[HN Gopher] How Copernicus took down Ptolemy's Almagest
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How Copernicus took down Ptolemy's Almagest
Author : Hooke
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-03-02 23:26 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| visarga wrote:
| Can we say humans also hallucinate and continue parroting a bad
| idea for 1500 years? How does this support the concept that
| humans have real understanding unlike AI? Looks to me we have
| hallucinated theories that eventually get invalidated. We don't
| really understand, we're like hallucinating LLMs testing their
| outputs in the world.
|
| Similarly to this we had no idea about the germ theory of disease
| even when 30% of our population was dying (Black Death). A life
| and death scenario and we couldn't figure it out, that's how
| intelligent we are in reality - not enough to save our asses. Our
| intelligence is social, an environment based discovery process
| not something coming from a single brain.
|
| All we know comes from the environment, and no agent is too smart
| alone. We should reexamine intelligence as a property of the
| brain, better see it as a property of language.
| koliber wrote:
| Coming up with a plausible but incorrect theory of how
| something works is not hallucination. Hallucination is seeing
| something that is not there.
|
| In terms of LLMs, they don't come up with with any original
| theories. When they hallucinate, they make things up that are
| easily shown to be untrue using current and present methods.
| visarga wrote:
| There is no difference between real understanding and
| integrating feedback into a hallucinating model. We're
| adjusting based on feedback to reign hallucination in.
| marketneutral wrote:
| A and B are not the same thing if they can sometimes
| generate the same output to a particular query.
| mihaic wrote:
| What you're doing seems to be the opposite of
| anthropomorphization (is there a term for that?) You seem to be
| considering humans by forcing them to fit into the observations
| of LLM outputs.
|
| > Our intelligence is social, an environment based discovery
| process not something coming from a single brain.
|
| Germ theory didn't come from the group, there were individuals
| that came up with new inventions (the microscope)_and concepts
| that later were approved by a community.
|
| I think you're trying to oversimplify our society, and that
| loses some important truths along the way.
| dave333 wrote:
| So which of today's accepted theories are in error? Quantum
| Mechanics and General Relativity do not agree so at least one
| must be incorrect yet both are widely if not completely accepted.
| FredPret wrote:
| We're certainly zero-ing in on the truth though, which is
| extremely exciting
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Are we though? All I see is a lot of effort followed by a lot
| of reaching (yet again) for the aspirin and/or whiskey.
|
| Have you any examples showing recent convergence between
| quantum & relativity?
| FredPret wrote:
| Pessimism much? We have GPS satellites orbiting, we can
| land a robot on a specific spot on Mars, and we can make a
| ton of predictions about how the universe should look on
| both huge and tiny scales and have those pan out.
|
| Sure we don't have a single theory of everything yet, but
| our mental model is asymptotically converging to our
| observations.
| summerdown2 wrote:
| A scientific theory doesn't have to be wrong or right. It can
| simply be useful as long as the limitations are understood. Eg,
| the domains where it applies and the domains where you
| shouldn't use it.
|
| Isaac Asimov wrote a really great essay about this, in which he
| pointed out that some people thought the Earth was flat. And it
| is flat, on a local scale. Then people thought it was round.
| And it is round, just not exactly. Then it was considered an
| oblate sphere. And it is an oblate sphere - just not exactly.
|
| The main theme of his essay is to point out that a theory can
| be wrong, but pretty accurate. Enough for rough work. And the
| one that replaces it can also be wrong, but even closer. Etc.
| So all theories in succession can be wrong. The real question
| is how wrong a theory is, and how useful it is.
|
| Here's the essay:
|
| https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| As long as you do not kill people who even talk about these
| ...
|
| And whilst one can say these, one may note something like say
| letting blood can cure disease it is not. Hence talking is
| ok. But actually using it ...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > So which of today's accepted theories are in error?
|
| It's not the same kind of error. Because science is based on
| factual observation, it tends to agree with the facts of
| reality.
|
| > Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity do not agree so at
| least one must be incorrect
|
| That's not so. It's not a binary choice at all. Both are
| accurate - both accurately predict certain phenomena and they
| will continue to do that. Someday, hopefully, someone will come
| up with an explanation that encapsulates both of them.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity do not agree_
|
| More precisely, they are incompatible _if you treat them as
| fundamental theories of everything_. But _neither_ QM nor GR
| _claims_ to be any such thing.
|
| That is a key difference between our current theories and
| schemes like Aristotelian physics, or for that matter Newtonian
| physics. Both Newton _and_ Aristotle thought their theories
| were theories of everything. We know that neither the QM we
| currently have nor the GR we currently have are theories of
| everything; they are just models valid within particular
| domains. Those domains are very wide, but (a) neither one
| covers everything, and (b) there is virtually no overlap
| between them, and where there is (for example, quantum field
| theory in curved spacetime) we have ways of meshing them that
| work well enough.
| bcaxis wrote:
| How mach of our current understanding is just as wrong?
| Certhas wrote:
| Nothing.
|
| At least not for any precise definition of "just as wrong" that
| would be useful.
|
| There is, today, not a single terrestrial observation in
| contradiction to GR and QM. We have an incredibly good
| understanding of the fundamental nature of our reality.
|
| Our understanding is so good that it takes decades of work by
| brilliant scientists and engineers, to build machines that
| could show even the slightest evidence of something else going
| on.
|
| It's easy to overlook how stunning this situation is. It is
| utterly unprecedented in the history of science.
|
| This does not mean that there are no deeper truths to discover,
| but Newtonian mechanics does correctly describe how the apple
| falls, even if it is not the final word.
| lcuff wrote:
| "We don't know what we don't know", comes to mind as an answer.
| Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity explain a Whole Lot,
| but since they haven't yet been "meshed", there's more to come.
| The James Webb Space Telescope is providing data that is
| upending many things in cosmology. Dark Matter: As a phrase,
| it's not even clear that it's "matter". There's some phenomenon
| that causes stars to be attracted to one another independent of
| our current notion of mass.
|
| Richard Feynman said "Science is the belief in the ignorance of
| experts", and Carl Sagan said the "Science is a way of thinking
| more than it is a body of knowledge". Both of these point to
| the reality that our current understanding of the universe is
| riddled with errors and omissions. We do our best with the data
| we have, and try to transcend our own prejudices and history.
|
| How much or our current understanding is "just as wrong?":
| Well, like most things, it's on a continuum, and to some extent
| a matter of opinion. Was Newtonian mechanics "just as wrong" as
| Ptolemy, when considering Relativity? I wouldn't say so, but
| maybe you would. Ptolemy's conception explained almost nothing
| and glossed over contradicting facts. Newton put mathematics
| around observations available to him, but named the reality
| that he had no understanding of how action-at-a-distance
| happened. "I make no hypothesis".
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Depending on what the future might bring, maybe all of it - or
| at least some aspect of everything. Since we base much, if not
| all of of our understanding on what we think we know: when
| those beliefs get thrown out then it will affect everything.
| This is admittedly not very useful in everyday life since we
| can't know beforehand exactly how earthshattering the new
| knowledge will be. Except, useful perhaps as a certain antidote
| to the potential suppressive damage done by those who are
| absolutely certain of the things we know now to be true for
| ever.
|
| Example: what if it turned out that time itself had qualities
| no-one had suspected before? Time is one of those fundamental
| things in existence that may (or likely will) still reveal some
| previously unknown aspect. Which in turn would likely affect
| our perception of all things in existence.
|
| Which means our "primitive" concept of time (and everything in
| it) would perhaps not be wrong, but incomplete. Or plainly
| wrong, for that matter.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Example: what if it turned out that time itself had
| qualities no-one had suspected before? Time is one of those
| fundamental things in existence that may (or likely will)
| still reveal some previously unknown aspect. Which in turn
| would likely affect our perception of all things in
| existence._
|
| "All models are wrong, but some are useful" [1]
|
| The validity of Newtonian mechanics didn't change because we
| discovered relativity just like the equations of motion don't
| become invalid because there's friction. It's still useful,
| we're just more familiar with the boundary conditions where
| it breaks down. It's unlikely we'll ever throw it away
| because it is the simplest model with a lot of predictive
| value at low energies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
| mistermann wrote:
| > Since we base much, if not all of of our understanding on
| what we think we know: when those beliefs get thrown out then
| it will affect everything.
