There are many possible motivations it seems. Whatever the reason I'd bet he felt certain about his conclusion.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

But the face of the moon was not found by theorists - it's visible and visibly asymmetrical to anyone with halfway decent eyes.

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"Illuminati's Razor - The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer."
-- Fazor

What do you see as asymmetrical?

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

The pattern of high and low albedo regions. The man in the moon, if you will.

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"Illuminati's Razor - The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer."
-- Fazor

Lunar disk

ETA: warning, astrological content therein

Yes, of course. I misread your post, sorry.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Ok, my sentence wasn’t worded properly. Perhaps I should have said that, “When something was noticed in nature (by everyone) to be asymmetrical, the theorist would often NOT use it as an example of ‘perfection’, but when something was noticed to be symmetrical, then they would say it represented ‘perfection’.”

I think this is a common trait among a lot of people of various ideological and philosophical beliefs.

Interesting question. Actually, the moon exhibits circular symmetry but pattern asymmetry, something like a combination of certain kinds of symmetrical and asymmetrical art nouveau:

http://www.artshole.co.uk/arts/artis...ple-Advert.jpg

Here is an example of symmetrical art nouveau:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/im...ns-Posters.jpg

And here is an example of asymmetrical art nouveau:

http://www.affordable-interiors.co.u...u%20irises.jpg

The problem could be that, at least I learned in school, sunspots were a tough sell because they implied blemishes on the face of the sun. However, the "blemishes" on the moon are far larger....

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

But not as blatant. Shades of gray do not detract from the perfection of a structurally flawless slab of marble.

Sunspots are as clear as black and white!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

For those who would like to learn where the old geocentric idea came from, they can read Ptolemy’s “The Almagest”. That book, along with Copernicus’ famous book, “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”, are usually available at used-booksellers in a single volume:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...n=The+Almagest

Of course these books were not available to everybody back in the old days, because only a very few copies of the books were available, and they were read by only a few people who were usually scholars, philosophers, and scientists.

Here is a translation of the basic opinion Ptolemy wrote 150 A.D. This section comes right after he has already said that he thinks “The Heavens Move Spherically”, meaning, he thinks the stars, moon, and sun move in the sky around the earth every day.

Ptolemy 1
http://i32.tinypic.com/2m34thx.jpg

Ptolemy 2
http://i29.tinypic.com/21niao4.jpg

Many old scholars accepted Ptolemy’s point of view for several hundred years. While we’ve all been taught to revere and almost worship the famous Library at Alexandria, we need to realize that some of the books that were stored in the library contained incorrect information about nature, and that information misled many future students and scientists (and some religious leaders) for hundreds of years.

Copernicus came along later and wrote the following text, which was published in a very limited edition in 1543. There is much more to what he wrote, but these sections represent a good summary of his opinion, including his opinion about the sun being in the center of the universe, as the universe was seen from earth at that time, before the age of telescopes:

Copernicus 1:
http://i32.tinypic.com/20frre9.jpg

Copernicus 2:
http://i31.tinypic.com/2ldk7rq.jpg

Copernicus 3:
http://i26.tinypic.com/ap379.jpg

Copernicus 4:
http://i26.tinypic.com/282lumr.jpg

Aristotle is the one that gets on my nerves the most. Man did he screw it up for future generations.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Things did get out of hand, but had Aristotle himself been around in the 16th century, he probably would have agreed with Copernicus or Galileo (17th), depending how hard-headed he may have been. Many of the Church scholars favored Galileo, including the Pope, but, as I said, things got out of hand.

The real problem was the integration of Aristotle into theology, thanks primarily to Aquinas. I don't think he should be blamed, either, due to the circumstances. The Aristotle/Ptolemy/Thomist model became dogma at a time when dogma was needed to carry a lot of abnormal weight, due to the Reformation. I think this is true, but I'm no historian on Church history.

This history, however, is very applicable to today, except the powers are reversed; science holds the populace (Western Culture) more so than any religious group that opposes them. This makes things more difficult for them.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

It's not his fault that everybody took his word to be unquestioned (and unquestionable) Truth.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Both of you make good points, and it is true that Aristotle didn't know his ideas would hold for so long. And I suppose had he known he was wrong he would have changed.

But there is no denying that he wanted people to believe him and even created the process of thought that was followed for so long. Actually, it may not have been the process (which we know today is seldom practical) but his conclusions alone that caused all the trouble. Once he died there were few people willing to change the dogma.



And George, regarding the religion of today, science, it changes as needed - when new evidence comes around. We often want things to switch immediately, especially in the world we live in today. But scientific revolutions don't occur overnight, and something you may find problems with can and probably will be changed. Usually at least one generation is required, but as we say with Aristotle's ideas several centuries weren't even enough.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Although I said that a lot of the science books at the Library of Alexandria were “wrong”, I didn’t mean to imply that the scientists and “philosophers” who wrote them were at fault.

I think the big problem in the old days was simply the lack of communication, and the lack of the printing press, which meant that all books had to be hand-written and not many copies of them were available, plus, not many people could read.

Scientists back then were often limited to only one or two other guys in the city they lived in who they could talk to about these complex and mysterious matters. And sometimes they had to travel all the way to Alexandria just to read a few books, and many of those books had been written hundreds of years earlier, and in various languages.

So, information, ideas, and knowledge spread very slowly back in the time of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Plus, there were different languages and different types of written languages.

That's a good point. Aristotle was the man for quite a while. It took the insight of Copernicus and others to awaken to new ideas. [There were some new things that developed in the Arabian countries which carried forth the Greek works and reintroduced them to Europe around the 12th century. It was some of the Greek ideas, including heliocentricity, that Copernicus sought and found that helped his theory.]

That is fair explanation of the process. Today, IMO, science has earned the respect that makes some religious claims look silly. Science could flip upside down someday, but, till then, if one weighs all the facts then reason clearly dictates that certain religious claims are extremely unlikely. They are so extreme that they are "silly", thus this impacts, sadly, how others see the validity of their entire faith.

The Copernican Principle (someone should do a thread on this principle ) is one such scientific idea that serves as an example of what I'm saying. It is not the bigger topic in contention with religion, however.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Own a piece of heliocentrism.

On Aristotle: I am not his biggest fan, although I would say an admirable thing about him -- well, two -- were his interest in natural science, and his encyclopedism. A lot of what we know about ancient Greek thinkers, we know through Aristotle. But, like George, I think the blind devotion to old Aristo in Galileo's day was more a symptom of the times, of the social climate during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, than any sort of cause. People had simply become intolerant (again). Rather than looking for some historical figure we can blame it all on, we should take it as a cautionary tale.

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire