Jay Hanson wrote (in response to Eva):
> >We are not ****** common herd animals with some
> >higher evolved race of scientists, Jay, wake up from
> >this irrational nightmare of yours.
>
> To deny human hierarchy, is to deny what is before your eyes everywhere.
> Hierarchy is part of every human society, from the shaman, to the Native
> American "Chief", to the football quarterback, to priests, to opera singers,
> to astronauts, to CEOs, to Joseph Stalin.
>
> Hierarchy is part of ALL primate societies -- from chimps, to baboons, to
> Americans. You must deny what is so utterly obvious because it is
> incompatible with your God of Communism.
Hey, Jay! What is "before my eyes everywhere" is a resting earth
with lots of geography. Galileo says (somewhat rhetorically, in
the _Dialogue_) that he admires Copernicus for declaring that the
earth is actually moving *despite* what his senses most definitely
tell him. It requires THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING to get it moving.
It is hardly something you just SEE, even through a telescope.
Of course, any and all relations can LOOK hierarchical IF you are
prepared or intending to see them that way. The question is: are
they REALLY hierarchical, and THAT requires more than looking.
What may look like hierarchy to you may look to me like
cooperative (& equal) social action wherein the cooperators have
designated (somewhat arbitrarily & somewhat according to skill)
one or more *coordinators*.
Plato's _Republic_ may look hierarchical to YOU, but *in theory*
it is an arrangement of EQUALS in which people having un-identical
abilities are treated EQUALLY according to their innate abilities.
Not a hierarchy at all. (This is, of course, according to Plato's
THEORY of innate human capacities, a theory which is surely overly
simple and spectacularly false; if you are sure it's false, then
_The Republic_ looks alot like *ideology*, a conceptual excuse for
domination.)
Thus, a group with a "chief" may not REALLY be a social hierarchy
at all: it just looks that way to people who think that they see a
"superior" lording it over "inferiors" and who may see things this
way because they are sure that such arrangements are "natural" or
"in our genes".
> Your fruitless struggle to defend your God against science reminds one of
> Bellarmino defending his God against science:
To quote an official pronouncement of an officer of the Church as
having ANY bearing on this discussion is intellectually
irresponsible. It contributes little to understanding. It's rather
like quoting the US House Bills of Impeachment (or whatever
they're officially called) as sufficient to explain what's been
going on in Washington DC for the last year (or 6).
The passage you quote from Bellarmine is a notification of the
official findings of a Commission of Inquiry (so to speak), which
Commission officially ordered Bellarmine to inform Galileo
personally of its findings. The Inquiry itself had been provoked
by Galileo's repeated insistence, in the absence of proof, that
the Copernican hypothesis is TRUE. From 1543 -- the publication of
Copernicus's book, which book, by the way, was dedicated to the
Pope and opened with a Letter to Cardinal Schoenberg in Rome
saying, essentially, here's the book you asked about -- until 1616
the Church had said NOTHING officially about Copernicanism. I
think it's fair to say that had Galileo not provoked an official
response, the Church might well have remained silent. (Whether
Galileo is heroic or injudicious is an interesting question.)
I can quote you Bellarmine *in writing* (at exactly the same time,
16 years before the "trial") telling Galileo (and others) that IF
he, Galileo, can produce a "demonstration" that the earth is
moving, THEN he, Bellarmine,
will be required to conclude that the Church has misinterpreted
Scripture. Galileo has no such demonstration and offers none, then
or later. He has a good case for *plausibility* but that isn't the
issue.
As of 1633, the Astronomy Dept. at the Collegio Romano (the
Jesuit astronomers who brought us our Gregorian Calendar) have
adopted Tycho Brahe's system largely because, in their view, the
failure to observe any stellar parallax -- Galileo can't find any
either with his telescope -- looks like a decisive falsification
of the Copernican hypothesis. Tycho -- the best damn observer ever
to date -- doesn't think the earth moves either.
> "Of all hatreds, there is none greater than that of ignorance against
> knowledge." -- Galileo Galilei, June 30, 1616
INCLUDING, most definitely, ignorance of the actual history of the
sciences, knowledge of which does tend to diminish both "hatreds"
and an unfounded certainty about matters which are uncertain.
--
Stephen Straker
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Vancouver, B.C.
