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Re: [Phys-l] Galileo was wrong



This is certainly in agreement with the Wikipedia. But I remember reading
somewhere that the Pope was interested in his project because it would
improve astronomical tables needed for navigation. And I also recall that
the data was supposed to eventually go the Vatican, but Kepler ran off with
it. This may have come out of one of the Harvard Project Physics readers,
which had both physicists and historians working together. Since Tycho had
a Holy Roman Emperor at Prague as his patron in later years, he was
certainly somewhat under the thumb of the Catholic church. So there may
have been some promises made to wring concessions. Being a wealthy man, he
could afford to go and do where he pleased, while making concessions on
paper.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


My understanding is that Brahe was actually trying to find good data that
would verify the Ptolemaic system (or more accurately his and/or latter
day versions of that system.)


I think this was an ambiguous antecedent. Kepler was outside, but
Galileo
inside. As I understood Brahe actually was doing his observations with
the
support of the Pope, but Kepler ran off with his notebooks after Brahe's
death.



I find it hard to think of Galileo as being outside the influence of
the Catholic Church. He seems like a pretty go insider to me.

He needed some sort of circular inertia to explain the continue
motion of the planets. Just a guess, perhaps he appealed to the
ideal circular motion as why they continued.