On Neil Degrasse's "Cosmos" Remake

[Juvenal]

All that nitpicking and axe-grinding of the nitpicking axe-grinders and you failed to notice the reference to Monty Hall's inquisition rather than Monty Python's, which is the only thing worthy of actual nitpicking and axe-grinding.

I'm so ashamed.

[Juvenal]

No, actually, they answered him with logic and evidence, multiple times, and he refused to accept it, multiple times. 'Then' they responded to his dishonesty by burning him at the stake.

You're a sick and twisted dude, TT. Justsayin'

Heliocentric is correct. His theory of it, however, wasn't, and was well-refuted at that time. Aristotle was the main source of arguments against heliocentric theory, arguments that both, Bruno and Galileo, failed to respond to.

I'm not sure how to break this to you gently, but you do realize Aristotle was wrong, don't you?

[Epoetker]

You're a sick and twisted dude, TT. Justsayin'

I'm not sure how to break this to you gently, but you do realize Aristotle was wrong, don't you?

You do realize that eventually being on the right side of one part of truth doesn't give you free reign to say whatever you want about all other aspects of truth, right? Besides, someone who cared about the truth of his message SO MUCH that he wanted to cover all possible objections, and didn't cover Aristotle, the most popular and recognized authority on his subject, probably isn't too confident in his findings.

Likewise, why should I waste my time talking about Affirmative Action Black Science Man when I can go straight to the source?

Carl Sagan was the country's leading practitioner of the mythologization of science, transforming a process into a philosophy, substituting political agendas for inquiry and arrogance for research. Sagan was often wrong, but it didn't matter because his errors were scientific, rather than ideological or theological. He could be wrong as many times as he wanted, as long as he wasn't wrong politically..

Science has been thoroughly Saganized. The vast majority of research papers are wrong, their results cannot be replicated. The researchers writing them often don't even understand what they're doing wrong and don't care. Research is increasingly indistinguishable from politics. Studies are framed in ways that prove a political premise, whether it's that the world will end without a carbon tax or that racism causes obesity. If they prove the premise, the research is useful to the progressive non-profits and politicians who always claim to have science in their corner. If it doesn't, then it isn't funded.

"Science" has been reduced to an absolute form of authority that is always correct. The Saganists envision science as a battle between superstition and truth, but what distinguished science from superstition was the ability to throw out wrong conclusions based on testing. Without the scientific method, science is just another philosophy where anything can be proven if you manipulate the terminology so that the target is drawn around the arrow. Add statistical games and nothing means anything.

This form of science measures itself not against the universe, but against the intellectual bubble inhabited by those who share the same worldview or those who live under their control. It's not a bold exploration of the cosmos, but a timid repetition of cliches. The debates are as microscopic as this miniature pocket universe. Discoveries are accidental and often misinterpreted to fit within dogma. Progress is not defined not by the transcendence of what is known, but by its blinkered reaffirmation.

This isn't science or even scientism because it has little basis in the scientific method. Like all progressive authority, it now derives its credentials from membership in an expert class and advocacy on behalf of a victim class.

You, like all other leftists everywhere, are bringing absolutely marginal legal cases to us and attempting to spin them as MILESTONES IN PROGRESSIVE HISTORY. I'd consider them less milestones than a rap sheet for your eventual Nuremberg trials. You have long arrears to make good.

[TimelessTheist]

You're a sick and twisted dude, TT. Justsayin'

How so?

I'm not sure how to break this to you gently, but you do realize Aristotle was wrong, don't you?

No, actually, he wasn't. Aristotle was 100% correct in disproving the heliocentric theories of those days. It wasn't until later that technology improved, and new evidence came up, that a 'new' heliocentric theory could be formed, and finally, proven as fact.

[rogue06]

There's a good deal of nit-picking here, all of which, from what I've seen, is coming from axe-grinders with little interest in applying the same standard of accuracy to themselves.

Just f'rinstance ...

Copernicus, d. 1543
Thomas Digges, d. 1595

Thank you for helping to make my point. By 1599 it was ridiculous to claim that "everyone knew the sun, planets and stars were just lights in sky revolving around the earth.” This had become the matter of debate and discussion over a half century earlier.

Nicholas of Cusa, d. 1464

Again, you're helping to reinforce my point. It wasn't that his ideas suddenly vanished from the world especially since Bruno was being profoundly influenced by him and almost certainly found out about Lucretius and his ideas through him.

Banned books! Defending the banning of books by religious authorities. Let me know how that works out for you.

For the rest of us, about the only thing more repugnant than the intellectual vice-grips historically wielded by religious authorities and their banned book lists are the modern day apologists for same.

Copernicus intended to publish post-mortem, because he knew the reaction he'd receive. His publisher inserted prefatory material cushioning the text, unsuccessfully; it was the banned book list for him, too.

