Galileo was the Renaissance scientist who spied the rings of Saturn with his homemade telescope. It was Galileo also who gave us the modern laws of motion. Galileo’s theories explain why it takes longer to fly from Kansas to San Francisco, into wind resistance, than to come home with a tail wind. And it was Galileo who described the physics of the modern practice of “platooning” by trucks, when they drive in the wake of the truck before them to cut down on wind resistance and so increase speed.
He went further. He said that the sun does not revolve around the earth; earth revolves around the sun. This was considered heretical, because in the Bible the wording is that the sun rises and sets, so Galileo found himself in trouble with the Inquisition. The authorities showed him the instruments of torture and he recanted.
This disturbs some people, who would have preferred that the great man suffer and die for the truth, rather than change what he said and what he knew to be true.
Tradition has it that, after a close escape from the torture chamber. Galileo muttered under his breath “Eppur si muove.”
Literally those words mean, “Nevertheless, it moves.” The earth moves. But in context the words mean more. They say: “the facts are the facts.” It matters very little what an authority says. What matters is the facts. Galileo lived on under house arrest and wrote one more book. Colleagues knew what was what, were aware of what he had discovered and how he had been treated.
Professor John Brunn of Chabot College averred years ago that one result of the episode was science moving north, out of Italy, to avoid confrontations with the Inquisition, thus assuring the greater prosperity of Northern Europe over Italy for the next several centuries.
Who really lost out on the issue? If there is a moral to the story, it would be that suppressing the truth, denying science, is not the way to thrive. It is a lesson that the current administration in the White House should take to heart. Suppressing data and cutting science budgets do not bode well for the country.
We are living under an administration that does not respect scientific facts, imperiling the future for all of us, but also leaving hegemony in science to other nations.
Nevertheless.blog 