arXiv subjects

Christopher M. Graney

Publications and source records attributed to Christopher M. Graney.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

The Challenging History of Other Earths

This paper provides an overview of recent historical research regarding scientifically-informed challenges to the idea that the stars are other suns orbited by other inhabited earths -- an idea that came to be known as "the Plurality of Worlds". Johannes Kepler in the seventeenth century, Jacques Cassini in the eighteenth, and William Whewell in the nineteenth each argued against "pluralism" based on what in their respective times was solid science. Nevertheless, pluralism remained popular despite these and other scientific challenges. This history will be of interest to the astronomical community so that it is better positioned to avoid difficulties should the historical trajectory of pluralism continue, especially as it persists in the popular imagination.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2024

Galileo and Buonamici on the Tides of the Sea: Was Something Omitted from the Dialogue?

In his 1616 discourse on the tides, Galileo claimed that diurnal tides occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, bolstering his theory of the tides. Lisbon does not feature such tides, but in an exchange of letters in 1629-1630, Giovanfrancesco Buonamici provided Galileo with information on where such tides could be found. Buonamici referred Galileo to the Regimiento de Navegación of Andrés García de Céspedes, and to the Descrittione di Tutti i Paesi Bassi of Lodovico Guicciardini. Galileo omitted any information on where diurnal tides occurred from his 1632 Dialogue, perhaps unintentionally, leaving him open to criticism. Buonamici's material militates against that criticism.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2024

The Vatican and the Fallibility of Science: Augustine, Copernicus, Darwin and Race

This paper provides an overview of work, published since the opening of the archives of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the end of the twentieth century, regarding the Vatican confronting evolution in the nineteenth century. It argues that this work, considered in light of recent studies of scientific writings by Jesuit astronomers who in the seventeenth century were opposed to the ideas of Copernicus, points to interesting things yet to be learned regarding the Vatican's actions on heliocentrism. Concern for Scripture and for the fallible and consequential nature of science, together with the processes used by the Vatican in these confrontations, inevitably led to messy results in these well-known "religion and science" confrontations. Nevertheless, these confrontations suggest that what the Vatican was attempting to do in confronting evolution or heliocentrism is something that is needed in science, and something that will be done in the future, probably not by the Vatican, and probably in a fashion not less messy.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2024

Stolzenberg's "The Holy Office in The Republic of Letters" Revisited: On an Astronomical Diagram and Whether the Papacy Tacitly Permitted the Circulation of an Explicitly Copernican Book in 1660

Did the papacy tacitly permit the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book in 1660? One scholar has recently argued that it did. A close analysis of a unique illustration from that book, Andreas Cellarius's atlas Harmonia Macrocosmica, illuminates this argument. This is because the illustration, a diagram showing the relative sizes of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, was among the material reviewed (at the request of the book's publisher) by the Holy Office prior to the book's publication and was pro-Copernican.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2023

Whence Tycho's Case against Copernicus? On Genesis, Augustine, and the Stars

This paper argues that Tycho Brahe's "principal argument against Copernicus" (as the astronomer Christiaan Huygens called it) likely derived from a much older argument regarding the sizes of the "two great lights" described in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. Brahe's argument, that in the Copernican system stars would have to be absurdly large, played an important role in opposition to the Copernican system in the seventeenth century. Brahe presented the argument in an exchange of letters with Christoph Rothmann in 1588-89. Within that exchange Rothmann and Brahe touched both on the question of the two great lights of Genesis and on theologians such as Augustine of Hippo who treated that question. The fundamentals of Brahe's important line of argument against Copernicus thus well pre-dated Copernicus and Brahe.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2021

Galileo between Jesuits: The Fault is in the Stars

In the middle of the seventeenth century, André Tacquet, S.J. briefly discussed a scientific argument regarding the structure of a Copernican universe, and commented on Galileo Galilei's discussion of that same argument -- Galileo's discussion in turn being a commentary on a version of the argument by Christoph Scheiner, S.J. The argument was based on observations of the sizes of stars. This exchange involving Galileo and two Jesuits illustrates how through much of the seventeenth century, science -- meaning observations measurements, and calculations -- supported a view of the Copernican universe in which stars were not other suns, but were dim bodies, far larger than the sun. Johannes Kepler emphasized this, especially in arguing against Giordano Bruno. Jesuit astronomers like Tacquet and Scheiner understood this. Those who might have listened to Jesuit astronomers would likewise have understood this -- Robert Bellarmine, for example, whose role in the debate over Copernicanism is well known. To many, such a universe was, in the words of Galileo's Dialogue character Sagredo, "beyond belief," and no modern view of a universe of many distant suns would be scientifically supportable until after Tacquet's death in 1660. The Copernican universe of the seventeenth century looked radically different from the universe as modern astronomers understand it, and recognizing this fact allows for interesting questions to be asked regarding the actions of those, such as Bellarmine, who were responding to the work of Copernicus.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2019

