
Galileo was right, but so were his critics (2015) - vo2maxer
https://strangenotions.com/galileo-was-right-but-so-were-his-critics/
======
throw0101a
For a general timeline of events that led up to the 'Galileo affair' and what
happened after, check out "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown":

* [https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-sma...](https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html)

The fact that the Earth moves was not 'proven' (or more technically, had
strong empirical evidence for that hypothesis) until 1806 when Giuseppi
Calandrelli reported parallax in α-Lyrae. That's ~250 years after Copernicus,
and ~150 after Galileo.

Note that by 1700 or so, everyone had switched to Kepler's model: not
necessarily because they thought it was "right" (there was no empirical way to
tell), but primarily because the math was much easier and it got correct
results. There were actually seven models floating around during the 1600s:

* Heraclidean. Geo-heliocentric. Mercury and Venus circle the Sun; everything else circles the Earth.

* Ptolemaic. Geocentric, stationary Earth.

* Copernican. Heliocentric, pure circles with lots of epicycles.

* Gilbertian. Geocentric, rotating Earth. (proposed by William Gilbert in De magnete)

* Tychonic. Geo-heliocentric. Sun and Moon circle the Earth; everything else circles the Sun.

* Ursine. Tychonic, with rotating Earth.

* Keplerian. Heliocentric, with elliptical orbits.

~~~
hinoki
It’s strange that it took so long to prove the earth moved. The Foucault
Pendulum [0] could have been created in antiquity, but it took until 1851.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum)

~~~
Psyladine
As Petzold said in Code, all the pieces for computers existed in the 1870s,
but it wouldn't be until the second world war that any serious effort at
leveraging computational power was attempted. All you had to do was take three
unrelated disciplines & combine them into labor saving technology, right?

Evidence that humans, while excellent problem solvers suffer terribly at the
creative aspect. In far too many disciplines only by already 'knowing'
something can we solve for it. The real miracle is that we're here at this
level at all.

~~~
coldtea
> _Evidence that humans, while excellent problem solvers suffer terribly at
> the creative aspect._

Compared to what baseline animal?

------
carlob
In Rome, on top of the church of Saint Ignatius (you know the one that has a
tromp l'oeil dome), just behind the building that used to house the very first
Jesuit school (ask a Jesuit and they will say the very first school in the
modern sense), used to be the Vatican astronomical observatory. Nowadays there
is nothing much left to see, since all of the scientific instruments were
moved to a museum in Florence when Rome became part of Italy in 1870. The
place is not open to the public, but if you know a friendly Jesuit you can
take an elevator from within the church and take a look around.

The first time I went there, the Jesuit who was accompanying me told me that
Galileo had visited this place, and that the story of church vs. science that
we've all learnt in school was very simplified. Apparently Riccioli defended a
hybrid geo-heliocentric model (due to Tycho Brahe) where the earth is at the
center of the universe, the sun and moon revolve around it, but all the other
planets revolve around the sun. We now know neither the sun, nor the earth is
at the center of the universe, so both models were equally wrong, however
according to my Jesuit guide, Riccioli's point of view was the only one that
would have been both theologically acceptable and scientifically sound.

I guess what is really wrong about the classical story of Galileo's trial is
that the catholic church is not and never was a monolithic entity: there are
factions, dissent, political agendas.

If you're interested in further reading on Riccioli the Wikipedia page is very
detailed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Riccioli#Arg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Riccioli#Arguments_Concerning_the_Motion_of_the_Earth)

~~~
throw0101a
> used to be the Vatican astronomical observatory.

The observatory was later moved to Castle Gandolfo:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory)

After the light pollution got too bad, its use was retired, and now things are
run out of Arizona:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Advanced_Technology_Te...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Advanced_Technology_Telescope)

