Michael Flynn's Blog, page 15

Bedab!

Judy Curry's website Climate Etc. has comm box posts by someone named Mike Flynn.  Be advised that this is not TOF.  About a week or so ago, our local paper featured a letter to the editor signed by "Mike Flynn" that was likewide non-TOFian.  What is going on here?  A plethora of Mike Flynns?  Or did the Michael Flynn Manufacturing Company put out one last shipment?  An entire company for producing Michael Flynns?  No wonder they went into liquidation.  Lack of demand.

Not as high-power as Kress or as widespread as Resnick, nor so wheeler-dealer as Haldeman.

Meanwhile over on the TOFSpot

Forgot to post these here:
Retrospective: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" (INTJ)
Apotemnophiliac Rights Now!
An Interview with David Berlinski
Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" -- Dritte Teil

Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars" -- Part Dieux

LAST WEEK, YOU MAY RECALL , TOF began his rumination on the recursively-titled The Wreck of The River of Stars.  Recusive, because there is a title (the ship's name) within the title (the book's name), throwing down the gauntlet for typographers everywhere.  How much and which portions are to be italicized?  Great minds must ponder this.

Meanwhile, we shall occupy ourselves otherwise. 

Previously, we discussed the title, which derived its ancestry from such as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and the desire to write a story of a tragic shipwreck.  Since TOF writes in the genre SF, the ship wrecked would be ipso facto a space ship.  

We also discussed Where do you get your ideas, and saw the idea for The Wreck came from a confluence of several things:

The aforesaid desire to write of a tragic shipwreck.
The desire to use Mayer-Briggs personality classifications to define sixteen distinct characters, just to see if I could pull it off. 
The notion in William Trevor's The Boarding House of a landlord who deliberately sought out misfits to rent rooms to.
Kick-Off Read more »

This Should Get Your Goat. Or Not.

Some of you may remember the woman who married the Eiffel Tower, or perhaps the one who married the roller coaster.  (What marriage does not have its ups and downs?)  Or the fellow who married his Laborador retriever.  (The bride was very fetching.)  Perhaps even the woman who married herself, or the woman who married a warehouse; though those last two may have been stunts.  (Only the last two?  Oh, the humanity!)
Read more.

In the Stone House

TOF is pleased to announce that his novelette "The Journeyman: In the Stone House" has been accepted at Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, in honor of which, the following teaser:

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Retroview: The Wreck of "The River of Stars"

Ain't TOF cute?

Taking a break from the heavy Ptolemaic lifting, TOF has decided to ruminate on his "critically-praised" but commercially orphaned novel, The Wreck of "The River of Stars," the title of which is the despair of orthographers everywhere.  To do so, he will abandon his cute affectation of referring to himself in the third person.  This does not mean he will cease being cute, however. 

The Wreck, if we may call it by its nicktitle, was called by one reviewer "the best hard-SF tragic novel of character yet written," adding "though this is an uncrowded niche."  Uncrowded, indeed.  Run out and buy a copy.  I'll wait. 

READ REST  HERE

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown

There seems not to be much traffic over here these days, since most of the posts are links to The TOFSpot, but one misses names one common in the commbox here.  Anyhow, here are the links to all the parts of the Ptolemaic Smackdown:

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: TABLE OF CONTENTS1. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown (3391)

2. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Down for the Count (1772)

3. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown:
The Great Galileo-Scheiner Flame War of 1611-13 (1298)

4. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown:
The Down 'n Dirty Mud Wrassle (2524)

5. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Here's Mud in Yer Eye (3856)

6. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Comet Chameleon (1293)

7. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Time and Tides Wait Not (933)

8. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Trial and Error (695)

9. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: From Plausible to Proven (319)

(Figures in parentheses are number of visits as of 10/7/13 12:21 PM, eastern)

6. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Comet Chameleon

Previously on the Smackdown...
Galileo's enemies have managed to suck him into a theological discussion, never a good idea for a private individual during a Protestant Revolution.  The lawyers and politicians who run things have almost no understanding of and little interest in natural science. They see it only as a hairy nuisance getting some folks riled up and they want to make it go away.  Even the Lynceans are mostly naturalists and lack deep understanding of astronomy.
Galileo has been asked politely to prove that the Earth really does move before he demands that the Church reinterpret the Scriptures.  But the Tuscan mathematician is an irascible and impatient sort.  He sees things so clearly that the demand for proof seems like pig-headedness and, alas, he starts to see proofs where they are not. 
The upshot is that in 1616 Copernicus' book has been withdrawn from publication -- the third edition has just come out -- to await corrections.  That it was not banned outright is evidence that the authorities have no problem with heliocentrism per se, only with the assertion that it is physical fact (and therefore etc.)  Two other books that delved into Scripture in the name of Copernicanism -- those by Foscarini and by de Zuñiga -- have been banned, indicating what really matters to the Holy Office.
Galileo is okay with this, because he believes that before long he will have the physical proofs Bellarmino wants.  Then he will Write a Book. 
We must not suppose that Galileo brought everything on himself by his arrogant personality, though that surely isn't helping.  (Lots of people are talking up geomobility without raising a stink.   Kepler, for example, has been appointed Imperial Mathematician by the Catholic Emperor.*)  Galileo has been systematically hounded by a band of Aristotelian enemies led by Ludovico delle Colombe, who have more or less compelled him to answer in theological terms.  He genuinely frets that if they keep it up they will badger his beloved Church into taking a theological stance on a matter of empirical fact.

(*) Imperial Mathematician. At this point, Kepler has been given permission to move to Linz and work on the Rudolphine Tables, a practical manual for applying his weird elliptical astronomical model. 

But neither should we suppose that the Church authorities are "out to get" Galileo due to some deep-seated science-hating hostility of science haters.  Everyone thinks they are on the side of science, and none of them -- not even Galileo -- think of science in the way we do today.  The authorities are rather well-disposed toward Galileo, especially those like Bellarmino, the Barberinis, del Monte, and others of "the Tuscan clan" within the Curia, who cut him every break they can.  Bellarmino gave him a heads up on the decree of 1616 so that he would not be taken by surprise and publicly embarrassed, and had no trouble providing Galileo with a certificate saying that Galileo himself had not been accused of anything.  Once the corrections to Copernicus' book are made, he is welcome to use and discuss it as a mathematical model.  It's only that until he has proof, he cannot say it is physical fact.  

Although Bellarmino showed an understanding of what we today recognize as scientific method, we can't say that he issued the decree out of tenderness for the purity of scientific methodology.  Many scientific theories have been proclaimed -- and accepted -- in advance of their proofs -- Maxwell, Darwin, Einstein, etc.  But it has not yet quite sunk into the 17th cent. Zeitgeist that the heavens are a physical place in which physical discoveries can be made.  Though it is beginning to change, astronomical theory is still instrumentalist: a specialized branch of mathematics whose purpose is to devise models that accurately predict heavenly events.  In fact, the heavenly bodies are so distant and so devoid of sensible properties -- only location, speed, brightness, diameter can be seen -- that it is unlikely that any physical theory regarding them can ever finally be proven.*

(*) finally proven. In the Late Modern Age, we have extended that to all of science.  Nothing is ever proven.  From time to time things are falsified.  Had Galileo known of Popper, he would have despaired. 

As of 1617, Galileo has returned to Florence to work on his Big Book; Kepler is in Linz developing the Rudolphine Tables; Scheiner is working on his own magnum opus on the sunspots; Simon Marius has discovered the Andromeda Nebula -- no one will know it's a galaxy until much later.  But TOF's Astute Reader will note that no progress has yet been made on establishing the dual motions of the Earth. If we assume the Earth moves, we can make accurate predictions of the heavens; but if we assume she does not, the Tychonic model also makes accurate predictions.  The Copernican and Tychonic models are mathematically equivalent, differing only in the origin of their reference frames.  To decide which reference frame to privilege will require physics, not math.
Wussup? In 1617:

René Descartes (21) has just graduated college and will shortly enlist in the army.  He is about to meet...
Isaac Beeckman (29), a student of Willebrord Snel, who will anticipate much of Galileo's mechanics.
Marin Mersenne (29), newly ordained, is teaching theology and philosophy at Nevers and will set up a correspondence network among the scientists of Europe that will include Galileo, Descartes, Beeckman, Gassendi, and Peiresc.  He will help translate Galileo's works into French.
Pierre Gassendi (25) is about to be ordained. 
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (39) has discovered the Orion Nebula.
Joseph Gaultier de la Vallette (55) had with Peiresc observed the moons of Jupiter back in 1610, shortly after Galileo and Marius, and had been the second to see the Orion Nebula.
Old Simon Stevin (69) had in 1586 dropped two balls of differing weights from the church tower in Delft, proving that they fell at the same rate.  He also discovered "Pascal's" Law. As science advisor to Maurice of Nassau, he may well have been present when Lippershey demonstrated his telescope in 1608.
Nicholas Zucchi (30), a friend of Kepler, has invented a reflecting telescope in 1616 using a borrowed parabolic mirror and some lenses.  The primitive design did not provide a way to keep the head of the user from intercepting most of the rays needed to form the focal image, but he will use it to discover the belts of Jupiter in 1630 and examine the spots on the planet Mars ten years later. At the urging of another Jesuit scientist, Paul Guldin, Zucchi will present a reflecting telescope to an enthusiastic Kepler.
All of these save Gaultier and Beeckman have Lunar craters named for them, as do Clavius, Tycho, Galileo, Kepler, Marius, Fabricius, Scheiner, and Harriott.  All those things that seemed so important 400 years ago, all the disputes over who was right and who was wrong and who was first are vanished now into the democracy of the dead and the landscape of the moon.

Then came...
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The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Here's Mud in Yer Eye

Previously on the Smackdown...
For sound empirical reasons the consensus science of 1400 years had been that the Earth is stationary at the bottom of the world and the Church Fathers anciently interpreted Scripture in the light of this settled science.
In the early 1600s, a series of telescopic discoveries made nearly simultaneously by Harriot, the Fabricii, Marius, Galileo, Scheiner, Lembo, et al., had broken Ptolemaic astronomy beyond repair.  But falsifying Ptolemy does not affirm Copernicus.  The Tychonic model seemed the best alternative at the time.  After all, if a geomobile theory were factual, it would require an entirely new physics, and no one had one handy.
One discovery -- the sunspots -- triggered a flamewar of epic proportions between Fr. Christoph Scheiner SJ, a mathematician in Ingolstadt, and Galileo Galilei, a mathematician-courtier of the Florentine Grand Duke. This will have Dire Consequences later.
Die-hard Aristotelian Lodovico delle Colombe attacks the new discoveries in a paper, some philosophers refuse to look through a telescope, some look but see nothing.(*)  Galileo ignores or mocks them.  Then della Colombe's "Liga" engineers a series of attacks, first by Lorini, then more scandalously by Caccini, finally by a formal complaint filed by Lorini with the Holy Office.  The Office dismisses the complaint without prejudice. 
(*) see nothing.  With good reason.  The first telescopes did not produce great images. 
Curses, foiled again.

In today's episode....
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The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: The Down 'n Dirty Mud Wrassle

Previously on the Smackdown...
We have seen that there were sound empirical reasons for accepting the consensus science of a stationary earth, in particular the lack of stellar parallax and of Coriolis effects.
In particular, the Church Fathers had interpreted Scripture in the light of this settled science, since like everyone else they assumed the scientists had gotten it right.  This consensus has stood for 1400 years.
In the early 1600s, a series of telescopic discoveries had shaken Aristotelian cosmology and one (the phases of Venus) had broken Ptolemaic astronomy beyond repair.  These discoveries were being made nearly simultaneously by mathematicians all over Europe: Harriot, Fabricius pere et fils, de Peiresc, Marius, Galileo, Scheiner, Lembo, and others.
Since the earth was "clearly" stationary, most astronomers shifted to the Tychonic or Ursine models.   A few -- mostly humanists rather than scientists -- rallied around the Copernican model.  Kepler's elliptical model for some reason flew below the radar.
One discovery -- the sunspots -- resulted in a flamewar of epic proportions between Fr. Christoph Scheiner, a mathematician in Ingolstadt, and Galileo Galilei, a mathematician-courtier of the Florentine Grand Duke.
It is 1613, and Galileo has published his Letters on Sunspots, after the censors have removed all of his appeals to Scripture.  (They did not object to his straight-up endorsement of Copernicanism.)  Meanwhile, Galileo's enemies are preparing an attack.  Several men of a severely Peripatetic persuasion have formed a "league" (as they have called themselves) under Ludovico delle Colombe.  Learning of this, Galileo calls them the "Pigeon League" (since colomb means "dove").  Ludovico, he says, never opens his mouth without saying something stupid.  Galileo's love of a witty put-down could get him in trouble some day.

"But my most holy intention, how clearly it would appear if some power would bring to light
the slanders, frauds, stratagems, and trickeries that were used eighteen years ago in Rome in
order to deceive the authorities!"   -- Letter: Galileo to Peiresc (22 Feb 1635) Read more »