|
| I don't think getting to the point of throwing anything out
| is necessary, if (some adequate subset of) humans could even
| get to the point of _seriously_ wondering if our models and
| beliefs (across all domains, including those outside of
| science, _particularly those which science sits on top of_ )
| contain zero fundamentally important flaws, I believe we
| would be well on the path to sorting the mess we've made out.
| Science and engineering are excellent examples of how capable
| humans are when they really set their minds on trying to
| understand something.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Probably all of it, if we extrapolate from the history of
| science. The theories we have now have replaced theories we now
| consoider wrong or less correct. No reason to think this will
| stop.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That's not actually true. We refine the theories, making them
| more accurate or extend them to cover a wider range of
| situations, but the theories usually hold out pretty well.
| Newton didn't address some things that Einstein did, but
| within their scope - which is most of human perceptual
| experience - they are accurate.
| TheBlight wrote:
| The existence of singularities and dark matter suggest our
| current models could use some work.
| sorokod wrote:
| Depends on how you measure wrong, I don't think that Newtonian
| vs. Special Relativity Physics is the same amount of wrong as
| geocentric vs. heliocentric
| pdonis wrote:
| Relativity doesn't agree with you. Relativity says you _can_
| use a frame centered on the Earth if you like. It makes your
| description of the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets more
| complicated, which is why astronomers don 't do it--why
| complicate things if you don't need to? But it's still a
| perfectly valid viewpoint as far as relativity is concerned.
|
| In fact, astronomers today don't even use a "heliocentric"
| frame--they use a barycentric frame, i.e., the spatial origin
| is the barycenter of the solar system. The Sun is of course
| much closer to the barycenter than any other body, but it's
| not exactly _at_ it.
| pdonis wrote:
| In physics? None of it. As Steven Weinberg remarked, if you
| have one of those T-shirts with Maxwell's Equations on it, you
| might have to worry about it going out of style, but not about
| it becoming false. Of course the remark about going out of
| style presupposes that it was ever _in_ style to begin with,
| which is questionable, but doesn 't affect the main point. :-)
|
| What we _do_ have in our current physics is a reasonably good
| understanding of the _limitations_ of our theories: we know
| that none of them are theories of everything, they all have
| limited domains of validity, even if for some of them those
| domains are very wide. That is the key thing that systems like
| those of Aristotle and Newton did _not_ have.
| Jun8 wrote:
| The premise of this article is wrong: heliocentric was not
| rejected because ancient scientists were foolish or they were
| afraid to speak up to established theory. It was not accepted
| because egocentrism produced better results!
|
| They correctly understood that heliocentrism predicted a parallax
| but failed to measure that with the primitive observational
| equipment they had. I thought this was a commonly known fact,
| together with the myth that the ancient believed Earth was flat,
| but evidently not.
|
| For further reading:
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26291/why-did-th...
| canjobear wrote:
| Furthermore Copernicus's system had lower accuracy and more
| epicycles. There wasn't any real reason to prefer heliocentric
| models until Kepler.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Kepler makes Copernicus look like a tool.
| sorokod wrote:
| A neat example of how the predictive power of a theory does not
| guarantee its correctness. Even if the theory and its
| predictions were incremental refined and improved over time.
| mistercheph wrote:
| What measure is there for assessing the correctness of a
| theory aside from predictive power?
| sorokod wrote:
| Here we have a theory which turned out to be fundamentally
| wrong while having predictive power.
|
| Maybe every physical theory is just a model approximating
| something that can at any time be replaced by by a better
| model that is still just that, a model.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Here we have a theory which turned out to be
| fundamentally wrong_
|
| What makes you think so? How is Ptolemaic theory
| "fundamentally wrong" where our best current physical
| theories are not?
