Talk:Galileo Galilei/Archive 8
Older talk archived at:
I have some facts about Galileo and the telescope that people might be interested in. The first telescopes were very unclear and had very narrow fields of vision. Most people could not see anything of any significance when they first looked down the telescope - Galileo would even offer lessons to show people how to find stars with a telescope, and then interpret what they saw. Hence, it was very easy (even legitimate) for Galileo's opponents (I'm talking individuals here, not institutions) to dispute the truth of his claims - they just said that the telescope was unreliable, what people saw wasn't actually the heavens but something in the telescope itself, or even that the telescope was a magical object. As with most 'scientific' discoveries, acceptance was due to a consensus, rather than 'proof'. A good article may be van Helden, A. "Telescopes and authority from Galileo to Cassini", in Osiris 9 (Instruments), pp 9-29 for those who wish to know more. It may also give an interesting aspect to the Church/Galileo dispute raging on above - so far, all the arguments have been interesting but, on the whole, far more vitriolic (dare I say childish?) than I expect from academics! Any chance of keeping the whole thing more relevant and less personal? User:131.111.243.37
"When Galileo was defending the copernican model, it was not scientifically superior to the Ptolemaic system." That's true but Galileo was the first to observe the satellites of Jupiter (a mini-solar system). IMO this led him to the conviction that small things should turn around around big things even if the real scientific basis requires Newton theory of gravity. Ericd 20:37 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
I've changed the statement that Galileo based his argument about the Moon's imperfect sphericity on "the occultation of stars", because most of the sources I've just looked at (admitted just some random webpages) suggest that it was his observations of shadows cast by lunar mountains that led him to this conclusion. If anyone knows that this is wrong, feel free to reword. -- Oliver P. 10:32 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
GNU FDL infringement!
Argh! I've just found this biography of Galileo at the "Malaspina Great Books" website, and it's suspiciously similar to our article. In fact, they acknowledge on the page that their article is "Adapted from Wikipedia". However, they seem to be claiming copyright of the article ("This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books ©1995-2003"), and I can find no mention of their releasing it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Clearly they are infringing the terms of the licence. What should we do about this?
Hmm... Investigating further, I see from Talk:Ernest Hemingway and Talk:Woody Guthrie that this has come up before - as early as last year, in fact. The Malaspina site has "adapted" hundreds of our articles, with acknowledgment, but without releasing their material under the GNU FDL. It seems that nothing has been done about it, though. Not that I can talk: I could win a world championship in apathy, if there was one... :) But I think something should be done... -- Oliver P. 10:32 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)