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Originally Posted by Disinfo Agent
Are you sure? Bruno said the universe was infinite, but I don't think astronomers had ever even seen a galaxy (except for the Milky Way), in his day.
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I believe I am correct.
Here is one article on him.
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Originally Posted by article
I found it utterly incredible that, during the Italian Renaissance, Bruno as a natural philosopher had developed a cosmology grounded in the concept of infinity. In fact, Bruno's worldview far surpasses those ideas of Cusa, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo: it argues for an infinite number of stars, planets, and galaxies!
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It wouldn't surprise me if some Ionian or Greek beat him to it, however.
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And why didn't Newton "follow through" with his idea of universal gravitation, and come up with the theory that there were other galaxies himself? That seems like a silly question.
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Hardly silly. I say the sun is not yellow but is white (irradiance). I used to look (ok, and acted) silly about it 'cause it's fun. However, now I support it with hard data and math, thus, will I not garner far greater respect?
Regarding Newton, gravity was known prior to Newton, but Newton's triumphs did come from math (ie calculus). This put meat on the bones of Kepler's laws and engineers today us Newton's math to no small degree, vastly more than GR or QM.
Newton may not have mentioned his view on the possibility of other galaxies because of his more scientific approach of producing repeatable tests and math. Conjecturing is fine but is limited in merit compared to hard, supportable and predictable theory.
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That kind of objection can be used to denigrate any contribution to science, from anyone, and of any magnitude. It's an unfair question that no one would ask of a "real" scientist whose contribution had been the same.
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It is a hard question that I would assume all scientists ask. Aren't Nobel prizes awarded for contributing efforts that noteably make a difference?
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Kant didn't just conjecture. He argued for his conjecture based on theoretical results and empirical evidence. I agree with others: that's what we call "science". How deep or formalised his analysis was is not decisive. Scientists too are not all math-oriented. Some are better at broad theoretical thinking, others at mathematical derivation, and others at measurement and observation.
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Agreed. He was brilliant in many ways. [How did he support his conjecture of galaxies?] As for math, I also agree as even Einstein sought and received great math help.
My view is that the degree of merit is proportional to the degree of substantiation of the original conjecture. Greater is the merit for hypothesis, and greater still is given to one who offers a genuine theory. Also, greater merit is given for the efficacy of the contribution. [The sun's true color ranks rather low in this category, otherwise astronomers would have nailed it long ago. ]