Not the Earth, but its orbit: Andre Tacquet and the question of star sizes in a heliocentric universe

This paper consists of a translation of Andre Tacquet's discussion of the question of sizes of stars in a heliocentric universe, as published in his posthumous Opera Mathematica of 1668, along with introductory material and analysis. While Robert Hooke mentions Tacquet as one of the "great Anti-copernicans", who argued the question of star sizes against the heliocentric theory with "great vehemency and insulting", Tacquet's discussion has received only scant attention. The kernel of Tacquet's argument is that the absence of any detectable parallax in the stars, combined with the measured apparent sizes of the stars, means that, in a heliocentric universe, the sizes of stars compare to the size of Earth's orbit via the same proportion that they compare to the size of the Earth in a geocentric universe. The translated material presents this argument in a straightforward manner, insulting absent.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2019

The Starry Universe of Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler described the Copernican universe as consisting of a central, small, brilliant sun with its planetary system, all surrounded by giant stars. These stars were far larger than, and much dimmer than, the sun -- his De Stella Nova shows that every visible star must exceed the size of the Earth's orbit, and the most prominent stars may exceed the size of the entire planetary system. His other writings, including his response to Ingoli, his Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, and his Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, also reflect this Copernican universe. To Kepler, such a universe was an illustration of divine power -- and solid evidence against the stars being suns, against the universe of Giordano Bruno. Kepler's starry universe was in fact the Copernican universe supported by observations of the stars, which showed them to have measureable apparent sizes. Not until the later seventeenth century were those apparent sizes shown to be spurious, allowing for a universe in which the stars were suns.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2019

How to make the Earth orbit the Sun in 1614

In 1614 Johann Georg Locher, a student of the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner, proposed a physical mechanism to explain how the Earth could orbit the sun. An orbit, Locher said, is a perpetual fall. He proposed this despite the fact that he rejected the Copernican system, citing problems with falling bodies and the sizes of stars under that system. In 1651 and again in 1680, Jesuit writers Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Athanasius Kircher, respectively, considered and rejected outright Locher's idea of an orbit as a perpetual fall. Thus this important concept of an orbit was proposed, considered, and rejected well before Isaac Newton would use an entirely different physics to make the idea that an orbit is a perpetual fall the common way of envisioning and explaining orbits.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2018

Of Mites and Men: Johannes Kepler on Stars and Size

In his 1606 De Stella Nova, Johannes Kepler attempted to answer Tycho Brahe's argument that the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis required all the fixed stars to dwarf the Sun, something Brahe found to be a great drawback of that hypothesis. This paper includes a translation into English of Chapter 16 of De Stella Nova, in which Kepler discusses this argument, along with brief outlines of both Tycho's argument and Kepler's answer (which references snakes, mites, men, and divine power, among other things).

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2016

The Coriolis Effect Further Described in the Seventeenth Century

Claude Francis Milliet Dechales described the Coriolis effect in his 1674 Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus. Dechales discussed and illustrated the deflection of both falling bodies and of projectiles launched toward the poles that should occur on a rotating Earth. Interestingly, this was done as an argument against the Earth's rotation, the deflections not having been observed at the time. Dechales's work follows on that of Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who had also described the effect in his Almagestum Novum of 1651.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2014

The Inquisition's Semicolon: Punctuation, Translation, and Science in the 1616 Condemnation of the Copernican System

This paper presents high-resolution images of the original document of the 24 February 1616 condemnation of the Copernican system, as being "foolish and absurd in philosophy", by a team of consultants for the Roman Inquisition. Secondary sources have disagreed as to the punctuation of the document. The paper includes a brief analysis of the punctuation and the possible effects of that punctuation on meaning. The original document and its punctuation may also have relevance to public perception of science and to science education.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2013

