Something I learned from the book Lost In Math, by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder:
People love to make fun of pre-Copernican geocentric models of the universe, but it turns out that there were some interesting arguments against heliocentrism, back in the day.
For one thing, scientists back then knew how to do trigonometry, and they noticed that the stars (unlike the planets) didn't seem to move, which meant that either (1) the stars were fixed in position relative to the earth, not the sun, or else (2) the stars were implausibly far away, thousands of times farther away than any of the planets, far enough away that their parallax motion was impossible to detect.
It wasn't until much later that we developed instruments sensitive enough to detect that yes, the stars really do show parallax motion as the earth goes around the sun. But if you went back in time to the 16th century, and you didn't bring any of those modern instruments with you, you'd have a pretty tough time answering that argument.
This is good in the sense that it teaches you something true about the way human beings search for knowledge, including the fact that people can be wrong without being stupid.
It's an interesting book.
-Max
Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray-ebook/dp/B0763L6YR7/
--
I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
People love to make fun of pre-Copernican geocentric models of the universe, but it turns out that there were some interesting arguments against heliocentrism, back in the day.
For one thing, scientists back then knew how to do trigonometry, and they noticed that the stars (unlike the planets) didn't seem to move, which meant that either (1) the stars were fixed in position relative to the earth, not the sun, or else (2) the stars were implausibly far away, thousands of times farther away than any of the planets, far enough away that their parallax motion was impossible to detect.
It wasn't until much later that we developed instruments sensitive enough to detect that yes, the stars really do show parallax motion as the earth goes around the sun. But if you went back in time to the 16th century, and you didn't bring any of those modern instruments with you, you'd have a pretty tough time answering that argument.
This is good in the sense that it teaches you something true about the way human beings search for knowledge, including the fact that people can be wrong without being stupid.
It's an interesting book.
-Max
Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray-ebook/dp/B0763L6YR7/
--
I could not love thee dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.
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