivieri did to distort their meaning."

HGL

Well, my issue is also with the decrees of 1600 being involved.

If Galileo was vehemently suspect of heresy, you said yourself there had to be some kind of definition before that.

One would of course be the Trentine on accepting all of Bible according to Church Fathers wherever they were unianimous. But another, closer both in time and subject matter and having been judged by the 1616 judge too, St Robert Bellarmine (who himself had NOT vehemently suspected Galileo of heresy) is precisely the one of 1600.

And that part of Bruno's cosmology is also more directly concerned than Heliocentrism as such with Distant Starlight Problem, and therefore with Mark 10:6 et al. loc.

So my take on the affair, even before knowing of you, involved Bruno affair being a very relevant background to Galileo affair.

Hans Georg Lundahl

PS, I came late onto Anfossi affair, through a man who unlike Palm did not think 1820 decress had settled question if Heliocentrism could be believed or not.

Juan Casanovas:
Giuseppe Settele and the final annulment of the decree of 1616 against Copernicanism
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1989MmSAI..60..791C/0000791.000.html

My own:

Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera : Father Filippo Anfossi was right against Giuseppe Settele
http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2013/02/father-filippo-anfossi-was-right.html

David Palm, if YOU think Church settled matter in Settele affair, look up Casanovas' essay at least!

III

Sungenis to me and Palm

16/04/15 à 04h04

Re: Expanding on previous reply, including on Bruno

In a message dated 4/15/2015 12:18:48 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, hgl@voila.fr writes:

[Previous dialogue expanded:]

HGL

I agree totally on the following first quote:

RS

"If just elliptical orbits were banned, then Kepler could have come up with a heliocentric model without elliptical orbits (like Ptolemy's Equant, which did the same thing as Kepler's elliptical orbits).

Riccioli put elliptical orbits into his Tychonian model and it worked just like Kepler's model, and he remained a devoted geocentrist. The Church allowed that without any comment to Riccioli. So it wasn't elliptical orbits, per se, that was the problem, but heliocentrism, which, as I have consistently maintained, was the ONLY issue on the table, that is, whether the sun went around the earth or the earth went around the sun."

HGL

Not only that, but fact that Olivieri could later pretend - falsely, whether he lied or was just repeating the lie - that Galileo's system had, because not involving elliptical orbits, proven contrary to observations (that was what he pretended, right?)

RS

"The point in fact remains, however, that Kepler's Epitome, which taught heliocentrism with elliptical orbits, was put on the Index, so the question is rather moot."

HGL

In ALL probability, the Epitome was put on the index for Heliocentrism. Apart from elliptical identic to Galileo's, i e making fixed stars a thin frame shell of a sphere with Sun in centre or in this case in one elliptic focus of the two perhaps.

RS

Yes, I agree, since no one in the Church would be discussing the merit of elliptical orbits until Olivieri tried to make a case with them for Settele. Also important here is that Kepler was not the first to use elliptical orbits. He first took Tycho's 40-years of notes that charted the planets and made them fit the heliocentric system. He then apparently took Schreiber's work and applied it to Tycho's notes. But even more significant is that it seems the Greek heliocentrists in the Pythagorean school had the first elliptical orbits. GWW contains the history (and I still need to send it to you) which shows that the Greeks were the first to offer elliptical orbits. Here is fn145 in GWW:

Not only may Schreiber have pre-dated Kepler in regards to inventing elliptical orbits, it seems that neither Schreiber nor Kepler were the first to introduce the phenomenon. That honor apparently belongs to the Greeks. As Koestler notes: “There exist some fragmentary remains, dating from the first century AD, of a small-sized Greek planetarium – a mechanical model designed to reproduce the motions of sun, moon, and perhaps also of the planets. But its wheels, or at least some of them, are not circular – they are egg-shaped [footnote: Ernst Zinner, Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Copernicanischen Lehre (Erlangen, 1943), p. 48]. Gingerich adds: “The equant got Ptolemy into a lot of trouble as far as many of his successors were concerned. It wasn’t that his model didn’t predict the angular positions satisfactorily. Rather, the equant forced the epicycle to move nonuniformly around the deferent circle, and that was somehow seen as a deviation from the pure principle of uniform circular motion. Ptolemy himself was apologetic about it, but he used it because it generated the motion that was observed in the heavens. Altogether his system was admirably simple considering the apparent complexity and variety of the retrograde loops” (The Book that Nobody Read, p. 53).

This could become an important point, since when the Church condemned the heliocentric system in 1616-1633, it specifically mentioned the "Pythagorean" system.

Here is the decree:

Quoting decree:

And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine – which is false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture – of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and by Diego de Zúñiga [in his book] on Job, is now being spread abroad and accepted by many – as may be seen from a certain letter of a Carmelite Father, entitled Letter of the Rev. Father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, Carmelite, on the Opinion of the Pythagoreans and of Copernicus concerning the Motion of the Earth, and the Stability of the Sun, and the New Pythagorean System of the World, at Naples, Printed by Lazzaro Scorriggio, 1615; wherein the said Father attempts to show that the aforesaid doctrine of the immobility of the Sun in the center of the world, and of the Earth’s motion, is consonant with truth and is not opposed to Holy Scripture. Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of the Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium, and Diego de Zúñiga, On Job, be suspended until they be corrected; but that the book of the Carmelite Father, Paolo Antonio Foscarini, be altogether prohibited and condemned, and that all other works likewise, in which the same is taught, be prohibited, as by this present decree, it prohibits, condemns, and suspends them all respectively.[1]

Quoting decree, footnote to Latin:

[1] Original Latin: “….Et quia etiam ad notitiam praefatae Sacrae Congregationis pervenit, falsam illam doctrinam Pithagoricam, divinaeque Scripturae omnino adversantem, de mobilitate terrae et immobilitate solis, quam Nicolaus Copernicus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, et Didacus Astunica in Job, etiam docent, iam divulgari et a multis recipe; sicuti videre est ex quadam Epistola impressa cuiusdam Patris Carmelitae, cui titulus: « Lettera del R. Padre Maestro Paolo Antonio Foscarini Carmelitano, sopra l’opinione de’Pittagorici e del Copernico della mobilità della terra e stabilità del sole, et il nuovo Pittagorico sistema del mondo. In Napoli, per Lazzaro Scoriggio, 1615 », in qua dictus Pater ostendere conatur, praefatam doctrinam de immobilitate solis in centro mundi et mobilitate terrae consonam esse veritati et non adversary Sacrae Scripturae; ideo, ne ulterius huiusmodi Opinio in perniciem Catholicae veritatis serpat, censuit, dictos Nicolaum Copernicum De revolutionibus orbium, et Didacum Astunica in Job, suspendendos esse, donec corrigantur; librum vero Patris Pauli Antonii Foscarini Carmelitae omnino prohibendum atque damnandum; aliosque omnes libros, partier idem docentes, prohibendos: prout praesenti Decreto omnes respective prohibit, damnat atque suspendit. In quorum fidem praesens Decretum manu et sigillo Illustrissimi et Reverendissimi D. Cardinalis S. Caeciliae, Episcopi Albanensis, signatum et munitum fuit, die 5 Martii 1616.” Part of above translation taken from de Santillana’s The Crime of Galileo, as cited by Fantoli in Galileo: For Copernicanism and For the Church, pp. 223-224.

RS:

Incidentally, if Olivieri was intent on approving systems that had to be scientifically accurate, he should have rejected Kepler's system right off, since Kepler believed the planets were caused to revolve around the sun by magnetism. Newton had long since discredited that notion

RS

"We also now know that putting the planets in elliptical orbits DOES NOT solve the problem of planetary orbits. They are simply too complicated to be solved by mere ellipses. Saturn is the worst. Putting it in a strict elliptical orbit results in it being off by many degrees every year. Mars is also complicated, because it is tilted 7 degrees off the ecliptic plane. Every planet has a problem, and none of them follow strict elliptical orbits. All in all, elliptical orbits are only approximations, not scientific fact."

HGL

Ah, thanks for telling me!

I had no idea of this, neither had probably Olivieri or even Anfossi.

I had heard one thing like it, Kepler's predictions being (with its matching Newtonian explanation) clearly off when it came to Mercury, which Einstein pretended to mend with relativity. So, Mercury is NOT the only issue?

RS

No, Mercury is mild compared to the other planets. Here is physicist Charles Lane Poor and astronomer Fred Hoyle on the issue:

Quote:

The deviations from the “ideal” in the elements of a planet’s orbit are called “perturbations” or “variations” …. In calculating the perturbations, the mathematician is forced to adopt the old device of Hipparchus, the discredited and discarded epicycle. It is true that the name, epicycle, is no longer used, and that one may hunt in vain through astronomical text-books for the slightest hint of the present day use of this device, which in the popular mind is connected with absurd and fantastic theories. The physicist and the mathematician now speak of harmonic motion, of Fourier’s series, of the development of a function into a series of sines and cosines. The name has been changed, but the essentials of the device remain. And the essential, the fundamental point of the device, under whatever name it may be concealed, is the representation of an irregular motion as the combination of a number of simple, uniform circular motions.[1]

Footnote to source:

[1] Charles Lane Poor, Gravitation versus Relativity, p. 132. See also Robert W. Brehme, “A New Look at the Ptolemaic System,” American Journal of Physics, 44:506-514, 1976. Brehme examines in detail the Ptolemaic system of planetary motions in order to demonstrate its direct kinematical connection with a heliocentric system. Ptolemy’s planetary parameters are shown to be in good agreement, upon transformation, with modern values. See also Bina Chatterjee, “Geometrical Interpretation of the Motion of the Sun, Moon and the Five Planets as Found in the Mathematical Syntaxis of Ptolemy and in the Hindu Astronomical Works,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 15:41-88, 1947.

