“Going Bananas: The Real Story of Kepler, Copernicus and the Church”

Last updated on: February 22, 2017 at 12:45 am

February 22, 2017 by Dan Peterson

Hilo Bay from Liliuokalani Park — I’m writing in a room about a block further down the road from where this photo of Hilo Bay was taken. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Chances are that you grew up with a lot of silly notions about the history of the warfare between science and religion.

I know that I did.

It turns out that stories like that of the trial of Galileo and of the Tennessee school teacher John Scopes and his (monkey) trial are a whole lot more complicated in reality than most propagandistic retellings of them let on. (I’m looking at you, Inherit the Wind.) The good guys aren’t so good, and the bad guys aren’t so bad (and so manifestly idiotic) as I, at least, was led to believe. The line between pure scientific rationality and weird irrational prejudice wasn’t nearly so clear, and sometimes it was the “scientists” who were the weirdest.

Here’s a short little article about the great German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) that’s worth a look in that light:

http://www.space.com/35772-copernicus-vs-catholic-church-real-story.html

Posted from Hilo, Hawaii