On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 09:47:35 +0200, Danijel Turina 
wrote:
>znali, da je to nesto nevjerojatno. Ti valjda mislis da su napredni
>Kopernik i Galileo _dokazali_ heliocentricni sustav, dokaz
>potkrijepili Newtonovom matematikom i kompjutorskim proracunima
>gravitacijskih sila, pokazali Crkvi simulaciju na laptopu, a Crkva im
>je pokazala Bibliju i rekla "odbij sotono"? Naprotiv, Galileo je rekao
>da se Zemlja okrece oko Sunca. Onda su ga pitali odakle mu to. On je
>iznio svoje teorije i opazanja. Onda su ga pitali, OK, a kako to sve
>skupa funkcionira, koje sile su odgovorne za mehaniku takvog sustava.
>Onda je on odgovorio da ne zna. Na to su mu oni rekli neka onda radije
>suti, nego da izlazi u javnost s radikalnim teorijama iza kojih ne
>stoje dokazi. Tek Newton, koji se _rodio_ nakon Galilejeve smrti, je
>matematicki formulirao koncept orbite planeta kao oblika slobodnog
>pada, a gravitaciju definirao kao privlacnu silu ciji intenzitet pada
>s kvadratom udaljenosti.

Sad sam bas pronasao jedan tekst na netu o Galileju. Zapravo je jos
gore nego sto sam mislio: Galileo je bio sarlatan i varalica koji je
kocio napredak znanosti radi svoje oholosti, radi koje je i zavrsio u
zatvoru.

http://www.cinephiles.net/cgi-bin/store.php?ASIN=B00015HXCW

Propaganda Masquerading as a Documentary
Richly costumed, the Medici deserves 4 stars for telling a cursory
tale in an enjoyable manner. Unfortunately, the final 30 minutes,
focusing on Galileo Galilei, are marred by such reckless disregard for
history that the entire "documentary" should be shunned. Why would PBS
twist his story into a morality play only a 21st century ideologue
would tell and why focus on a man who received less than a page of
attention in Hibbert's The House of Medici if not to make a political
rather than historical statement? Full disclosure of my religion: I am
an agnostic and could care less about Catholicism; however, history
should be told from what we know, not distorted into biases we want
people to swallow. If one watched only this PBS film, one would
believe this about Galileo:

The most brilliant scientist of his age, Galileo dropped cannon balls
off the tower of Pisa and proved a key concept of gravity. Amazingly,
Galileo determined that the Earth orbited the Sun, not the other way
around as taught by those narrow-minded Catholics. To publicize his
breakthrough, Galileo wrote The Dialogues. For challenging church
dogma, wedded to the Ptolemaic view of an Earth-centered universe, the
pope, a silent glowering figure, ordered Galileo before the
Inquisition where people are tortured. Later groveling before the evil
pope, Galileo renounced his correct view and was confined to house
arrest where he died shortly thereafter.

What a story! But why tell a falsehood when the truth is more
enlightening?

Forget that this is a documentary on the Medici but never finishes the
tale of their dissolute decline. The long discourse on Galileo is
riddled with errors so serious it drags this presentation into the
category of fiction. Following are some of PBS's intentional
distortions. First, they do not mention Copernicus, a Catholic priest
who first claimed that the Earth circles the sun in De Revolutionibus
two decades before Galileo was born. Although brilliant, Galileo's
conceit and self-righteousness marred his historical accomplishments.
He was a liar who wrested from the Venetians a huge stipend for
supplying his invention of the telescope before being revealed as a
charlatan since the telescope was an invention of others passed off as
his own. For this deceit, he was ridiculed in a play by Bertolt
Brecht.

The problem with Copernicus' theory (passed off by PBS as Galileo's
discovery) is fundamental: the Earth does not circle the sun. The
proof is simple enough: Copernicus' theory failed to predict future
eclipses as well as the Ptolemaic theory - it was off by weeks where
the latter theory missed by days.

An infantile Galileo refused to supply Kepler with a telescope -
leading Albert Einstein to condemn Galileo hundreds of years later:
"It has always hurt me to think that Galilei did not acknowledge the
work of Kepler. That, alas, is vanity." Galileo's jealousy forced
Kepler to toil a decade longer to discover that planets orbited in an
ellipse, not a circle as Galileo believed. In another burst of
foolishness, Galileo denounced Kepler's theory that the moon caused
the tides. Again, Galileo was wrong.

Galileo waged a campaign to teach Copernicus' theory as absolute truth
and damn all other theories. Contrary to PBS's claim, many in the
Catholic Church embraced Copernicus' theory; for example, Cardinal
Bellarmine, Master of Controversial Questions at the Roman College,
wrote in an April 4, 1615 letter that he was intrigued by the
Copernican theory but requested it be taught as theory rather than
absolute truth, barring proof. Galileo scoffed that he could provide
proof but he did not want to waste his time.

Scientist Timothy Ferris, who admires Galileo but recognizes his
childishness, writes: "This was pure sophistry. Galileo did not, in
fact, have definitive proof of the Copernican theory. In Rome, Galileo
ridiculed the anti-Copernicans at every opportunity, and promised that
he would finally reveal his irrefutable proof of the Copernican
theory. This turned out to be his erroneous account of the tides -
Kepler's more nearly correct theory having, as usual, been ignored by
Galileo."

When his great friend and admirer Maffeo Barberini was elected pope in
1623 as Urban VIII, the pope showered Galileo with gifts and
declarations of "fatherly love." This is the same pope who PBS depicts
as a silent, glowering evil presence. In response to the pope's
support, Galileo wrote The Dialogues, exposing his critics as
buffoons; Galileo inserted a belief of the pope's in the mouth of an
idiot named "Simplicio" (simpleton). The pope, through the simpleton,
uttered Kepler's correct belief (denounced by Galileo) that the moon
affects the tides. Angered, the pope banned the book. Growing
increasingly irrational, Galileo denounced his friend the pope and
fled to the pope's enemies, placing the pope in danger of
assassination by pro-Spanish factions. To quiet him the pope placed
Galileo before the inquisition but ensured no harm would come to a
former friend who nearly caused his assassination. Galileo spent his
final 8 years under house arrest.

Despite PBS's artfully filmed shots of Galileo dropping balls from
atop the tower of Pisa, he never practiced this experiment. Although
Galileo was a devout Catholic (he ordered his daughter to a convent
against her wishes), he imposed dangerously on his friend the pope.
PBS twists history to claim that the church was suppressing the fact
that the Earth orbits the sun when in reality many in the church
believed but couldn't prove it since the mathematics were incorrect.
PBS presents the pope as a narrow-minded torturer rather than a
learned man disappointed that his friend Galileo was halting the
advancement of science and placing his life in danger. Had Galileo
triumphed, science would have been wounded because he wanted to
squelch all theories, including the elliptical theory posited by
Kepler, who used another man's telescope to determine the truth of
Earth's orbit.

I recommend the same: use another media's teachings to determine the
truth and shun this shameful piece of propaganda.

--
http://www.danijel.org/