On 03/15/2013 10:30 AM, Joshua Marsh wrote: > On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Lonnie Olson<[email protected]> wrote: > >> I hate to disagree with you, but you are wrong. I wish you were right >> though. > > Just because not everyone gets it, doesn't make it wrong. Sure, there are > examples of when people got it wrong. I think there are examples of people > who got it right though and did great things in either or both fields. > > Such as Newton, Descartes, Pascal (my personal favorite). I would go so far as to say that Galileo had it right in both areas as well, suffering his house arrest due to support and defense of Copernicus' theory in the midst of a political pissing fight over the calendar with Tolosani as instigator. I'm betting the calendar administration was a commissioned appointment, which would include money, notoriety, and position, and no doubt Tolosani was trying to make a play for a position.
Tolosani based part of his refute of Copernicus on theology, making Copernicus' theory appear to be contrary to the ruling authority (the church filling both political and religious authority) and the empire's citizens at large; though I don't see anywhere where Copernicus said anything to put his view as contrary to theological history. Tolosani presented Copernicus' ideas as those of a post-humus heretic, and given the church's nature of authority, I'm thinking this would have been equivalent of calling someone a traitor or terrorist. As such, this would have been an early example of a FUD campaign. Considering that Copernicus had died 3 years earlier, Tolosani must have thought this would be an easy play, but it still took Tolosani several years to garner enough support to get the church to accept that the followers of Copernican ideas as a threat to the empire. If you think about it, this same thing happens regularly when we criticize the code of our predecessors. And FUD campaigns over idea ownerships, or suggestion of community products being communist ideals are not unheard of in our industry either. ;-Daniel Fussell /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