|
| _> Maybe every physical theory is just a model
| approximating something that can at any time be replaced
| by by a better model that is still just that, a model._
|
| This is indeed our current view of physical theories. But
| you realize, don't you, that once you accept this, it
| invalidates your criticism of Ptolemaic theory? Ptolemaic
| theory was a model. For centuries it was the best model
| known in terms of the accuracy of its predictions, which
| were accurate enough to predict things like eclipses
| years in advance. We now have better models, but none of
| that invalidates Ptolemaic theory's achievements. It just
| means we have now found better approximations.
|
| In fact, our modern viewpoint, specifically relativity,
| even helps us to understand _why_ the Ptolematic model
| worked as well as it did: it is one way of describing
| what you get if you use an inertial frame centered on the
| Earth to analyze the motions of the Sun, Moon, and
| planets! IIRC Steven Weinberg, years ago, wrote a paper
| that expounded this in some detail.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| +1 Myth of the flat Earth
|
| For some years I gave talks about this (Germany), it is
| astonishing how many people think that the idea of a spherical
| earth is a new one.
|
| "The myth of the flat Earth, or the flat-Earth error, is a
| modern historical misconception that European scholars and
| educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be
| flat."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Many such ideas are the work of Enlightenment pamphleteers
| engaged in self-flattery and anti-Church propaganda
| (including the Protestant variety). By straw manning the
| Middle Ages (especially the Middle Ages, as many of these
| types had an ax to grind against the Church) or the ancients
| as superstitious imbeciles, it makes them look better, these
| true men of reason, in the eyes of the ignorant whom they
| sought to impress.
|
| And wacky ideas like fundmentalism are likewise very new
| historically, but eagerly seized upon by our modern sophists
| who, again, have an ax to grind.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > self-flattery
|
| Lol.
|
| > By straw manning the Middle Ages (especially the Middle
| Ages, as many of these types had an ax to grind against the
| Church) or the ancients as superstitious imbeciles, it
| makes them look better, these true men of reason, in the
| eyes of the ignorant whom they sought to impress.
|
| This is a great point - and still relevant. Academia does
| this to this day, attacking researchers like Jared Diamond,
| pooh-poohing the work of (very) ancient mathematicians and
| astronomers, or diminishing the insanely impressive
| craftsmanship shown in, eg, 30-50 thousand year old flutes,
| carved with perfect pentatonic scales.
|
| Pentatonic scales! Well over 30,000 years ago! The
| implications of that are astounding.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _They correctly understood that heliocentrism predicted a
| parallax but failed to measure that with the primitive
| observational equipment they had._
|
| Aristotle in _De Caelo_ (Book II, part 14):
|
| > _The earth, then, also, whether it move about the centre or
| as stationary at it, must necessarily move with two motions.
| But if this were so, there would have to be passings and
| turnings of the fixed stars. Yet no such thing is observed. The
| same stars always rise and set in the same parts of the earth._
|
| * http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Heavens
|
| See also:
|
| > _In the_ mathematikoi _tradition of Pythagoreanism the Earth
| was removed from the center of the universe. The_ mathematikoi
| _believed that the Earth, along with other celestial bodies,
| orbited around a central fire. This, they believed, constituted
| a celestial harmony.[24]_
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism#The_mathematiko...
| nyokodo wrote:
| > heliocentrism predicted a parallax
|
| Also, they didn't have a theory of gravity so the lack of a
| sensation of moving with the earth and the fact that objects
| fall straight down were not expected unless the earth was
| stationary. There were also other more philosophical arguments
| for geocentrism that were compelling given the cosmology and
| science of the time.
|
| > I thought this was a commonly known fact... evidently not.
|
| Especially given how this is tied up with the common use of the
| Galileo affair as an example of faith vs science despite faith
| being common between Galileo and the Church Authorities to
| which he ran afoul.
| tzs wrote:
| Galileo and the Church had the same fundamental belief: the
| Universe was designed by an all-powerful God and that God
| picked laws of physics that were mathematically elegant and
| beautiful.