RS:

Tycho Brahe proposed a dualistic scheme, with the Sun going around the Earth but with all other planets going around the Sun, and in making this proposal he thought he was offering something radically different from Copernicus. And in rejecting Tycho’s scheme, Kepler obviously thought so too. Yet in principle there is no difference.[1] We know now that the difference between a heliocentric and a geocentric theory is one of motions only, and that such a difference has no physical significance,” [the Ptolemaic and Copernican views], “when improved by adding terms involving the square and higher powers of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, are physically equivalent to one another.”[2]

Footnotes to sources:

[1] Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work, p. 3. Hoyle continues: “So what was the issue? The issue was to obtain even one substantially correct empirical description of the planetary motions. The issue was to find out how the planets moved….With knowledgeable hindsight, the situation may not seem unduly complicated, but looked at without foreknowledge the problem of how is anything but simple” (emphasis his). In the same book, Hoyle adds a time-lapsed photograph of the motions of the planets as seen from Earth. The photo shows looping motions, zig-zagging motions, abrupt reversal motions, in short, a dizzying array of complexity.

[2] The first quote taken from Fred Hoyle’s Astronomy and Cosmology, 1975, p. 416; the second, from Hoyle’s Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on His Life and Work, p. 88.

RS:

Here are two more, even better:

Quotes:

The planetary orbits are not strictly ellipses, as we have so far taken them to be, because one planet disturbs the order of another through the gravitational force that it exerts….In all cases the orbits are nearly circles….It is curious that although the actual orbits do not differ in shape much from circles the errors of a circular model can nevertheless be quite large. Indeed, errors as large as this were quite unacceptable to Greek astronomers of the stature of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. It was this, rather than prejudice, which caused them to reject the simple heliocentric theory of Aristarchus….The Hipparchus theory grapples with the facts whereas the circular picture of Aristarchus fails to do so….The theory of Ptolemy, a few minor imperfections apart, worked correctly to the first order in explaining the planetary eccentricities. Copernicus with his heliocentric theory had to do at least as well as this, which meant that he had to produce something much better than the simple heliocentric picture of Aristarchus…. Kepler achieved improvements, but not complete success, and always at the expense of increasing complexity. Kepler and his successors might well have gone on in this style for generations without arriving at a satisfactory final solution, for a reason we now understand clearly. There is no simple mathematical expression for the way in which the direction of a planet – its heliocentric longitude – changes with time. Even today we must express the longitude as an infinite series of terms when we use time as the free variable. What Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Kepler, in his early long calculations, were trying to do was to discover by trial and error the terms of this series. Since the terms become more complicated as one goes to higher orders in the eccentricity, the task became successively harder and harder…[1]

Professor of celestial mechanics at Columbia University, Charles Lane Poor, says much the same:

From the time of Newton, it has been known that Kepler’s laws are mere approximations, computer’s fictions, handy mathematical devices for finding the approximate place of a planet in the heavens. They apply with greater accuracy to some planets than to others. Jupiter and Saturn show the greatest deviations from strictly elliptical motion. The latter body is often nearly a degree away from the place it would have been had its motion about the sun been strictly in accord with Kepler’s laws. This is such a large discrepancy that it can be detected by the unaided eye. The moon is approximately half a degree in diameter, so that the discrepancy in the motion of Saturn is about twice the apparent diameter of the moon. In a single year, during the course of one revolution about the sun, the Earth may depart from the theoretical ellipse by an amount sufficient to appreciably change the apparent place of the sun in the heavens.[2]

Footnotes to sources:

[1] Fred Hoyle, Nicolaus Copernicus: An Essay on his Life and Work, pp. 73, 8, 9, 53, 11-12, 13-14, in the order of ellipses.

[2] Charles Lane Poor, Gravitation versus Relativity, p. 129. Owen Gingerich adds: “Naturally astronomy textbooks don’t show it this way, because they can’t make the point about ellipses unless they enormously exaggerate the eccentricity of the ellipse. So for centuries, beginning with Kepler himself, a false impression has been created about the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. The eccentricity of planetary orbits (that is, their off-centeredness) is quite noticeable – even Ptolemy had to cope with that – but the ellipticity (the degree the figure bows in at the sides) is very subtle indeed. Observations of Mars must be accurate to a few minutes of arc for this tiny ellipticity to reveal itself” (The Book that Nobody Read, p. 166).