How did you manage to interpret what I said as a defense of banning books?

My point was that reading Lucretius' De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) was not, as Tyson mistakenly states, "his undoing"? And I thought I made that pretty clear by first showing that reading something that had been placed on a list that was banned did not automatically get you in trouble and later discussing exactly what it was that actually did get him trouble -- and it wasn't reading a book that had been banned.

And I'm quite aware of how Andreas Osiander took it upon himself to add a preface (“Introduction to the Reader”) to Copernicus' De Revolutionibus declaring heliocentrism wasn’t reality or a truth (“neither true nor even probable”) but was only as hypothetical construct that was only useful insofar as it facilitated mathematical calculations. It is probably the first time a book of science got an "Only a Theory" warning slapped on it. But of course this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Bruno and Tyson's assertion that reading a banned book was "his undoing."

His political appointment was a steady job until it stopped being a steady job when the politics changed, as they always do. He had no problem getting one of these "steady" jobs, which he kept losing after a year or two.

The clear implication was that Bruno was unable to keep a steady job because of reactions to his views about the cosmos and that is pure unadulterated bull feathers. He lost his job in Geneva when he picked a religious fight with a respected professor. He lost his job in Paris when he decided to go to London. He lost his job in London because the political climate between France and England worsened (he came to London with a recommendation from the French King and as a guest of the French ambassador). None of that had anything in the slightest to do with his view that the universe was infinite or anything like that.

Was he fired, or did he quit? Did he leave voluntarily, or was he coerced by the religious authorities? Kicked out, or ran off, it reads the same. There's little point in distinguishing between theological and scientific truth claims in an age where all truth claims were theological.

He was not leaving his jobs because of any conflict caused by his beliefs regarding the universe. There is no reason to believe that he couldn't have stayed in Paris and continued lecturing what with having many powerful patrons including the freaking King. But he decided to leave and go to London and lecture at Oxford and seek a position there. Why? You're guess is as good as mine since most historians thought that such a move wasn't a bright one in that Paris at the time was much more receptive to his notions.

Good catch on the timeline issue.

Thank you. I thought the other points that I raised were just as valid. Bruno was hardly not staying in one place because of his views concerning an infinite universe. And his dream hardly "sealed his fate." This is pure fabrication on Tyson and Cosmos' part.

You're talking about the trial of Galileo, prosecuted by the same Bellarmine who ordered Bruno burned at the stake. There is little doubt Galileo would have received the same punishment.

Not saying that he wouldn't. What I'm saying is that in Bruno's time "the penalty for supporting Copernican ideas or even the view that there were other worlds (something that Nicholas of Cusa also had proposed) was not as Tyson stated 'the most vicious form of cruel and unusual punishment'." The claim that it was his false.

That's just warped. The secular courts performed the executions, but that's no absolution for the religious courts that handed them over to be executed.

What I'm saying is that the secular courts and methods they employed were far more brutal. And this had nothing to do with whether someone was handed over to them by church authorities for heresy or whether they were arrested for some non-religious crime like rape or murder. Secular courts often started the process by trying to extract a confession through torture. As barbaric as the Inquisition was they saw torture only as a last resort.

Does that absolve them of their behavior or did I say that it did? Perhaps I should bolden, underline and change the color of statements like "And again not to excuse the brutality that they inflicted" as well as "But again I reiterate, killing people who disagree with us is indefensible" so you don't miss them.

Not silly at all. Bruno offered to recant his purely religious heresies, saving out only the plurality of worlds, but was denied, and in consequence, recanted none.

From what I read at various times he offered to recant those as well but would change his mind just like he would change his mind concerning disavowing his religious beliefs after offering to recant.

[whag]

Is this a grammar fail?

"He was not, as Tyson said, one of those ..." should be "He was, as Tyson said, not one of those ..."

It would be a stretch to call Bruno a martyr for science, but deGrasse Tyson never went there. On the contrary, as deGrasse Tyson said in the program, Bruno was a martyr, but not a martyr for science, explicitly enumerating the reasons you've given.

The overall message of the opening show was the expansion of our views of the universe in the past few hundred years since the development of the telescope from a single world in the center of creation surrounded by relatively insignificant points of light … to a possible multiverse of universe upon universe, within which lies our observable universe, composed of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each composed of hundreds of billions of solar systems, all nestled in a vast ocean of dark energy and dark matter.

