Michael Flynn's Blog, page 16

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: The Great Galileo-Scheiner Flame War of 1611-13

Previously on the Smackdown...
...we have seen that the immobility of the earth was 'settled science' and 'the consensus' for excellent empirical reasons, while geomobile theories had been falsified on several grounds, most decisively on the lack of stellar parallax (which falsified the earth's revolution) and the lack of Coriolis effects (which falsified the earth's rotation).  We now know that these falsifications (like all falsifications) have been falsified by what we might call the Duhem Effect. 

Popperian falsification is known in logic as modus tollens. 

M: If A, then Y.
m: But not-Y
/.: not-A

But there is never just one A, so what we always have is:

M: If A and B, then Y.
m: But not-Y
/.: Either not-A or not-B

Thus, it is never evident on the face of it which of the prior assumptions -- and there will be more than two! -- has been falsified when Y fails of observation.  The problem is, it's hard to know what unspoken assumptions you are assuming.  The lack of stellar parallax was thought to falsify A (Earth goes round the sun) but it actually falsified B (the stars are millions of miles away).  In fact, they are billions of miles away and the parallax is too small for eyesight to detect even with a 20x telescope. The stellar distance was believed to be fact, based on the brightness and diameter of stellar disks.  But it turned out (in the 19th cent.!) that the "disks" were optical illusions caused by aberration and the stars differed in intrinsic brightness. But we are still here in the 17th century.

In the second episode, we saw a slew of new telescopic discoveries during 1610-1611; viz., the mountains on the moon, the Medicean stars, and (more decisively) the phases of Venus.  Now the first two do not demonstrate geomobility, not do they undermine geostationarity.  The first indicates that the moon is not incorruptible.  But this is agreed to by theology, and it undermines only Aristotelian physics.  The second indicates that some heavenly bodies -- Cosmo, Franco, Carlo, and Lonzo -- circle Jupiter and not the Earth.  This bothers Aristotelian physicists, but not Tychonic astronomers.  Only the phases of Venus KOs Old Man Ptolemy.

But eliminating Ptolemy does not prove Copernicus any more than eliminating Darwin would prove ID.  There may be [and were!] other alternatives.  When Ptolemy was ptossed, astronomers flocked... to the Tychonic and Ursine systems -- because none of the telescopic observations have so far established the motions of the Earth.  Of the seven models of the world that were in play at the beginning of the century, four are still in the running, although the kumbersome Kopernican was fading fast:

Heraclidean
Ptolemaic
Copernican
Gilbertian
Tychonic
Ursine
Keplerian
It was a new, modern age.  Everything was changing.  Who knew what might happen next?
The Sun Gots Freckles!Read more »

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Down for the Count

In the Previous Postfound here, we saw that the geocentric/geostationary model of the world was not only not unreasonable, but was the best fit for the empirical data that was then available.  Inter alia, you could see the stars and planets moving around the earth!

Oresme subverted that evidence in 1377 in his Livre du ciel et du monde, with an argument from relativity of inertial reference frames.  Whether the Earth were turning and the heavens stood still or vice versa, everything would look the same.  He also proposed "common motion" to counter the Argument of the Winds.  None of these arguments were conclusive and Oresme lacked the sort of instrumentation that might have provided him with better information or the conceptual lumber (inertia, forces, ...) that would have let him frame the issue.

The main obstacle to the revolution of the Earth was the lack of stellar parallax.  Copernicus (among others) proposed that the stars were really far away and thus the parallax would be too small to see with the naked eye.  But this was saving one unproven hypothesis by throwing in a second unproven hypothesis.  The stars could not possibly be as far away as Copernicanism required because then, given their visible disks, elementary geometry required the stars to be of such enormous size as to dwarf the solar system.  Tycho (among others*) thought this absurd, as it would mean an entire class of new entities.  The Copernicans answered by saying "Goddidit!"  “Who cares how big the stars are?” wrote Christoph Rothmann, since an infinite Creator God is far bigger still.
(*) among others. Little in the history of science is due to Just One Person.  There is no
"Father of..." this or that.  Those who get credit are typically lucky, more astute in PR, or
standing on someone's shoulders.  The best of them, like Newton, will tell you so. 
Notice, en passant, that it was the Earth being stationary that mattered, not it's being 'in the center.'  The ancients and [especially] the medievals, saw the Earth as being in the bottom of the world, the most ignoble place.  That's why Copernicanism was supported by humanists but opposed by physicists.  It elevated Earth (and humans) to a higher position in the universe. 
1. The Magnificent Seven.  Read more »