RS:

By the way, when they use Einstein's General Relativity to calculate the excess perihelion precession of all the other planets, it is off by whopping amounts. It doesn't even come close. That's a little fact that you don't see advertised in books on Einstein. The history also shows that Einstein arrived at the needed precession for Mercury by starting with the right figure and then back-fitting GRT into the solution.

RS

"Hence, this makes Olivieri's thesis all the more suspect, since he was motivated to legitimize heliocentrism by claiming that elliptical orbits were the final solution."

HGL

Suspect from a scientific point of view, but that should already have been apparent from Anfossi's words then.

RS

Perhaps, if they had willing ears, but Olivieri ruled the roost. Plus, Anfossi could not compete with Olivieri's "science knowledge" (at least what Olivieri thought was science knowledge, much like Galileo thought he knew the science)

RS

"But the only reason Sentence 1 said that one could not say the Sun is the center of the world is that the Church didn't want anyone saying that the Sun was motionless, since that would mean the Earth would have to revolve around it. There was no thought about "other worlds" or about whether the Sun could move with respect to the galaxy nor anything of the sort."

HGL

Not totally wrong, not totally right.

Church certainly did not want anyone to say Sun was motionless.

But if real main reason for that had been mainly making the earth move around it, why was position on moving earth just "at least erroneous" when sun's non-movement in centre of universe or world was "formally heretical"?

RS

The simple reason (and I get this from McMullin, Fantoli and Finocchiaro) was that it may have been possible to interpret some Scripture passages that referred to the "Earth cannot be moved" as meaning that it could not be shaken, as opposed to not revolving around the Sun. So, some leeway was given there. But the Church then reasoned that, since Scripture is very clear that of the two bodies it is the Sun that is revolving around the Earth, then simple logic requires that the Earth cannot be revolving around the sun. To say otherwise would be logically "erroneous," even if one wanted to argue that Psalm 93:1 only referred to a shaken Earth instead of a moving Earth. I cover this issue in my book in even greater detail.

HGL

Also, if the issue in 1616 and 1633 was only between sun and earth, this is because the question of sun being one star like all the others and stars being centres of worlds like the sun had already been settled in 1600.

RS:

Perhaps, but the 1616 and 1633 prior discussions and final decrees made no reference to that issue. If you can find some direct connection there, it would be very valuable for the discussion.

Getting now on to your response on Bruno process ...

RS

"But my issue is only with the 1616 and 1633 decrees and why they were worded the way they were, and what Olivieri did to distort their meaning."

HGL

Well, my issue is also with the decrees of 1600 being involved.

If Galileo was vehemently suspect of heresy, you said yourself there had to be some kind of definition before that.

One would of course be the Trentine on accepting all of Bible according to Church Fathers wherever they were unianimous. But another, closer both in time and subject matter and having been judged by the 1616 judge too, St Robert Bellarmine (who himself had NOT vehemently suspected Galileo of heresy) is precisely the one of 1600.

RS:

I don't think so. First, neither the 1616 or 1633 discussions or decrees brought up the Bruno issue. Second, I don't know of any specific decree that was given against heliocentrism in 1600, which is why the fact that Bruno was condemned for far graver issues (e.g., deny the real presence in the Eucharist) is the main issue in his case. I think most Galileo historians agree that the "defined and declared" doctrine against heliocentrism that was already established referred to the 1616 decrees, and they were very specific, and thus Urban VIII could use them against Galileo.

HGL

And that part of Bruno's cosmology is also more directly concerned than Heliocentrism as such with Distant Starlight Problem, and therefore with Mark 10:6 et al. loc.

So my take on the affair, even before knowing of you, involved Bruno affair being a very relevant background to Galileo affair.

Hans Georg Lundahl

RS: Well, you should study the connection between Bruno and the Galileo case too see if you can come up with anything concrete. It's an open area waiting for someone like you.

PS, I came late onto Anfossi affair, through a man who unlike Palm did not think 1820 decress had settled question if Heliocentrism could be believed or not.

Juan Casanovas:

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1989MmSAI..60..791C/0000791.000.html

My own:

http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.com/2013/02/father-filippo-anfossi-was-right.html

[Both clickable above]

David Palm, if YOU think Church settled matter in Settele affair, look up Casanovas' essay at least!

RS:

Indeed. Of course, imprimaturs could never settle Settele :)

Thanks for your paper. I'd like to put this on the Galileo Was Wrong site, with your permission. Also, thanks for Casanovas' paper. Not often you see treatments of the Settele case like that.

