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Re: [Phys-l] Galileo was wrong

Your account seems to be correct. It seems I may have remembered a very
vivid account from an extremely well written textbook that I reviewed. But
apparently the historical facts were a bit shifted. It preserved the
historical "sense" but not the specific facts, probably because the readers
would not have heard of the Emperor Rudolf, and would have been bogged down
in that sort of detail.

Actually according to another account that I read, Kepler did have
difficulty because he was a Lutheran in an area when you had to be Catholic
to get a good position. But he spent his latter years in a small quiet town
where he had time to write his books, and even have a spat with the local
Lutheran minister.

But the tables are not officially named after Rudolf as he originally
intended. They are however referred to generally as the Rudolfine tables.
Also apparently the Tycho family got nothing from the publication and Kepler
won the lawsuit to have the sole right to publish them. This info came from
the Wikipedia & Rice U's Galileo project web site. Kepler apparently also
proposed many ideas that Newton subsequently used, but Galileo rejected.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


It is interesting that a Danish protestant on the verge of the thirty
years war would have a deal with the Pope. His patron at the end was Holy
Roman Emperor Rudolf II (a Catholic). Kepler made a deal with all
concerned to finish the Tycho tables, get Tycho's family paid for them and
his instruments, and name them after Rudolf. They are the Rudolphine
Tables. As far as I know the Pope never got involved. Tycho had his own
system of the universe which actually found wide acceptance. It was the
Copernican system with a stationary Earth and the Sun and Moon going
around it and the planets all going around the Sun. It let you do
Copernican Mathematics but keep Aristotelian physics!
Gary Karshner
-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Clement
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 3:56 PM
To: 'Forum for Physics Educators'
Subject: 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.



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