The head dude is Brother Guy, and he has some interesting interviews if you
search for him:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Consolmagno](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Consolmagno)

~~~
martinbalsam
what a coincidence, edu-Youtuber Brady Haran just uploaded three videos about
the Vatican Observatory, a long interview with brother Guy and the their
collection of space rocks:

The Pope's Space Rocks

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OI4wb2XIZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OI4wb2XIZc)

The Pope's Telescopes - Deep Sky Videos

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoGKAL6Qas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoGKAL6Qas)

The Pope's Astronomer - Sixty Symbols

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0DAKaR16cY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0DAKaR16cY)

------
anovikov
Can anyone explain why from the XVII century standpoint, heliocentrism
required stars to be huge, much bigger than Sun? Which observation or
measurement hinted at that?

Yes there was lack of observable star parallax. But XVII measurement precision
was so, so much worse than the one required to detect parallax (15" was best
precision achieved at the time vs <1" required to tentatively detect parallax
and ~0.3" required to be sure about it), that stars could "be" 50x closer than
they really are, and 50x smaller, and the world would still "fit" the
observations if one assumes that parallax is just tad small enough to escape
detection. Which means, nearly every star being much smaller than Sun. Such a
small star is impossible, but since source of the stellar energy wasn't known
anyway, that couldn't be determined.

~~~
nestorD
The reasonning of Tycho Brahe, taken from "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown"
(which could probably provide a much better answer to your questions) :

\- Procyon has the same diameter and brightness as Saturn.

\- If Procyon is much farther than (say) 100 times Saturn’s distance, simple
geometry proves its actual size would dwarf the sun.

\- All the stars would dwarf the Sun, which would then be the only pea in a
universe of melons, which is absurd.

\- But if Procyon were any closer, there would be visible parallax from the
Earth's revolution.

\- There is no visible parallax.

\- Lack of parallax plus the apparent size of the stars therefore requires a
stationary Earth. QED.

The problem with heliocentrism is that it requires a lot of additional
hypothesis that are not needed by other (better performing !) models.

~~~
chopin
> Procyon has the same diameter and brightness as Saturn.

How could he possibly that have determined? I don't think that Brahe could
measure this he hadn't even a telescope. The apparent diameter you see from
stars is diffraction limited.

~~~
shadowprofile77
Yes but diffraction of light wasn't understood at the time, or until a couple
centuries later.

~~~
anovikov
Tycho was pre-telescope... so he had no idea that Saturn has a bigger visual
diameter than Procyon... But, he could at least figure it out indirectly - by
noticing that all stars twinkle a lot, while planets do not (or only a bit, on
the worst nights).

------
seemslegit
Looks like the Vatican reputation management campaigns are alive and well, I
suppose given those deep pockets backed by taxless ownership of good chunks of
Europe it would be naive to expect them to go away.

But for the record - Galileo could be arguing that the earth revolves around
his ass and the Church would still be damnable for persecuting him or anyone
else and "critics" is not the word one uses for anyone wielding arrest and
execution powers to enforce a monopoly on science and thought in general.

------
Nasrudith
Those apologetic efforts always fall flat it seems because the justifications
always make it clear that the rot is far deeper. "He wasn't facing torture for
pursuit if the truth but for undermining their power and authority" is an even
worse look than being deluded fundamentalists. Nothing of their intentions
changes the outcome that came from their actions which they are fully
responsible for. Whether Archimedes was stabbed for being impertinent, rage of
the invaders at his years of countersiege engines, or even if he starved to
death in the siegr his death was still a great loss regardless of why or how
and Rome was fundamentally alsays responsible!

There can be no reason which results from such exercises as apologism ammounts
to justifying travesties to assuage their own cognitive dissonance and
deserver bad reputations. It fundamentally a perpetuation of the evils of the
past through rationalization.

~~~
SiempreViernes
There is a difference between being an apologists and wanting the history of
science to be cleaned of anti-papal propaganda you know.

~~~
whatshisface
The difference is mainly up to whether it's a papist or an atheist telling you
about it.

------
nestorD
On that subject, I recommend reading the wonderful "The Great Ptolemaic
Smackdown"[0] blogposts.

[0]: [https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-
sma...](https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-
table-of.html)

------
pvitz
I guess he hasn't read Feyerabend's defense of the church in "Against Method".

~~~
pvitz
I am not sure why I have been downvoted, but it is a fact that Feyerabend
discussed that the Church was acting reasonable and rational in Galilei's
case. This was well before this book, so I don't think the book's claim is
entirely new.

~~~
spindle
I agree - the book's main claim has been the orthodoxy in history of science
for decades. (No doubt there are many new details in the book - I haven't read
it.)

------
mannykannot
The real issue is one of free inquiry versus authoritarianism (of any sort,
not just religious). Galileo did not have all the facts, and he was reckless
in how he addressed authority, but today, many of us are fortunate in living
in circumstances where free inquiry (and also freedom of religion) became the
norm.

