Those who cherish freedom must recognize the work of today’s solar science revolutionaries
Jeffrey Foss, PhD
Practically everyone knows that Galileo is a heroic figure in the rise of modern science. Most people do not know, however, that the scientific revolution that Galileo launched relied on the support and protection of the Medicis. The very name of this family signifies the marriage of power and wealth that strikes fear and loathing into the hearts of those among us who – how shall I put it? – lean to the left.
But without the support of Princess Christina, wife of Ferdinand I de Medici, the truth that the Earth goes round the sun would have remained a mere theoretical novelty.
Why did Galileo turn to the Medicis? Because only they had the gold required to support his research and protect him from The Church of Rome. Why did the Medicis support Galileo? They, like many rich people before and after, supported the arts and sciences.
They also resented the stifling power of The Church, and were charmed by the gallant Galileo who dared to stand up to it. So they defended Galileo against the Inquisition, which aimed to silence him and burn his books – along with his body, perhaps, just for good measure.
Fed, funded and protected by the Medicis, Galileo launched the first great scientific revolution. With the telescope he built with his own hands, and the money of his patrons, he saw with his own eyes – for the first time of any human being – the evidence that would establish Copernicus’s revolutionary idea that the sun is at the center of our solar system, and we and our planet go around it.
The very meaning of the word ‘revolution,’ in such phrases as ‘The American Revolution,’ derives from its occurrence in the title of Copernicus’s book: On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. Galileo was the Washington that turned Copernicus’s declaration of independence into the first revolution against establishment science and a globe altering success – given Medici cash.
Many things are said to be unsustainable these days, such as driving our cars, transporting our food from afar in ships and planes, and flying in jets merely to enjoy Thanksgiving Day with our families.
One thing that really is unsustainable, though too few realize it, is the reigning scientific orthodoxy of the 2000s. Government-funded science today serves as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, just as Church-supported science did in Galileo’s day. Nothing could be more opposed to true science. Nothing like this would have been tolerated by America’s Founding Fathers.
The government-science orthodoxy that largely controls most people’s thoughts and actions nowadays is the idea that Earth’s climate is controlled internally by CO2 levels, and is being warmed apocalyptically by the CO2 that humans emit.
The revolutionary modern-day Copernican idea is that our climate is controlled by the sun, just like our orbit through space. Perhaps new Medicis will one day help solar scientists establish the hypothesis that Earth’s climate warms and cools following the quasi-periodic rising and falling of our Sun’s brightness.
Everyone now believes that the Earth circles the Sun, but most do not know that the original Copernican idea established by Galileo’s first scientific revolution was in turn defeated by Newton`s scientific revolution, which showed that the Earth follows an elliptical path round the sun, not a circular one.
Newton`s elliptical path model then fell in Einstein`s revolution, which more accurately models the Earth as falling into the gravitational well caused by solar gravity.
The historical lesson is this: science progresses through revolution and renewal.
The frailty of the CO2 theory is shown in Graph (A): While CO2 has been climbing smoothly from 1890 to the present day, Northern Hemisphere temperatures have repeatedly gone up and down without any linkage to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Soon, R. Connolly and M. Connolly, 2015. Re-evaluating the role of solar variability on Northern Hemisphere temperature trends since the 19th century. Earth-Science Reviews. Vol. 150, pp. 409-452 [Based on Figure 31(a) and (c)].
The power of the solar theory is obvious in Graph (B): Global temperatures are clearly linked to changes in the brightness of the sun (total solar irradiance, TSI).
Though the solar theory has been marginalized by government-funded climate scientists, it should be supported for the good of science itself, which we know is an inherently revolutionary activity. New Medicis need to fund and protect the new Galileos of our age.
We the People need to start questioning government-science with the same principled scrutiny and skepticism we employ for all other government business. We need to once again recognize the virtues of privately funded science, notably its essential freedom from government control.
Those who cherish freedom must become cognizant of the work of the solar science revolutionaries, support it, and help disseminate it among the people. A good place to start would be the work of Dr. Willie Soon, whose sun-centered theory of climate change has made him a modern Galileo: a scientist shunned, denied funding – and demonized by government-supported earth-centered climatologists.
Belief grounded in actual, replicable evidence must remain free if science is to survive – along with American life, liberty, prosperity and happiness. America flirts with severe decline when it consorts with the enforcement of scientific orthodoxy under the banner of “climate change.”
But flirtation need not lead to marriage. It’s not too late to call the whole thing off.
Dr. Jeffrey Foss is a philosopher of science, Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, Canada, and author of Beyond Environmentalism: A Philosophy of Nature.