|
| The Church was not nearly as closed-minded about heliocentric
| theories in Galileo's time as is commonly thought. Their
| position was that if empirical evidence clearly showed that
| the universe did not work the way the Church thought that the
| Bible said it worked then the Church must have misinterpreted
| the Bible.
|
| The problem with Galileo's heliocentric theory was that it
| was empirically not correct. If some observation didn't fit
| in with his theory and changing the theory to accommodate it
| would make the theory ugly or inelegant Galileo would dismiss
| that observation as observational error. God, he believed,
| would not make an inelegant universe.
|
| What got him in trouble with the Church wasn't that he
| proposed a heliocentric theory. It was a combination of 5
| things.
|
| 1. His theory wasn't better than the best current geocentric
| theories at actually predicting things.
|
| 2. He had a very big ego.
|
| 3. He was an asshole. If he saw you are a rival or as an
| inferior he was intolerant and rude to you. Because of his
| big ego, "inferior" included pretty much everybody.
|
| 4. He was a celebrity. The rich and powerful would regularly
| invite him to attend their gatherings.
|
| 5. He had a terrible sense of politics. #4 regular brought
| him in contact with people who could make his life miserable
| if he annoyed them too much, and #2 and #3 ensured the he did
| so.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Oh, wow. This is pretty different from what I learned in
| school. Where can I read more about this?
| tzs wrote:
| The article linked in this comment [1] is good.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39582243
| rurban wrote:
| Arguably Aristotle made a worse error in his definition of
| mechanics, particularly of motion. For him friction ruined
| acceleration. "Continuation of motion depends on continued action
| of a force".
| canjobear wrote:
| Aristotle's physics is correct for objects immersed in a fluid.
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057
| pdonis wrote:
| More precisely, it is a good approximation for objects
| immersed in a fluid that is sufficiently dense relative to
| the density of the objects, on time scales long enough for
| the effects of the fluid to be significant given the relative
| densities. Rovelli fails to point out this critical factor,
| although it is implicit in the equations he gives, and fails
| to recognize that this factor invalidates his criticisms of
| high school textbooks and teachers who, he claims, mislead
| students by telling them that heavy and light objects fall
| with the same acceleration.
|
| In fact, what high school textbooks and teachers tell
| students is that _if we neglect the effects of air_ , heavy
| and light objects fall with the same acceleration. That's
| what I was taught in high school, and it's perfectly correct.
| (Note that this phrasing already eliminates cases like motion
| in water, for which the Aristotelian model is a much better
| approximation.) Some high school textbooks and teachers (like
| the one I was fortunate enough to have) will even go on to
| point out that, for a wide range of objects falling in air,
| the effects of air are negligible for a significant enough
| amount of time to make feasible, for example, the famous (but
| probably apocryphal) experiment of Galileo dropping two
| cannon balls of different weights from the top of the Leaning
| Tower of Pisa and seeing them hit the ground at the same
| time. And Rovelli's equations, when you plug in the relevant
| numbers for such a case, say the same thing--but Rovelli
| himself doesn't.
|
| While this in itself does not invalidate the actual math in
| the paper, which is fine, I found it very disappointing that
| Rovelli went beyond what his math actually justifies in
| making the criticisms of high school textbooks and teachers
| in the paper. He should have known better.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I will add as a footnote, and I know you likely did not mean
| this, but it happens often enough, that one should distinguish
| between Aristotle's scientific works and philosophic works.
| That is, while his physics may be obsolete (though we should
| show gratitude, as this was an early attempt from which our
| later traditions drew), his metaphysics is not, for example.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> his metaphysics is not_
|
| It isn't?
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| And Kepler "took down" whatever Copernicus did.
| herodotus wrote:
| This article is wrong on many levels. A very good article to read
| about this is '"Crisis" versus Aesthetic in the Copernican
| Revolution' by Owen Gingerich
|
| https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%2...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| When they disagree, how do you know which article is accurate
| about what? How do we know?
|
| People say these things about almost every OP on HN; the claim
| itself isn't a signal.
| clausecker wrote:
| Also worth reading on this subject: The great Ptolemaic smackdown
| (https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-
| sma...).
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