[from Gary Cziko 930528.1948]
I shared Dag Forssell's quote about Galileo with Bill Brewer, a cognitive
psychologist on my campus interested in scienctific change (Bill Powers met
him at my home some years back--longish reddish hair and beard).
I thought some netters would like his follow on Galileo.--Gary
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Thanks Gary,
I read much of Galileo's work several years ago. We use several stories
from this reading as historical examples in our RER paper on anomaly. My
favorite is the one where he lets an Aristotelian look though his
telescope. The man was shaken by seeing the mountains on the moon.
However, he later wrote to Galileo and told him he had a solution to the
problem. He said it was clear that the mountains on the moon were embedded
in perfect transparent sphere so that the observations were not in conflict
with the Aristotelian view after all. Galileo write him back saying that
he was a tolerant man and that he accepted this man's view, however, he
hoped the Aristotelian was also tolerant since the Aristotelian had not
realized that there were transparent mountains on the outside of the
transparent sphere!
Bill B.