The Great Ptolemaic Smack Down

The first instalment talked about how philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Oresme opposed heliocentrism, early models of the universe, difference between Astronomy and Physics, and the evolution of the models from Ptolemy to Kepler.

It also gave the background on how the rest of the blog goes by the way TOF presents his ideas, his comments, his codes, and even jokes. I was amused by how his sense of humor affects the manner of how he tackled each issue. The titles he used like Our Ancestors Were Stoopid, The Last Hurrah of Eyeball Astronomy, and Mystical Woo-woo and commentaries like "Oh, them unscientific medieval dark agers!", "Game, set,andmatch, dudes and dudettes!" , and "We'd be on freaking Mars by now!" were absolutely hilarious. He even called Copernicus Nicky.

He also mentioned unfamiliar names of Nicolai Reymers Bär and astronomer John Herschel and presented their significant contribution.

Aside from a smooth flow of facts, what I learned from this is the uncertainty of the known truth. Ptolemaic model was considered as a "settled science" but it turned out that it's wrong. Nothing is permanent in science which makes it different in mathematics just as how astronomy is different from physics. What if some of our settled science today was as wrong as Ptolemy's model of the universe? The information that we study, read and learn can just be a part of the shadow that we observe. I admire these eyeball astronomers for even if some of their theories were out of this world fails, some are still surviving and being redefined until today.

However, I have one question, why did he call Galileo You know who?

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown the author basically said a lot about Galileo's rise to power. He's journey to Rome and how this affected the way the people, mostly scholars, from that time treated him. According to TOF, he was a celebrated astronomer. The phrase in the last part: Kepler, Harriot, Marius, Lembo, Maelcote, Grienberger, Fabricius, Scheiner? Who dey? Galileo is on top of the freaking world!

This phrase made me laugh and think in the same time. Was he really worth it? Or Galileo was a jerk who stole a lot of works done by a lot of people and announced to the world that he discovered it?

Aside from that, the author also mention the history of the look glass which was further then called the telescope which helped A LOT in astronomy and Physics.

It was also nice and convenient that the author enumerated the seven models that I myself am not familiar of and how those models were eliminated in the system.

It was also revealed that sometimes scientists discover the same thing in the same time which makes it really hard. It made me wonder if the things that I thought was discovered by this scientist are really discovered by him or he was just lucky that he has a patron back then.

They hurt their eyes. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Man, was that bright!

The third instalment told the story about how Galileo found his first nemesis, Fr. Christoph Scheiner SJ, a mathematician in Ingolstad. Each believed that they discovered the sun's freckles called the sunspots. But basically the first one who spotted the sunspot was with a telescope, but