Most of this is a tangent, but it was the thoughts brought to mind.
"In other words, what if the truth is too big for humans to handle?"
That is very close to the saying the reason is known only by God.
"...both versions are true."
Allow me to propose a third story which, although a little more sympathetic to the Church, is still distinct. It also allows me to ride a favorite hobby horse (which should be obvious by the end).
Galileo was a mathematical astronomer much more than an observational astronomer, his discoveries of the Galilean moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn not withstanding (in fairness, the norm for his time). He was also a skilled self-promoters.
He combined his few valuable observations with an okay heliocentric system to portray himself as a bullwark of Truth, fooling those centuries later who don’t even understand what he did and didn’t do but who need a weapon against their enemy, Christianity, especially Western Christianity. In fact, they even actively misrepresent the Church’s position about the Earth being the center of the universe claiming Galileo demoted Earth from a premier position which, as you point out, is 180 degrees off.
Galileo was not the man who truly changed our understanding of the universe and the Earth’s place in it. Why? Because his mathematical system did not obey Occam’s Law while another, still Earth-centric system, did, that of Tycho Brahe.
Tycho combined both the idea that other items orbited the Sun while still having the Sun, and thus its satellites, orbit the Earth. This system, not Galileo’s, explained the best observations available at the time. This should not surprise because Brahe was the man who made those observations. He devoted his, too brief, life to making. He invented new instruments for observing and measure the movement of the planets and positions of the stars.
Why did his Earth not move? Because a good distance to the Sun was known and if the Earth revolved around it the fixed stars should show a parallax on the 2AU baseline observations a year apart. In fact, we call the distance of 3.26 light years a parsec, short for parallel second, to designate the distance at which an object will show 1 second of arc (1/3600ths of a degree) parallax on a 2AU baseline. No start is this close so parallax of the stars wanted quite some time after both Brahe and Galileo to be measured.
Yet Brahe mostly forgotten today by the fans of Galileo and why is best exemplified by the “I love fucking Science” crowd. Galileo had some new but not world changing knowledge combined with self-promotion and the ability to show off at parties. Brahe stayed up all night doing the hard work of measure and then finding a theory to match the measurements while not taking a flier on ideas that required a world that defied the observations.
Beyond defending Tycho Brahe’s achievements and the importance of observation and experiment I’m not sure why this is such a big thing for me to damn near kneejerk present when Galileo comes up. We know what we know and both men’s work is superseded.
Perhaps I’d just rather make the “right” people heroes. Yes, Brahe was very flawed and his observations were truly fulfilled by Kepler. But for our generation and later Sagan did a lot of good work bringing Kepler to the popular mind while slighting Brahe.
Most of this is a tangent, but it was the thoughts brought to mind.
"In other words, what if the truth is too big for humans to handle?"
That is very close to the saying the reason is known only by God.
"...both versions are true."
Allow me to propose a third story which, although a little more sympathetic to the Church, is still distinct. It also allows me to ride a favorite hobby horse (which should be obvious by the end).
Galileo was a mathematical astronomer much more than an observational astronomer, his discoveries of the Galilean moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn not withstanding (in fairness, the norm for his time). He was also a skilled self-promoters.
He combined his few valuable observations with an okay heliocentric system to portray himself as a bullwark of Truth, fooling those centuries later who don’t even understand what he did and didn’t do but who need a weapon against their enemy, Christianity, especially Western Christianity. In fact, they even actively misrepresent the Church’s position about the Earth being the center of the universe claiming Galileo demoted Earth from a premier position which, as you point out, is 180 degrees off.
Galileo was not the man who truly changed our understanding of the universe and the Earth’s place in it. Why? Because his mathematical system did not obey Occam’s Law while another, still Earth-centric system, did, that of Tycho Brahe.
Tycho combined both the idea that other items orbited the Sun while still having the Sun, and thus its satellites, orbit the Earth. This system, not Galileo’s, explained the best observations available at the time. This should not surprise because Brahe was the man who made those observations. He devoted his, too brief, life to making. He invented new instruments for observing and measure the movement of the planets and positions of the stars.
Why did his Earth not move? Because a good distance to the Sun was known and if the Earth revolved around it the fixed stars should show a parallax on the 2AU baseline observations a year apart. In fact, we call the distance of 3.26 light years a parsec, short for parallel second, to designate the distance at which an object will show 1 second of arc (1/3600ths of a degree) parallax on a 2AU baseline. No start is this close so parallax of the stars wanted quite some time after both Brahe and Galileo to be measured.
Yet Brahe mostly forgotten today by the fans of Galileo and why is best exemplified by the “I love fucking Science” crowd. Galileo had some new but not world changing knowledge combined with self-promotion and the ability to show off at parties. Brahe stayed up all night doing the hard work of measure and then finding a theory to match the measurements while not taking a flier on ideas that required a world that defied the observations.
Beyond defending Tycho Brahe’s achievements and the importance of observation and experiment I’m not sure why this is such a big thing for me to damn near kneejerk present when Galileo comes up. We know what we know and both men’s work is superseded.
Perhaps I’d just rather make the “right” people heroes. Yes, Brahe was very flawed and his observations were truly fulfilled by Kepler. But for our generation and later Sagan did a lot of good work bringing Kepler to the popular mind while slighting Brahe.