Mass, Speed, Direction: John Buridan's 14th century concept of momentum

In the 14th century the French thinker John Buridan developed a theory of motion that bears a strong resemblance to Newtonian momentum. Buridan's ideas include a quantity of motion which is determined by an object's mass, speed, and direction; in the absence of resistive effects, this quantity remains with the object. Buridan's work is an interesting story in the history of physics. Buridan's insights have value for introducing concepts of inertia and momentum to physics students.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2013

Francesco Ingoli's essay to Galileo: Tycho Brahe and science in the Inquisition's condemnation of the Copernican theory

In January of 1616, the month before before the Roman Inquisition would infamously condemn the Copernican theory as being "foolish and absurd in philosophy", Monsignor Francesco Ingoli addressed Galileo Galilei with an essay entitled "Disputation concerning the location and rest of Earth against the system of Copernicus". A rendition of this essay into English, along with the full text of the essay in the original Latin, is provided in this paper. The essay, upon which the Inquisition condemnation was likely based, lists mathematical, physical, and theological arguments against the Copernican theory. Ingoli asks Galileo to respond to those mathematical and physical arguments that are "more weighty", and does not ask him to respond to the theological arguments at all. The mathematical and physical arguments Ingoli presents are largely the anti-Copernican arguments of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe; one of these (an argument based on measurements of the apparent sizes of stars) was all but unanswerable. Ingoli's emphasis on the scientific arguments of Brahe, and his lack of emphasis on theological arguments, raises the question of whether the condemnation of the Copernican theory was, in contrast to how it is usually viewed, essentially scientific in nature, following the ideas of Brahe.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2012

Beyond Galileo: A translation of Giovanni Battista Riccioli's experiments regarding falling bodies and "air drag", as reported in his 1651 Almagestum Novum

The Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli is commonly credited with performing the first precise experiments to determine the acceleration of a freely falling body, but he also went further, experimentally investigating what today would be called the effect of "air drag" on falling bodies. This paper consists of a translation of those experiments, with a brief analysis and commentary. Riccioli arrived at conclusions consistent with modern understanding of "air drag".

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2012

Doubting, Testing, and Confirming Galileo: A translation of Giovanni Battista Riccioli's experiments regarding the motion of a falling body, as reported in his 1651 Almagestum Novum

The Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli is commonly credited with performing the first precise experiments to determine the acceleration of a freely falling body. Riccioli has been discussed by historians of science, sometimes positively but often not, but translations of his work into modern languages are not readily available. Presented here is a translation of his experiments regarding the nature of the motion of a falling body. Riccioli provides a thorough description of his experiments, and his data are quite good. He appears to have a model approach to science: He attacks the question of free fall with the expectation of disproving Galileo's ideas, yet he is convinced by his data that Galileo is indeed correct, and he promptly informs a former protégée of Galileo's of the results.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2012

Regarding how Tycho Brahe noted the absurdity of the Copernican Theory regarding the Bigness of Stars, while the Copernicans appealed to God to answer that absurdity

Tycho Brahe, the most prominent and accomplished astronomer of his era, made measurements of the apparent sizes of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets. From these he showed that within a geocentric cosmos these bodies were of comparable sizes, with the Sun being the largest body and the Moon the smallest. He further showed that within a heliocentric cosmos, the stars had to be absurdly large - with the smallest star dwarfing even the Sun. (The results of Tycho's calculations are illustrated in this paper.) Various Copernicans responded to this issue of observation and geometry by appealing to the power of God: They argued that giant stars were not absurd because even such giant objects were nothing compared to an infinite God, and that in fact the Copernican stars pointed out the power of God to humankind. Tycho rejected this argument.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2011

Teaching Galileo? Get to know Riccioli! -- What a forgotten Italian astronomer can teach students about how science works

What can physics students learn about science from those scientists who got the answers wrong? Students encounter little science history, and what they have encountered typically portrays scientists as The People with the Right Answers. But those who got the wrong answers can teach students that in science answers are often elusive -- not found in the back of a book or discovered in a bold stroke of genius. Giovanni Battista Riccioli, a 17th-century astronomer who argued that science supported a geocentric universe, and whose arguments made sense given the knowledge of the time -- is an example of such a person.

physics.ed-ph↗