Re: An astronomer's view of mechanics

oriel36 wrote:
Look,I am tired and the previous reply was a tired response.

Thank you, but I understand that you are under a terrible frustration.

Even if I were tempted to try to make you feel good by trying to humor
you, and claim I now agreed with you, though, I am unable to do it; I
think I understand part of your arguments, but not their totality - I
can't see where you get anything from Copernicus, Kepler, or Galileo
that makes Flamsteed and Newton wrong.

Especially when what you object to is simply accepting the
heliocentric perspective as natural and given.

Of course, when I see a statement like

(begin quote)
Galileo had much to say about your kind,the difference being that
unfortunately it is now almost the totally dominant viewpoint ,it is
crude,it is brutish and the contrapunctal opposite of all things
astronomical.
(end quote)

I take little offense for a number of reasons.

I don't think that Galileo was talking about people like me at all,
but about people who rejected Copernicus - or other new scientific
knowledge - out of ignorance and prejudice.

Reducing the Solar System to a tabletop orrery - instead of seeing the
full glory of the night sky as it is above us, too large to fit
anywhere on the Earth - you could indeed call that "crude" or
"brutish". Since it is being done simply to aid understanding, and not
to diminish the heavens, I don't view it as you do.

Letting this kind of emotional discomfort stand in the way of a
simpler explanation, or simpler calculations, is something that is
simply alien to me. Since you also claim this view leads to factually
wrong conclusions, about things such as the Earth's climate, however,
there is more to it than that - and what that *more* might be, I can't
guess.

And, if Newton and Flamsteed complement Copernicus, Galileo, and
Kepler in such a way that they all *make beautiful music together*,
that can hardly be called a criticism! (Although, of course,
counterpoint, even as practised by J. S. Bach, sounds old-fashioned to
many people today.)

I am not an optical astronomer,at
least in terms of magnification, but Galileo was.If no living person
can match that man's endeavor to promote all that is good via
telescopes then things are much worse then I thought.

It is no longer your argument nor those of the followers of Newton
whom you represent.

Our achievements, when so much is already known, cannot be as far-
reaching and fundamental as his were. But we stand upon his shoulders.

Appreciation can only come from understanding, and I regret you feel
that today's astronomers have thrown away too much when they try to
make these matters simple enough that ordinary people might begin to
grasp them.

John Savard

.

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