In this reincarnation of the Cosmos of Carl Sagan — Neil deGrasse Tyson’s mentor! —deGrasse Tyson gives our address as:

Earth
Solar System
Milky Way Galaxy
Local Group
Virgo Supercluster
Observable Universe

Each of the lines following “Earth” was nailed down in the past four hundred years. That dividing line is directly associated with Galileo and his telescopes, which in turn is directly associated with Galileo’s persecution in the face of the church's theological abstention from what he described and defended. Galileo’s recantation was in turn directly associated with Bruno’s failure to do the same, with tragically brutal consequence, as described: a vicious form of cruel and unusual punishment.

It’s beyond grotesque to engage in blaming a victim who was burned at the stake for thought crimes.

If Bruno was abrasive and belligerent, and also heretical, so was Newton, whose work corroborated Bruno’s vision in a way Galileo —often described as the father of the scientific method — never could. Newton went beyond measurement to a mathematical modeling so precise its discrepancies from the observations would pave the way for Einstein.

Even beyond his unquestionably heretical writings on mysticism and the occult, Newton’s theory of gravity was subject to accusations of heresy. If Newton escaped Galileo’s fate, not to mention Bruno’s, it was only because he lived outside the time and place of the Inquisition, which deGrasse Tyson described, accurately enough, as an institution which existed to investigate and torment any with views that differed from theirs.

If “Nothing made them happier than for someone accused of heretical teachings to immediately and voluntarily recant and rejoin the Church,” we have a disagreement on what the word “voluntarily” should mean. If they were able to force a recantation without physical application of their torture devices, the threat of their use was still coercion. There’s no question the threat worked on Galileo. And if it is true that the suppression of heresy was higher bliss for them than an objective search for truth, that is its own indictment.

Having read the commentary surrounding this show, I’m well aware your list of criticisms originates with church apologists, axe grinders if you will, who take these historical excesses personally and respond by lashing out at the ill-fated Bruno. Appealing to context, they minimize the crimes perpetrated by their church authorities and magnify their accusations against Bruno by refusing to lodge the same appeal: Bruno was no more abrasive than his opponents, giving as good as he got, and besting them at their own game, only losing out when his patron was outranked by theirs or they managed to upgrade their champions.

Bruno was guessing, and could well have been wrong. But it was an awfully good guess, inspired by both secular and religious thinking, and specific enough to be tested as the technology evolved. If he wasn’t martyred for a science that did not yet exist, he was certainly martyred for the free thinking that allowed that science to come into being. His multiplicity of worlds, with a boundless, omni-centered universe in which the stars are suns like our sun, surrounded by planetary systems was far beyond his time, and has since been spectacularly verified. None of his influencers can say the same.

And, if the visceral reaction to his biographical sketch on the first episode of Cosmos is any clue, the same religious suppression of free thought is still active today, making his inclusion all the more apt.

As ever, Jesse

I love that you pointed out Newton's stranger beliefs, which definately were unorthodox. His mind strayed beautifully, as minds ever will.

[whag]

There's comedy in this vigorous criticism of the Cosmos cartoon, while JP Holding is given no tongue lashing for his foolish cartoons.

At worst, Tyson misrepresented a church that threated torture, executed people, and granted special dispensation. At worst, JP Holding makes cartoons that deceive people into thinking those are good apologetics.

Have you ever seen Mountain Man link to a Holding cartoon? I have. It's not pretty.

[TimelessTheist]

There's comedy in this vigorous criticism of the Cosmos cartoon, while JP Holding is given no tongue lashing for his foolish cartoons.

At worst, Tyson misrepresented a church that threated torture, executed people, and granted special dispensation. At worst, JP Holding makes cartoons that deceive people into thinking those are good apologetics.

Have you ever seen Mountain Man link to a Holding cartoon? I have. It's not pretty.

I see you're being your usual self....that is, an idiot.

[shunyadragon]

I see you're being your usual self....that is, an idiot.

More name calling for one who sincerely believes that the Inquisition is justified.

[TimelessTheist]

More name calling for one who sincerely believes that the Inquisition is justified.

More platitudes from the liar who still hasn't admitted he was wrong about anything he said.

[shunyadragon]

More platitudes from the liar who still hasn't admitted he was wrong about anything he said.

Not platitudes, just citable and documentable facts. You said it on this thread!

[TimelessTheist]

Not platitudes, just citable and documentable facts. You said it on this thread!

Yeah, I know. The fact that you keep repeating it, essentially coupled with an argument from outrage, as a response to everything I say, is platitudinous.

[shunyadragon]

Yeah, I know. The fact that you keep repeating it, essentially coupled with an argument from outrage, as a response to everything I say, is platitudinous.

Not outrage at all, just the facts.

[TimelessTheist]

Not outrage at all, just the facts.

Literally nothing you've said so far has been "the facts".

[shunyadragon]

Literally nothing you've said so far has been "the facts".

Just the facts!!!!

Your emotional justification of the Inquisition is disgraceful and dangerous to those who believe differently.