~~~
whatshisface
> _he was reckless in how he addressed authority_

I think that might border on victim blaming. The Church had the _power_ to
persecute intellectuals who they felt were running too far, but that doesn't
mean they had any rightful _authority._ If an illegitimate power is running
around your society trying to get people to cow down to it, anyone who stands
up to them by failing to cow down appropriately should be described as
"heroic" moreso than "reckless." If nobody had ever stood up to the
illegitimate authority, they would still be running things and imprisoning
people for insulting them today. We are in great debt to everyone who was
reckless in 1610.

~~~
mannykannot
I did not intend it as such, but as an observation about the reality of his
world. Fortunately, things have improved in many places. Galileo's act of
resistance was one among many that brought about this change, and science was
more of a beneficiary than a leader of this social revolution.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Riccioli’s work and the star size problem tell us that what was going on in
the seventeenth century was not the brave and reasonable Copernicans against
powerful forces arrayed to cover up the truth, so much as it was the
scientific process at work: a vigorous debate, with good arguments and careful
observations on both sides, as each worked to figure out what the truth was.

Yes, vigorous scientific debate with arguments on both sides, as for example
the argument of the Inquisition that heliocentricism was heresy.

An argument that the Inquisition certainly defended vigorously. Galileo was
tried and found guilty of heresy, forced to recant his heretic views and spent
the latter period of his life under house arrest.

It seems the way the scientific process works has changed since Galileo's
arrest. We don't expect scientists who voice controversial opinions (i.e. ones
that go against the accepted consensus) to be arrested, tried and imprisoned,
for voicing such opinions.

------
michaelmrose
This is interesting minutia but a closer look at the details entertains but
doesn't change the fundamental picture for me. It was a battle of new ideas vs
orthodoxy. It seems fairly obvious that all parties had world views that were
partially informed by their religious views and what they thought were
scientific ideals. The fact that the catholic church employed more than one
person with a brain and tried to use him to refute Galileo while also crushing
him with the power of law doesn't improve their position from my perspective.
I don't see a lot of daylight between Riccioli and scientists employed by the
petroleum industry or Phillip Morris.

Looking purely at the scientific case the bizarre world of epicycles seems
like a vastly greater sin than star size or an entirely misunderstood Coriolis
Effect that Riccioli posited but failed to calculate or measure correctly. I
would go so far as to suggest that a stationary earth might seem intuitively
obvious to a illiterate savage but anyone with a mathematical mind and access
to a telescope ought to have figured out that stasis isn't the natural state
of anything in the universe.

One might suggest that he author started from a place of wanting to present
the Church he cares very much for in a better light and presented the best
possible defense for its misbehavior. The best that can be said for him is
that like a good attorney he believes in his client and defends him honestly.
This doesn't make him correct. Science is the process of arriving at
increasingly accurate models of reality by finding ways to test theories. This
is inherently at odds with religion which is the process by which priests
interpose themselves between man and god to derive status and importance by
serving as the only valid conduit between man and both imaginary spiritual
goods like salvation and the temporal goods they acquired by selling the
former.

This is a problem when the shtick you have been selling everyone is universal
truth because constantly having to revise it to be more in line with secular
ideas makes it increasingly clear it was far from universal and once its clear
that its just your best effort and not a very good one at that the long term
viability of your mission is in doubt.

------
mvcalder
I helped my daughter with a science fair project in which we mapped the
relative position of the sun and mars as viewed from a "stationary" earth,
when all three correctly followed Newton's laws. I was very surprised how it
turned out. I expected odd cycles or other misbehavior, but actually things
were smooth and round. It was eye opening.

~~~
Seenso
> I expected odd cycles or other misbehavior, but actually things were smooth
> and round. It was eye opening.

How long did you map them? My understanding is that to see the "odd cycles and
misbehavior" you need to make observations over the course of months at the
right time of year.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_retrograde_motion)

------
jariel
This is easily as much an issue of popular history as it is of Science.

