In message <[log in to unmask]>, Fred White
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>
>On Monday, January 12, 2004, at 03:33  PM, Roy Brown wrote:
>
>> In message <[log in to unmask]>, Fred White
>> <[log in to unmask]> writes
>>> Science Timelines are accessible via:
>>>
>>>                http://www.psigate.ac.uk/newsite/timelines.html
>>>
>>> One of the thousands of excerpts was:
>>>
>>> -270
>>> Aristarchus says that the Sun is at the centre of the Solar System;
>>> this is generally dismissed
>>>
>>> In 270 BC, most folks disagreed. No big deal.
>>>
>>> A later excerpt was:
>>>
>>> 1600
>>> Dominican monk and philosopher Giordano Bruno is executed by the
>>> inquisition for failing to recant his belief in a Copernican
>>> heliocentric Solar system
>>>
>>> 1870 Years later, many folks still disagree but with a little less
>>> tolerance.
>>>
>>> We've come a long way baby.  :-))
>>>
>>> FW
>>
>> Yes, but is it true as stated?

>> Bruno was a Copernican, though there is no evidence that his support
>>for  this featured in the trial at all. In fact, he managed to get
>>Copernicanism tarred with the same brush as his heresies, and
>>scientific  progress in Italy might have proceeded more smoothly, for
>>Galileo and  others, if it had not been for this.

>You're probably right. Nevertheless, does either explanation support
>burning at the stake for possessing a belief which was different than
>the persecutors'? It shouldn't even be a felony.

Do I detect the goalposts being surreptitiously moved?

At first, this was about the Sun going round the Earth or not, now it's
about belief.....

>People should be punished for their actions; not for their beliefs.

They were..... Bruno didn't just hold these beliefs, he went round
actively proselytising.

And even the Catholic Church, if not perhaps the Inquisition exceeding
its brief a little, was prepared to allow Galileo to teach
Copernicanism.

But it is certainly true that while the Catholic Church apologised to
Galileo, who they merely censured, I haven't seen where they apologised
to Bruno, who they executed...

Of course, the other thing about your timeline is its very selective
start and end. Gribbin's History only starts in 1543, barely fifty years
before the events you cite.

Who could doubt that we have, indeed, come a long way in the 404 years
since then?

--
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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