IV

Me to Sungenis and Palm

16/04/15 à 10h08

Re: Expanding on previous reply, including on Bruno

Et quia etiam ad notitiam praefatae Sacrae Congregationis pervenit, falsam illam doctrinam Pithagoricam

This very probably only means that the known proposer of the false doctrine in Antiquity was a Pythagorean.

Not that everything else the Pythagorean said was condemned because he, being a Pythagorean, had said it.

Pythagoras is beyond reproach in Arithmetic (but don’t let Pythagorean Arithmetic encroach on Geometry! There are size relations which are NOT numbers and not even rational ratios, like π and side of the double surface square compared to the side of the square you compare it to. [Second item also known as "sqrt of two"]

Incidentally, if Olivieri was intent on approving systems that had to be scientifically accurate, he should have rejected Kepler's system right off, since Kepler believed the planets were caused to revolve around the sun by magnetism. Newton had long since discredited that notion

Newton kept Kepler’s geometry, though. He only changed the mechanism.

By the way, the discrediting Newton did was probably due to a view of space above atmosphere as very close to absolute vacuum. In a smaller universe where interstellar matter is denser than we think, or if aether is a substance, or in both cases, the mechanism of electric or magnetic power might work.

But Newton had a problem with his own proposed mechanism.

Have you seen the video by Don Pettit?

The water droplets that in weightlessness orbit a charged knitting needle stick to it between 10 and 20 orbitations after start of orbit. So, I guess Kepler would be out of question too.

Riccioli, as you said, saw no problem with elliptic orbits, but he did see Kepler as wrong in proposing a materialistic mechanism.

He said we can’t check, but philosophical reasons plus majority of scholastics speak for taking of the four scenarios he knew of and considered, angelic movers as most probable one.

No, Mercury is mild compared to the other planets. Here is physicist Charles Lane Poor and astronomer Fred Hoyle on the issue:

The deviations from the “ideal” in the elements of a planet’s orbit are called “perturbations” or “variations” …. In calculating the perturbations, the mathematician is forced to adopt the old device of Hipparchus, the discredited and discarded epicycle. It is true that the name, epicycle, is no longer used, and that one may hunt in vain through astronomical text-books for the slightest hint of the present day use of this device, which in the popular mind is connected with absurd and fantastic theories. The physicist and the mathematician now speak of harmonic motion, of Fourier’s series, of the development of a function into a series of sines and cosines. The name has been changed, but the essentials of the device remain. And the essential, the fundamental point of the device, under whatever name it may be concealed, is the representation of an irregular motion as the combination of a number of simple, uniform circular motions

This is the kind of stuff I look forward to reading once I have a place where you can send me your book!

Btw, as I am a bit of a musicologist, any concrete sound is likely not to be a real sine wave, and is usually analysed as a combination of sine waves. Galileo’s father was a musician and I am not sure which of them made the experiments that Father Mersenne developed into the foundation of acoustics. I think it was the guy we are talking about. Sadly, he was sure, while Mersenne was not, that sound as heard was identical to vibrations. Mersenne also allowed, very wisely in my view, that vibrations could be accompanying a really extant audible quality.

Hans Georg Lundahl

V

Me to Sungenis

16/04/15 à 19h21

Re permissions

There is a general one:

hglwrites : A little note on further use conditions
https://hglwrites.wordpress.com/a-little-note-on-further-use-conditions/

If applied online, a link to original is in order.

I see absolutely no problem with the proposal.

Hans Georg Lundahl

To public reading this

My general permission is applicable as such on any essay my own, like the one on Anfossi/Settele.

For blogposts with shared copyright, there is for instance here, if anyone would want to print this correspondence ALSO a question of asking Palm and Sungenis. See more on this subject here:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Copyright issues on blogposts with shared copyright
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/p/copyright-issues-on-blogposts-with.html

W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno, part IV of V

Proemium : With Sungenis on Settele-Anfossi Affair · W. Sungenis/Palm on Anfossi-Settele and Bruno : part I of V · part II of V · part III of V · part IV of V · part V of V

I

Me to Sungenis and Palm

15/04/15 à 10h26

Answering II of Sungenis 2

There was not just a local motion discussion, but also a local centre discussion. That local centre discussion means local centre of the whole world, i e the entire universe.

Condemned sentence 1: "The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture."

This quote is from this page:

Papal Condemnation (Sentence) of Galileo (June 22, 1633)
Famous Trials
by Douglas O. Linder (2015)
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY (UMKC) SCHOOL OF LAW
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html

Now, the words "center of the world" very clearly mean centre of the entire universe. BOTH sides were agreeing, as I do also, that fixed stars were a thin sphaeric shell around that centre.

That "sun is one star among many, each star a sun as centre of its world, and having planets, and each world having its own world soul and God being that of our world, but not for instance the world of Sirius" would be a very fair résumé of what Giordano Bruno was burned on the stake for in 1600.