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown

TOF once wrote an article entitled "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown and Down 'n Dirty Mud-Wrassle" which described the century-long progress from the first seriously-worked out geocentric mathematical model to its final establishment as empirically-verified fact.  A century, more-or-less, is generally what it takes for quantum mechanics, general relativity, and sundry other theories to progress from "wild hypothesis overthrowing the wisdom of the ages" to "standard model," so there was nothing unusual in the resistance to heliocentrism from the scientific establishment of the day.  As Max Planck once put it, a new scientific theory gradually gets accepted by scientists because "all the old scientists have died."

Now the aforesaid article appeared in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of Analog, so it is still technically under the ban.  That is, Analog purchased the English language reproduction rights for a year.  TOF considered blogging on it in Latin, but that would present its own problems for his Faithful Reader.  However, a couple of points suggest themselves.

The article has appeared on-line as part of the reading for a course in science education, taught by Leonard Bliss at Florida International University in Miami.  This non-commercial use was with permission.
For technical reasons having to do with file size, the article was published without the accompanying artwork and diagrams.
So, it occurs to TOF that a much-altered version including the artwork might not be amiss.  In particular, because it is often believed that the opposition to heliocentrism was religiously-inspired, a bit of attention to You-Know-Who(*) is warranted.  First, a bit of background.
(*) You-Know-Who. Galileo.  You knew that, right? 1. Our Ancestors Were StoopidRead more »

Who is the Best SF Writer?

TOF's devoted son sent him this screen cap from Cracked-dot-com:
It's nice to see my Fan hard at work spreading the word. 

Verbalocity, redux

TOF ran across one of those list-sites and found thereon 25 handy words that English does not have, but should.

One of the benefits of having a word for something is that one can talk about it without talking around it.  For example, the ancient Greeks had no word for 'velocity' and so could not easily discuss the physics of local motion.  Not that they were unaware that things changed location at various rates, but they simply called it 'motion.'  A constant velocity was said to exhibit uniform motion, that is, it's motion had a single form.  Acceleration, by which a thing took on successively greater forms of motion, was call difform motion.  But that's as far as they took it.  Terms like 'velocity,' 'instantaneous velocity,' and the like awaited the Middle Ages.  So did terms like 'numerator' and 'denominator,' which you kinda need to speak of velocity intelligibly.

Read more

Verbalocity

Words change over the ages, sometimes in form, sometimes in matter, that is, the substantial meaning.  These changes are of two sorts in the final sense: those that make finer distinctions and those that coarsen them.  Call them splitters and lumpers.

The magpie tendency of English to adopt foreign words is a case in point.  "Why does English have so many words?" a Sino-Panamanian once asked me.  (The Chinese went to Panama to build the Trans-Isthmian Railroad which, while technically trans-continental, is somewhat shorter.)  She gave as example the two words director and conductor, which she said in Spanish were the same word.  So I conducted her across the room and then directed her to return.  Now both of those words were Latin, so I am puzzled that the distinction did not survive in Spanish. Otherwise, we are aware of the distinctions we make between sweat and perspiration.  Though technically they mean the same thing, there are distinctions in usage.  A ditchdigger sweats while swinging his pick; a nervous suitor may perspire as he comes to pop the question.  That is, sweat carries connotations of hard physical work, of extreme guilt, extreme heat, etc.  Perspiration connotes mere nervousness, moderate heat, etc. Read more »

The Only Thing You Need to Know About Statistics

from ikcd

The Chieftain

For a change of pace, I have put up the prologue from an historical fantasy on the Story and Preview Page .  It is set in the West of Ireland in the Year of Grace 1224-25.  The conceit of the story is that all the events described -- save for the story details -- happen as described in the Annala Connaught, the Four Masters, and the Annala Locha Ce.  In the excerpt, all the characters, except the monk and the servants are actual historical characters.  I have felt free to pencil in their personalities.  Woo, as they say, hoo.