Someone needs to make a Netflix special about this to set the plebes straight.
And I include myself in that grouping!

------
Irrelevantant
Total misinterpretation and tangent, but I do feel on the long timeline, Earth
_is_ at the center of the universe. In terms of primitive people this is true.
In terms of visible universe this is true. In terms of the eventual
interstellar expansion, I think it will once again ring true. Modern era is
too focused on the quirks of the language. Gravitation center is not the only
center!

~~~
lisper
According to all the data that I have direct access to, _I_ am the center of
the universe!

~~~
whatshisface
If I'm not the center of the universe, how can scientists explain why my nose
never moves?

------
dr_dshiv
I'm surprised that Christianity never went back to its roots to show how Jesus
is compatible with our knowledge that the universe contains over 100 billion
galaxies. It's not too hard, if you'll bear with me for 2 minutes.

 _Mental health trigger warning_ : this might unintentionally make an atheist
believe in God and Jesus. If you have a background with religious trauma,
avoid this post. It is weird stuff.

Ok, that said, the first point to make is that "God the father", in early and
orthodox Christianity, wasn't a person, except as an allegory. The One God was
rather the incomprehensible concept of Oneness -- more akin to a mathematical
singularity than Zeus. This was discussed extensively by Philo of Alexandria
(b.25 BC), one of the biggest influences on early Christians. That Oneness was
also described by Plato and the Pythagoreans.

Pausing there -- I find this Oneness concept to be a really fascinating idea,
especially as we now accept that the entire universe was born out of a single
point in the big bang. Also, Oneness is more or less a culturally universal
phenomenon in mystical and psychedelic experiences. This god of Oneness is a
very different perspective than the "guy in the sky" perspective -- but it is
actually still compatible with Christian orthodoxy.

Where does Jesus fit in? Jesus was the "Logos" \-- translated poorly as "the
word" \-- which was understood by the contemporary stoics and jewish-greek
philosophers (Philo) as "the eternal emanation of the Oneness". We need the
logos as the oneness is really kind of boring with no diversity.

So, Jesus was viewed as the allegorical "son" of the oneness (the father).
That's why Jesus was there since the beginning of time. But, the mystery of
the Christian faith is that the cosmic logos incarnated as a human -- the
Jesus story is the story of the logos becoming flesh. Make sense?

What troubled me was the Christian idea that _you have to believe in Jesus to
have eternal life_. I found that irritating and disturbing. Why would belief
in Jesus give eternal life?? Here is my best-faith interpretation: if you
believe that we are all part of an eternal, common, cosmic logos, like if you
_really believe that we are the logos_ , then of course we don't die, we live
on for ever, since we are the logos. So, in shorthand, believe in Jesus and
you live for ever.

Of course, theology got weird when people wanted the allegorical stories to be
true and adopted the absurd idea of biblical literalism. For instance,
Theophilus was a 4th century Alexandrian pope who first wrote a treatise on
why it was foolish to believe that the One god was a material person -- but
then had to backtrack when the monks literally started rioting in the streets
[1].

So, there you have it: orthodox christianity can be galactic in scope,
philosophically sound and compatible with empirical physics. No supernatural
required, but plenty of mystery.

[1]
[https://books.google.nl/books?id=9joABAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA37&ots=x...](https://books.google.nl/books?id=9joABAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA37&ots=xBsDihrVyW&dq=Theophilus%20riot%20monks&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q=Theophilus%20riot%20monks&f=false)

~~~
jandrese
> Mental health trigger warning: this might unintentionally make an atheist
> believe in God and Jesus. If you have a background with religious trauma,
> avoid this post. It is weird stuff.

I can't read the rest of the article because my eyes have rolled all the way
to the back of my head.

But I read it anyway. Your warning was for naught since the post makes very
little sense.

It defines God as literally everything, and Jesus as a vague notion of
communication, thus if you believe in communication you can live forever.
Somehow this is compatible with orthodox Christian teachings, just because the
author says so. This is like when Unitarians call themselves "true
Christians".

~~~
dr_dshiv
Sorry for the eyeroll. I thought it was funny.

I didn't say the christian God is everything. I said the Christian God is the
Oneness. That is not the all. It is the One. Perfectly one. Understanding the
idea of Oneness is, well, _not easy_. Plotinus thought it could only be
experienced, not verbally communicated.