And if you take away the part of world soul and of God being that of our world only, and rephrase terminology to make other stars centres not of "worlds" but only of "solar systems", this idea of Bruno's was exactly what Settele was promoting in 1820.

So, neither can the term "local motion" be used to deny the directly condemned sentence in 1633 was about Sun as centre of the entire universe, nor the fact that only movements involving the scale Sun and Earth within fixed stars, since it was in 1633 already a SETTLED (Settele will excuse the pun!) question that calling other stars other worlds was part of Bruno's condemned sentences.

Now, the exact wording of the condemnation against Bruno in 1600 is a bit less possible to get across even these days, after the documents have been returned from France to Vatican.

Even the exact wording of the Galileo case may be somewhat difficult to get across, I give this quote, but on a video I have heard Sungenis insert with emphasis the phrase "as is seen". Which would clearly imply necessity of sun having, not just any motion, but the precise one we see not being illusory.

Now, the cosmology discussed in 1820, unlike the very much more recent one we have since 1930 (Shapley and Kapteyn contributed to it) had each star, thus also the Sun, stand still. Eternally or since creation equidistant in a presumably endless cosmos.

The "endless cosmos" part is also part of Giordano Bruno's ideas, and I also do not know if it was condemned separately or only as part of a more general and more clearly blasphemous thesis of his or even not at all. But I think it likely it was condemned, because it gives "infinity", which is an attribute of God, to the world and also because an endless cosmos would demote "edge of the world" from being the Heaven where Seraphim adore God and where Blessed souls go and where the resurrected bodies of the Blessed will be along with the already glorious bodies of at least Our Lord and Our Lady.

Therefore, as likely as not, in 1616 and 1633 EVERYONE agreed as on a moral certainty, at least of Christian doctrine, that fixed stars or stellatum were a pretty thin layer, so that NO ONE risked falling under the shadow of the condemnation of 1600 against the non-recanting and executed Giordano Bruno.

The condemnations against Bruno were probably also missing in 1820, which is probably why even Anfossi did not dare to refer to them.

Hans Georg Lundahl

II

Me to Sungenis and Palm

15/04/15 à 15h02

Expanding on previous reply, including on Bruno

Quote 1592 – 1600 From the Trial to the Stake: Giordano's trial lasted almost eight years. The Inquisition initially accused him for his anti-dogmatic ideals, which had already cost him his Dominican habit. As an anti-Trinitarian, the philosopher rejected the virginity of Mary and transubstantiation. His reflections in terms of cosmology, his rejection of geocentrism and his attraction for magic gradually gave rise to an impressive list of accusations. In the end, it was the whole of his freethinking that was challenged. In February 1593, Bruno was incarcerated in the prisons of the Holy Office. The trial dragged on for another two years before the decision was taken to conduct an in-depth study of his works, which were censured and subsequently burned at St Peter's Square. From his cell, Bruno finished writing a statement for his defence and presented his final plea on 20 December 1594 before the Holy Office. The trial was interrupted for six months, during which time Bruno continued to actively defend his theory on infinite worlds, sometimes stating that he was ready to recant, and at other times declaring that he was faithful to his ideas. Cardinal Bellarmin therefore drew up a list of the theories deemed to be heretical, over which Bruno again hesitated before categorically refusing to renounce his doctrine: The eight propositions that the philosopher refused to renounce were as follows:

1 - The statement of "two real and eternal principles of existence: the soul of the world and the original matter from which beings are derived".

2 - The doctrine of the infinite universe and infinite worlds in conflict with the idea of Creation: "He who denies the infinite effect denies the infinite power".

3 - The idea that every reality resides in the eternal and infinite soul of the world, including the body: "There is no reality that is not accompanied by a spirit and an intelligence".

4 - The argument according to which "there is no transformation in the substance", since the substance is eternal and generates nothing, but transforms.

5 - The idea of terrestrial movement, which according to Bruno, did not oppose the Holy Scriptures, which were popularised for the faithful and did not apply to scientists.

6 - The designation of stars as "messengers and interpreters of the ways of God".

7 - The allocation of a "both sensory and intellectual" soul to earth.

8 - The opposition to the doctrine of St Thomas on the soul, the spiritual reality held captive in the body and not considered as the form of the human body.

End of quote.

Source:

The Trials of Giordano Bruno: 1592 & 1600
Selected Links and Bibliography
by Lawrence MacLachlan
Famous Trials
by Douglas O. Linder (2015)
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY (UMKC) SCHOOL OF LAW
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/brunolinks.html

Both 1600, and 1687 (Principia), and most times by progressive astronomers and astronomical philosophers between Kant and very recent ones, the Heliocentric idea involved "infinite worlds" in the sense of an "infinite number of solar systems".