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We’re nearing the end of “the crazy years” in Robert A. Heinlein’s future history. What follows is theocratic dictatorship in the United States. Fortunately Micheal Mann makes a poor Nehemiah Scudder. Unfortunately, “Occasionally Coherent” fits the part much better with her “fire and brimstone” ranting. If things go according to Heinlein’s projection, anything resembling a sane human culture will not reemerge before 2070.
Burn incense at the altars of Fineline (God of Engineers), Zeemoff (God of Automation and Building Contractors), and M’Affrey (Goddess of Dragons).
Because any unveiling of a historic scientific breakthrough should start with 14 paragraphs of hype and propaganda (to make sure no one gets put in an inappropriately skeptical mood!)
Boy we sure have a lot of history experts here. If the history is so clear, then why do so many of these experts disagree with each other.
For the same reason alarmist ‘experts’ disagree with skeptic experts.
Fear of upsetting the ‘consensus’.
I won’t offer yet another opinion on the relation of Galileo’s life and work to present day climate science.
However, I will suggest that the forces at play in Galileo’s time included political and personality currents as well as religious. A very nice book on the subject is Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel. In addition, translations of Galileo’s own words are widely available and are well worth the read. Many are referenced and summarized in Sobel’s book. His thought is often a breathtaking view into a careful, cautious and humble mind conversing with the universe, not just on the solar system but even more so laying the foundations for classical mechanics.
A couple of oft quoted lines of his are
1. In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
and, evidence of his lifelong devout faith,
2. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo did himself no favours by mocking one of his religious patrons.
The writing style of the day was less of a series of facts and arguments and conclusions, but more in the form of a dialogue between several characters. Think of an infomercial in text form. Several characters were invented for the purpose of the book. One was usually the wise character who did all the explaining while the others were lesser types who fed him questions.
Galileo’s problem was that not only did he make one of those ‘lesser’ characters a complete buffoon, but he made him a complete buffoon that look rather a lot like a mildly significant member of the current church.
So when Galileo turned up with his book it was not the outrageous claims that upset the church – remember this is the era when it was held that because God created everything, the more you understood how things worked, the closer you could get to God. The church had actually heard all the current theories and wanted someone to clarify if God had placed the sun or the earth in the middle. They didn’t care which, it was God’s doing either way – it was the open insults he insisted in having all through the script.
Painting Galileo as a massive victim and a hero of science is oversimplifying the story. Foss does himself little favour for going down that path.
Thank you, Craig. You did a better job than I in trying to explain the life and times of Galileo.
The Heliocentric model of the solar system has been known about for millennia – long before Copernicus and Galileo. Take a look at the 1st century Jewish zodiac in an ancient synagogue at Hamat Teverya on the Sea of Galilee.
In the central imagery you can clearly see Helios the Sun holding a spherical blue Earth in his (gravitational) grasp. A better depiction of the Heliocentric model would be hard to find.
http://passionforfreshideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/p-Hamat-Teverya-e1407361222494.jpg
Sorry to say that the base of this topic is untrue. Medici’s family doesn’t “protect” Galileo against the Cattolic Church. Galileo was persecuted and repudiate his theory to have his life safe. This way He was able to continue his studies in lonely place. So it was His “repudiation” that saved his life not the Medici’s Family!
Silent deletion of posts is evidence of censorship.
Sad to see WUWT going that way.
This article is wrong. Padua was the centre of scientific revolution (or Scientific Renaissance) in that time, and Galileo made no exception since he was teaching there:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190203-the-birthplace-of-modern-medicine
Padua, Veneto, the Most Serene Republic of Venice where he could teach freely and without having to fear the Inquisition, from 1592 to 1610, and where he made his most important discoveries and applications.
But Galileo preferred to follow Medici’s money and get back to his native Tuscany where, teaching at the University of Pisa, he was handed over to Inquisition instead.
There is an overwhelming human drive to be “believed”, even if one is not right. If you believe in something, anything, take the time to challenge your belief using opposing best arguments. Challenge yourself at every turn. Say it isn’t true. Then if you still observe the phenomenon take raw data on it. Then submit that raw data to standard statistical measures. The author of this post failed to test his believed premise at the most basic level.
Governments covet the stifling power that churches and science can wield together if unified and usurped through “public policy.” (Emphasis on usurp.)
The term “reigning scientific orthodoxy” is very apt for describing how science works in real life. The “scientific method” describes science as well as that childhood song, “I’m Just a Bill” describes how a bill becomes a law.
A much more contemporary example is found in the field of nutrition science.
In the 1970’s, a British nutritionist named John Yudkin saw his reputation destroyed and his career ruined for pointing out that sugar, and not fat intake, was the driver behind obesity. He showed that the landmark study that established the myth was obviously faulty. For decades, public policy was based on myth, leading to an obesity epidemic that has lead to an early death for untold numbers of people. Today, half a century later, we are still recovering.