And wait, Jesus as communication? No, I didn't say that, I said that Jesus is
the _logos_ , the emanation from perfect oneness.

I admit that proving orthodoxy is a challenge, since it has to be declared
heresy first. But is hasn't been -- and these are old ideas. For instance,
here is Paul, 8 Corinthians.

"there is no God but one.

5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth; as
there are gods many, and lords many;

6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto
him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through
him."

~~~
basch
>the emanation from perfect oneness.

I read that as "the act of a medium propagating a message through itself." How
air carries sound.

God is a trumpet, and Jesus air, and together sound coming out and absorbed
elsewhere. Jesus is the process through which a message moves. A vessel.

------
DiogenesKynikos
This is very poor history. A constant theme among apologists for the 17th
Century Catholic Church is the claim that the Church was somehow defending
scientific rigor. That idea is quickly dispelled by simply reading the
Inquisition's 1616 findings on heliocentrism:

> Proposition to be assessed:

> (1) The sun is the center of the world and completely devoid of local
> motion.

> Assessement: All said that this proposition is foolish and absurd in
> philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts many
> places the sense of Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the
> words and according to the common interpretation and understanding of the
> Holy Fathers and the doctors of theology.

> (2) The earth is not the center of the world, nor motionless, but it moves
> as a whole and also with diurnal motion.

> Assessment: All said that this proposition receives the same judgement in
> philosophy and that in regard to theological truth it is at least errouneous
> in faith.

The Church wasn't calling for scientific rigor. It was calling for adherence
to orthodoxy - in this case, its interpretation of Scripture.

Graney and others make an ahistorical argument: they cherry-pick one
observation (the apparent angular diameter of stars), and then apply modern
arguments not known to people at the time (the actual size of stars) to say
that Galileo's scientific argument was weak. They ignore all the other
observations that strongly favored heliocentrism at the time (the phases of
Venus, the discovery that Jupiter and its moons form their own Copernican
system, the greater parsimony of the heliocentric system when it comes to
explaining things like retrograde motion of planets, and so on), and focus on
the argument about sizes of stars. But Galileo had a perfectly reasonable
answer to the star-size argument: the stars might be very large, and different
measurements of stellar angular diameters were inconsistent with one another.
Countering with modern knowledge about the true sizes of stars doesn't give
any insight into who had the stronger argument in the early 1600s.

On balance, the argument for heliocentrism was already much stronger at the
time. And of course, forcing Galileo, under threat of torture, to publicly
accept the Church's interpretation of Scripture did nothing to aid science.

~~~
foldr
You're also cherry picking a bit. For example, Galielo failed to observe any
parallax effect.

More broadly, it's a classic case of parsimony vs empirical coverage.
Galileo's model did not enable better predictions, in the short term.
Parsimony arguments are always more persuasive in retrospect, when we know
that the theory in question is correct. There are many parsimonious but wrong
theories. It was not unreasonable at the time to think that Galielo's theory
might have been one of them.

>then apply modern arguments not known to people at the time (the actual size
of stars) to say that Galileo's scientific argument was weak

I think you're misreading the argument. They point out that Galileo's theory
appeared to require all other stars to be much bigger than the Sun, which
seemed implausible at the time. This point was made by Galileo's
contemporaries, so it can't be anachronistic.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> Galielo failed to observe any parallax effect.

That's the same issue - the size argument. Without the argument about the
sizes of stars, not observing parallax is not a problem at all. One can simply
say that stars are far away.

> Galileo's model did not enable better predictions, in the short term.

Galileo did not have a model. He advocated Copernicus' heliocentric model,
though I think his general attachment was more to heliocentrism than any
particular heliocentric model (he appears not to have been particularly aware
of Kepler's model).

> They point out that Galileo's theory appeared to require all other stars to
> be much bigger than the Sun, which seemed implausible at the time. This
> point was made by Galileo's contemporaries, so it can't be anachronistic.