Newton and more recent ones would not have termed these "worlds". But they would have substantially repeated the meaning Bruno gave this term.

And in Newtonism it becomes kind of inevitable, at least until it is replaced by Big Bang (which is also a very recent thought, far more recent than the Anfossi-Settele affair).

How so?

Suppose sun and planets is all there is, no problem (in the Newton theory, I'll be back on it!) as long as centrifugal force of planets keep them out of the sun. Of course, we know this is not the case. Even in Galileo's one sheet spheric shell of fixed stars, as opposed to this idea, which coincides on this point with Classic Geocentrism, the Newtonian Heliocentrism would imply stars would be moving too slowly to stay out of the sun.

Suppose on the other hand that Sun were surrounded by six stars at 60° angle from each other and all same distance from Sun. Now, in such a case, gravitation would sooner or later add up to them getting an impulse to crash into the sun. But hold it: we get a few stars outside those, and therefore the six stars closest to sun won't crash into it, since also attracted by stars outside themselves. So, how about the twelve stars outside those? And so on. And same for three dimensions and not just plane. Therefore, a universe functioning on Newton's terms would need to be either an infinite universe of an infinite number of stars and solar systems OR expanding, so as to provide, in absense of circular motion, even so a centrifugal force.

And up to Lemaître "infinite" was more in vogue than "expanding".

This Bruno-ish idea is then what Settele and Olivieri considered sufficiently different from the exact system of Galileo to not fall under the condemnation of 1633.

Now, I think you may both guess that as I am not a Bruno fan, I am very much NOT a fan of modern cosmology either.

Btw, one argument I saw attributed to Bruno for the infinite universe was clearly borrowed from Flat Earth Geography, despite this being already refuted by da Gama. Chesterton gave the real and round Earth answer to that problem in Manalive : if you travel far enough, you will NOT see an infinity of new horizons, you will rather come back to see the same horizon you started out from.

Chesterton-Bruno 1:0.

Hans Georg Lundahl

III

Sungenis to me, cc Palm

15/04/15 à 16h15

Re: Answering I of 2 by Sungenis

It wouldn't make it any better for Kepler if it was just heliocentrism. It would make it worse, since it would mean that NO model of heliocentrism would be allowed, elliptical or no elliptical orbits.

If just elliptical orbits were banned, then Kepler could have come up with a heliocentric model without elliptical orbits (like Ptolemy's Equant, which did the same thing as Kepler's elliptical orbits).

Riccioli put elliptical orbits into his Tychonian model and it worked just like Kepler's model, and he remained a devoted geocentrist. The Church allowed that without any comment to Riccioli. So it wasn't elliptical orbits, per se, that was the problem, but heliocentrism, which, as I have consistently maintained, was the ONLY issue on the table, that is, whether the sun went around the earth or the earth went around the sun.

The point in fact remains, however, that Kepler's Epitome, which taught heliocentrism with elliptical orbits, was put on the Index, so the question is rather moot.

We also now know that putting the planets in elliptical orbits DOES NOT solve the problem of planetary orbits. They are simply too complicated to be solved by mere ellipses. Saturn is the worst. Putting it in a strict elliptical orbit results in it being off by many degrees every year. Mars is also complicated, because it is tilted 7 degrees off the ecliptic plane. Every planet has a problem, and none of them follow strict elliptical orbits. All in all, elliptical orbits are only approximations, not scientific fact.

Hence, this makes Olivieri's thesis all the more suspect, since he was motivated to legitimize heliocentrism by claiming that elliptical orbits were the final solution. They weren't. He was just looking for some excuse to help the Church save face in front of the world, much like it does today.

IV

Sungenis to me, cc Palm

15/04/15 à 16h51

Re: Answering II of Sungenis 2

In a message dated 4/15/2015 4:26:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, hgl@voila.fr writes:

[Dialogue time!]

HGL

There was not just a local motion discussion, but also a local centre discussion. That local centre discussion means local centre of the whole world, i e the entire universe.

RS:

I have no problem with that.

HGL

Condemned sentence 1: "The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture."

This quote is from this page:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/condemnation.html

[Link given clickable above]

Now, the words "center of the world" very clearly mean centre of the entire universe. BOTH sides were agreeing, as I do also, that fixed stars were a thin sphaeric shell around that centre.

RS:

Granted. But the only reason Sentence 1 said that one could not say the Sun is the center of the world is that the Church didn't want anyone saying that the Sun was motionless, since that would mean the Earth would have to revolve around it. There was no thought about "other worlds" or about whether the Sun could move with respect to the galaxy nor anything of the sort. The only issue on the table was whether the sun went around the earth or the earth went around the sun. We know this from all the discussions that went on prior to the decrees being issued, both in 1616 and 1633. This needn't be very complicated at all.

RS:

One more thing. Galileo was convicted of being "vehemently suspect of heresy." In order to be so convicted, there had to be a formal and established doctrine of heresy concerning what he was convicted of. In other words, he could not be convicted of being suspect of heresy if there were no heresy already established that he could be convicted of, otherwise he would be falsely convicted. And this is precisely why the 1633 sentence says that the heresy was "declared and defined" for all to know, especially Galileo, BEFORE he was convicted.

Quote by RS:

“And whereas a book appeared here recently, printed last year at Florence, the title of which shows that you were the author, this title being: “Dialogue of Galileo Galilei on the Great World Systems: Ptolemy and Copernicus”; and whereas the Holy Congregation was afterwards informed that through the publication of the said book the false opinion of the motion of the Earth and the stability of the sun was daily gaining ground, the said book was taken into careful consideration, and in it there was discovered a patent violation of the aforesaid injunction that had been imposed upon you, for in this book you have defended the said opinion previously condemned and to your face declared to be so, although in the said book you strive by various devices to produce the impression that you leave it undecided, and in express terms probable: which, however, is a most grievous error, as an opinion can in no wise be probable which has been declared and defined to be contrary to divine Scripture.”[1]

Footnote to Quote by RS:

[1] “non potendo in niun modo esser probabile un’opinione dichiarata e difinita per contraria alla Scrittura divina” (Le Opera di Galileo Galilei, vol. 5, pp. 335-336, translated by Finocchiaro, cited in Galileo: For Copernicanism, pp. 201-202).

HGL

That "sun is one star among many, each star a sun as centre of its world, and having planets, and each world having its own world soul and God being that of our world, but not for instance the world of Sirius" would be a very fair résumé of what Giordano Bruno was burned on the stake for in 1600.

RS:

Granted

HGL

And if you take away the part of world soul and of God being that of our world only, and rephrase terminology to make other stars centres not of "worlds" but only of "solar systems", this idea of Bruno's was exactly what Settele was promoting in 1820.

RS:

Perhaps

HGL

So, neither can the term "local motion" be used to deny the directly condemned sentence in 1633 was about Sun as centre of the entire universe, nor the fact that only movements involving the scale Sun and Earth within fixed stars, since it was in 1633 already a SETTLED (Settele will excuse the pun!) question that calling other stars other worlds was part of Bruno's condemned sentences.

RS:

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here. All I can say at this point is that the insertion of "local motion" in the sentence, "The sun is the center of the world and completely devoid of local motion" is to curtail those who were saying that if the Sun, if it was in the center, would have no motion, and thus it couldn't revolve around the Earth. If the sun is not in the center of the world and has motion, then obviously it can revolve around the motionless earth. There was nothing else discussed. So all this talk from Palm about the "new astronomy" being more involved than the old astronomy is just a red herring.

HGL

Now, the exact wording of the condemnation against Bruno in 1600 is a bit less possible to get across even these days, after the documents have been returned from France to Vatican.

Even the exact wording of the Galileo case may be somewhat difficult to get across, I give this quote, but on a video I have heard Sungenis insert with emphasis the phrase "as is seen". Which would clearly imply necessity of sun having, not just any motion, but the precise one we see not being illusory.

Now, the cosmology discussed in 1820, unlike the very much more recent one we have since 1930 (Shapley and Kapteyn contributed to it) had each star, thus also the Sun, stand still. Eternally or since creation equidistant in a presumably endless cosmos.

The "endless cosmos" part is also part of Giordano Bruno's ideas, and I also do not know if it was condemned separately or only as part of a more general and more clearly blasphemous thesis of his or even not at all. But I think it likely it was condemned, because it gives "infinity", which is an attribute of God, to the world and also because an endless cosmos would demote "edge of the world" from being the Heaven where Seraphim adore God and where Blessed souls go and where the resurrected bodies of the Blessed will be along with the already glorious bodies of at least Our Lord and Our Lady.

Therefore, as likely as not, in 1616 and 1633 EVERYONE agreed as on a moral certainty, at least of Christian doctrine, that fixed stars or stellatum were a pretty thin layer, so that NO ONE risked falling under the shadow of the condemnation of 1600 against the non-recanting and executed Giordano Bruno.

The condemnations against Bruno were probably also missing in 1820, which is probably why even Anfossi did not dare to refer to them.

Hans Georg Lundahl

RS:

As far as I understand the Bruno case, he was condemned for denying the soteriology of the Church more than his ideas of cosmology, and the cosmological ideas were condemned because they infringed on the soteriology (e.g., that if there were beings on other worlds they would need a savior also).