If more people understood how science is actually done, they’d understand how things can go so wrong, as they have in climate science.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sugar-conspiracy
This post about Galileo is histoeically inaccurate. He was childhood friends with the pope of his time, that is what protected him. Stop spreading myth.
This series of blog posts is the best treatment of the Galileo affair that I’ve ever read. It covers the entire process of how heliocentric cosmology came into being.
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown.html?m=1
So where is this use of power today by rich families to protect fact-based science questioning of the Climate Crusades? Nowhere, in my humble and powerless opinion. We have the internet but not much else.
Thank you Anthony in the absence of bravery elsewhere.
This is article repeats many of the tropes about Galileo versus the RCC. A few important historical facts about the Galileo controversy:
1. Heliocentrism was not condemned by the RCC and was taught in many Catholic universities before Galileo after Copernicus’s work was published and widely read. Copernicus’s work was published shortly before he died as he feared the opprobrium of other cosmologists (he says this in the introduction) and he dedicated the work to the Pope and the book received the imprimatur of the Church (it couldn’t have been published otherwise at that time in Catholic parts of Europe)
2. The only religious objection at that time to heliocentrism was from Luther who condemned Copernicus as ‘This fool that goes against the Holy Writ’
3. Galileo’s views were objected to by other scientists as claimed to have ‘proven’ that heliocentrism was true with his observations (lunar motions around Jupiter) – he hadn’t proven it by scientific standards of then or now as his model was no more elegant than the Ptolemic model as Galileo insisted (wrongly) that the orbits had to be perfectly circular – requiring nearly as many epicycles as the more ancient geocentric model
4. The scientific obstacles of no velocity sensation on earth (pre Newtonian laws of motion) and much more importantly the absence of stellar parallax made the motion of the earth difficult to accept for many (Tycho Brahe for example wouldn’t accept the theory for this latter reason in particular)
5. Galileo was permitted by the Pope (a personal friend of his) to publish his views but was told he had to also publish scientific arguments against his theory and favoring geocentrism (who opposes a red team here?!?)
6. Galileo chose to publicly insult the Pope and as a temporal ruler of that time he had no choice to take Galileo to task.
7. It was Kepler and not Newton that proposed elliptical orbits that solved many of the inelegancies of the heliocentric model
8. Stellar parallax wasn’t observed until 1839 when Bessel invented an instrument that could detect it in one of the closest stars to our solar system (however, over the course of the 18th century cosmologists overwhelmingly understood stellar parallax was not observed as stars were incredibly further away than had hitherto been believed as the heliocentric model with elliptical orbits was the simplest model that described what was being observed.)
9. RCC subsequent objections to heliocentrism owe much more to the fraught political climate of the time and the paranoia that the reformation had caused within the Church – Galileo’s arrogance in his dealings with the Church did little to ameliorate the situation (Bellarmine’s approach for the Church did little either)
The once settled Science will Soon be unsettled , when it’s shown Gas is Metal – liquified in a Kettle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0eINoQdk0I
You can say that again.
The once settled science will Soon be unsettled – as the gas turns to metal -liquified in a kettle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0eINoQdk0I
Jeffrey: An enlightening article about Galileo and a well-argued call for more attention to solar science; I have an old blog post on the latter topic at https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2018/10/1/solar-science-shortchanged-in-climate-models-1s.
And it’s good to see someone taking the current system of government funded science to task, a subject first taken up by President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address.
May I point out a couple of nit-picking inaccuracies in your post:
(1) The Medicis did indeed fund Galileo’s later work, but at the time he made his initial telescopic observations in 1610, he was still a mathematics professor at the University of Padua. His booklet “Starry Messenger” describing his discoveries was dedicated to one of the Medicis, in the hope of gaining their patronage – which of course he did.
(2) Elliptical orbits were actually proposed by Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s – but his groundbreaking work wasn’t recognized until Newton’s time. Newton’s theory of gravitation provided a physical explanation for Kepler’s laws of planetary orbits.
Elementary school level of history of science. It was all more complicated what Copernicus postulated and what Galileo has demonstrated and why Church was persecuting Galileo. Partly because Galileo did not have a proof. And it was not Newton who has proven elliptical orbits but Kepler who deduced them from measurements. Newton only explained that central inverse square law force leads to elliptical orbits. And Einstein correction to Newton in Solar system is very small. It accounts for only 43 angular seconds in Mercury orbit per 100 years.
“Global temperatures are clearly linked to changes in the brightness of the sun (total solar irradiance, TSI).”
Global temperatures move inversely to changes in the solar wind pressure/temperature. Stronger solar wind states drive colder AMO anomalies, and La Nina conditions.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/association-between-sunspot-cycles-amo-ulric-lyons/