Galileo measured much smaller stellar angular diameters than Tycho had, which
very much called into question the reliability of the measurements. Arguing,
based on modern knowledge, that stars are not so large, and insisting that
this is the decisive argument, does come across as anachronistic to me. At the
time, there were many other arguments in favor of heliocentrism that were very
quickly accepted by a large part of the scientific community (particularly in
Protestant Europe, beyond the control of the Church). Heliocentrism was widely
accepted long before the star size objection was definitively answered (by an
understanding of diffraction), and hundreds of years before the measurement of
parallax. It was widely accepted even before a proper theory of gravity had
been developed.

~~~
foldr
Galileo's arguments were reasonable and we know with hindsight that he was
right. But that doesn't mean that all of the resistance of his ideas was
unreasonable.

The star size objection clearly isn't anachronistic because it was considered
to be a serious objection by other scientists at the time, on purely
scientific grounds.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> it was considered to be a serious objection by other scientists at the time,
> on purely scientific grounds.

Not by most scientists, who adopted heliocentrism long before diffraction was
understood.

And again, the opposition from the Church was due to theological and political
reasons.

~~~
foldr
>Not by most scientists

What's your source for the "most" here? Certainly there were prominent
contemporaries of Galileo who took the star size objection seriously.

>And again, the opposition from the Church was due to theological and
political reasons.

Partly. The Church didn't want to make theological revisions in the absence of
a compelling scientific case for heliocentrism. So the scientific status of
the claims was important as well.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> What's your source for the "most" here?

Most of the major scientific minds beyond the control of the Inquisition
(i.e., in Protestant Europe). Heliocentrism was widely accepted by the time of
Galileo's death, even though diffraction had not yet been understood (meaning
that the star-size objection was still unanswered). It's significant that the
next generation of scientists - Hooke, Newton et al. - were committed to the
New Science, rather than the old geocentric worldview.

> So the scientific status of the claims was important as well.

The scientific status of the claims was irrelevant to the Church. The idea
that it was is pure modern apologia. From the context of the times (the
Counter-Reformation) and the texts of the Inquisition's decisions (which
emphasize the heretical nature of heliocentrism), it's clear that what the
Church cared about was enforcing its control over doctrine. This was an era in
which the Church was in a bitter battle against heresy, trying to fight the
spread of Protestantism and reassert control.

~~~
foldr
It's not the case that most of the major scientific minds beyond the control
of the Inquisition immediately accepted Galileo's work. In fact, he was not
particularly influential in scientific circles, in the short term.

Of course the Church wanted to enforce its control over doctrine. But the
Church was also fully aware that the Bible could potentially be interpreted in
a way that was not contrary to heliocentrism. It simply wanted to avoid making
a fairly significant doctrinal revision in the absence of a compelling
scientific case for heliocentrism. That is not to say that such restrictions
on scientific work are justified, merely that it's inaccurate to see the
Church in this instance as acting from blind dogmatism.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
> But the Church was also fully aware that the Bible could potentially be
> interpreted in a way that was not contrary to heliocentrism.

The Inquisition's assessment of heliocentrism explicitly contradicts your
claim:

> All said that this proposition is foolish and absurd in philosophy, and
> formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts many places the sense of
> Holy Scripture, according to the literal meaning of the words and according
> to the common interpretation and understanding of the Holy Fathers and the
> doctors of theology. - The Inquisition, 1616

Your claim that

> It simply wanted to avoid making a fairly significant doctrinal revision in
> the absence of a compelling scientific case for heliocentrism.

... is simply not supported at all by the Inquisition's own statements. The
Inquisition was very clear that heliocentrism must be false, because it
contradicted the literal meaning of Holy Scripture. The Inquisition didn't say
that heliocentrism was an open question to consider. It positively declared
that heliocentrism is false and that the Earth stands still, and it grounded
that statement by pointing to a literal reading of Scripture.

> it's inaccurate to see the Church in this instance as acting from blind
> dogmatism

I don't see any possible way to interpret the Inquisition's judgment on
heliocentrism as anything other than blind dogmatism. In modern apologia, the
Inquisition's rulings are rarely cited, because they contradict the key points
that modern apologists make (about the Church supposedly being interested in
scientific caution, etc.). I get the sense that people are trying to defend
the 17th Century Church from criticisms rooted in a modern sensibility (which
accepts empiricism and rejects religious dogma), ignoring the fact that the
17th Century Church (and most people in Western Christendom at the time) did
not share our modern sensibilities.