In particular, we have this entry:

Uair robo tarisi le macaib Ruaidri a n-airecht fein arna cuired do cech oen fo leth dib-sin, acht mad Cormac mac Tomaltaig Meic Diarmata & Dauith O Flainn & a aes grada archena. – Annála Connaught, 1225The sons of Rory felt confidence in their own lieges, having been asked to come into the country by each one separately, except Cormac son of Tomaltach McDermot with David O Flynn and the rest of his officers. – Annals of Connaught, 1225

David O Flynn is the Chieftain of the title and the story involves the war between the O Conner cousins over the kingship following the death of Cathal of the Red Hand O Conner.

m_francis @ 2013-08-14T00:06:00

The Art Establishment




Cousin Thomas and family

Among TOFs relatives are thirty-odd cousins, many of them extremely odd.  (Yes, I'm looking at you, and you know who you are.)  One of them is a lovely fellow: Thomas Patrick son of John Thomas son of Francis Joseph son of Daniel Joseph son of John Thomas son of Martin of Loughrea.  Not to be confused with Thomas Patrick son of John Daniel son of Daniel Joseph, etc.  He and Ellen are the parents of three lovely daughters.

He and Ellen are also the parents of The Art Establishment, a projected venue where amateur artists can rent time and facilities to create art or to take and give lessons.  Let him speak for himself: 

"We're all about the amateur artist. The factories and offices and retail shops of the world are filled with artists - pragmatic artists who, tragically, stifle their artistic impulses to earn a living. The great sin is that, eventually, the Artist is forced into submission by the Factory Worker.

Future location of The Art Establishment

We believe there are untold numbers of amateur artists who would love to create if they had better access to studio resources, but we recognize that these artists are typically under-served. For an amateur to have studio access, he or she would have to either set aside space in their home, or commit their time and up front expense on monthly studio rentals or enrollment in semesters of art courses.

Read More

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

Part I Looked at the Shroud as an artifact; this part looks at a possible history of that artifact.
A Stroll Down Memory LaneA telling point against the Shroud is that no one seems to have known of it until it surfaced in Lirey, France, in 1349.  You would think there'd have been more notice taken of a sacred image!  But then, how many people today natter on about the Shroud of Turin, other than enthusiasts and their debunkers?  Further, it is not entirely reasonable to hold earlier eras to the standards of modern forensic laboratories regarding chains of custody.  We don't doubt Tacitus wrote the Annals even though the earliest manuscript we have of it (M1, from Kloster Fulda) is written in a Carolingian hand (8th cent.), long after Tacitus became tacit, and was itself lost for centuries and rediscovered only in 1506.  Who had the original scrolls?  Where was M1 during the intervening centuries?  How do we know that the Annals and the Histories are not medieval forgeries?  (Or perhaps Renaissance fakes!)

Simple.  We use a double standard.  For some artifacts, we allow a reasonable filling-in of the gaps.  For other, we do not.  Especially if the other has been touted as miraculous, since at that point reflexive dogma kicks in and anything miraculous must be denied.  But if we suppose the image on the Shroud was formed by an entirely natural process involving the Maillard Reaction, and the only threatening possibility in play is that it might -- might -- establish the historicity of Jesus and the reliability of certain accounts of his death, we may be able to consider it from an entirely materialistic and secular point of view and make no demands beyond those normally made of ancient artifacts.

Of course, some people may find the simple historicity of Jesus to be threatening enough. That is an entirely different topic.

In fact, few are the artifacts that could satisfy the demands made on this one.  All we have in history are isolated data points, and we must as it were "connect the dots," doing the best we can.  Let's take a look at one possible reconstruction.

In what follows, TOF has taken accounts from a couple of Shroudie sites, largely because no one else bothers to do this.  However, both sites presented information with cautions about reliability and interpretation, and where not, TOF has noted some cautions or omitted the item entirely.  For example, there is a Gnotic hymn called the Hymn of the Pearl that seems to TOF to require a great deal of the verbal equivalent of  pareidolia to link it to the Shroud at all.  And he was unable to find another translation on-line that matched the translation provided at the site, and so TOF does not discuss it here.

Therefore, with the usual standard cautions against the sort of details that have or have not survived the shipwrecks of time, the following reconstruction is offered.
Read more »