In response to Bree and your statement about how more details lead to more of a gray area, I agree with you. I believe Eli said earlier today that questions will always lead to more questions; I interpreted that as the more we learn about a subject, we will always try to explore it in a greater depth.
Like Tilly, I was confused as to what the authorities were, but after reading the posts, the idea that the authority was the "experts" on the subjects makes sense to me. If you are confused, look at the left page of 54 and substitute authorities with experts and authority with expertise.
Despite his attempt (or success) to disprove Aristotle, Galileo thought empirically. He based his theories on personal observation and experience, although in some cases he believed that "we must not resort to experiments for settling such questions" (55). But that is only when it would be impossible to prove through experiments. When Sarsi includes that "what ever else conduces to it", meaning whatever other circumstances we cannot know or recreate. (55).
I was wondering if we could further discuss how we know what we know? Is empirical knowledge true, or inaccurate because it is from a human, who experience differently than others?
My favorite part of this reading was on the very first page. and yes, I did read the whole thing, I just think that the story about the little birdie sums up the whole experience question very nicely.
Galileo argues that "the less people know and understand about them, the more tentatively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new". In the bird story, he explains how the man who doesn’t know any other sound besides that of his birds learns and examines the other noises by traveling around and finding them for himself. He learns from experience, like Aristotle. Galileo applies this to his theories by not believing things that people tell him automatically, rather he goes out and learns about them for himself, and teaches himself.
And I am with Tilly about having trouble drawing connections between the authorities and what Galileo is trying to say in the article... I understand Knaideface’s point about about humans having authority over nature, but I have to disagree. I believe that humans can manipulate nature and try to get it to do what we want, but ultimately nature always wins... we are part of nature, G-d.
I believe we, as ordinary people, don’t really know what we know. We believe we know what we know, and we usually take it as truth, but we don’t go out and test or experience everything we are told. Yes, we may question and argue different teachings, but still we accept a majority of things we are told without question.
Aristotle said forms and matters are inseparable. But I totally agree with Galileo's suggestion that some 'forms' only exists in our mind. Let me ask a question; Is lemon yellow? But think about it; when we see a lemon, we can see the yellow color because lemon's surface only can reflect the certain color wave, and our eyes perceive the color wave as yellow. Maybe Lemon does not have the aspect of yellowness. Maybe it's only our mind thinking it is yellow, deceiving ourselves. Now I ask again. Is Lemon yellow?
I think in order to know what we know, a sense of belief works on it. We do not know the 'true color' of lemon. Yellow is the only color that is allowed to us to perceive. Repeated experiences of lemon's yellowness led us to believe lemon is yellow, and nothing else.
and I think it is rather impertinent to say '...several reasoners would be worth more than one,' even to Galileo. It is true one wise and careful line of advice worth more than a bucketful of profanity, but saying by that, Galileo agreed with establishing social stratum, violating the valued virtue of our society, the equality of people. Is Galileo partially approving with the concept of authority? Maybe I’m just confused by today’s reading
I was SO confused by this reading! I understood the first part about the man being curious on what made music. But after that Galileo lost me big time. I can try to answer the question about experience.
I think that what he was saying is that, the poets before were not wrong because they did not experience what is, but they did their best to try to understand. And if they were able to experience what they wrote about, they then may realize that their reasoning was incorrect. So I think it is like innocent until proven guilty. They are not "wrong" until they themselves see the proof that they are wrong. Is that in any way answering this question?
Im totally gonna need help picking this apart tomorrow. If anyone could help me out that would be lovely.
Galileo and Aristotle are similar on the grounds that they believe strongly in the power of experience. Galileo thought that until you had physically witnessed something, it couldn’t be proven. He posited that everyone was liable to error and anyone’s answer to a question was unreliable as fact. He also thought that authority had no effect on the facts of nature. Galileo heavily disagreed with the idea of putting the authorities conclusions over your own experiences. "It is news to me that any man would actually put the testimony of writers ahead of what experience shows him."(p.54)
I agree with Tess on the “sassy” front, which is evident to me when Galileo sarcastically refers to the reader as "Your Excellency."
I found the story at the beginning very helpful in grasping the concepts because it gave me a very clear visual to work off of. Also, Kate's connection to CSW felt very relevant to me. Coming from a non-authoritarian environment has taught me to advocate for learning from personal experiences.
Also, I was confused as to whom this Sarsi figure was that Galileo frequently references to through out the reading.
Galileo has got some refreshing sass in his writing but even so i think this was the most difficult reading for me. Galileo went out of his way to prove that some aspects of objects exist only in our heads. At the same time he criticizes his fellow scientist for preforming thought experiments without testing them.
how does he reconcile these two ideas?
Well, I think Galileo's examples of things that only exist in our heads are more abstract ideas that humans 'invented' (for lack of a better word) terms for, things like color. As for his fellow scientist, his assumptions seem a little far-fetched and counter-intuitive in comparison. Basically, what I mean to say is the absract objects/terms Galileo describes are exactly that: abstract. they exist only in our minds as definitions, and you can't prove something is red beyond showing someone a rose and saying 'this is red'. if they ask 'why', the only answer is because thats the way it is. Whereas the cooking an egg in a sling business can actually be disproven.
Wow, Galileo is amazing. I know we are supposed to say our opinions like that, but I'm blown away. This was my favorite reading by far and definitely the easiest to understand. Everything he said just made so much sense.
I think I'll first address how I translated the "authority." I saw it as Galileo's way of saying humans have authority over Nature. "you will be able to find out just how much force human authority has upon the facts of Nature" (pg 54). It seems like experience plays a huge role in Galileo's theories. I found this quote about what Nature creates for us really interesting. "she employs means we could never think of without our senses and our experiences to teach them to us" (pg 53) I think that its saying without experience we can't even understand or learn what is going on in the world around us. I also found it fascinating how Galileo kind of disregarded his other people and their experiments and opinions. How he says Nature and God gave him "senses and my reason, why should I defer such great gifts to the errors of some man?" I really appreciated that he stuck to his own experiences and beliefs and reasons regardless of what other people think. It goes on to say "Why should I believe blindly and stupidly what I wish to believe, and subject the freedom of my intellect to someone else who is just as liable to error as I am?" He is saying that through his own experience his knowledge is better than what someone could tell him and him just accept and believe. So why bother just believing someone who could be telling you the wrong information instead of just experiencing it for yourself and knowing the true answer since you figured it out.
I have no idea if that made any sense at all, but I really enjoyed this article. I kind of have a million different things to say about different aspects of it and they are all getting jumbled in my head so I'm not sure if the few I spilled out, make sense but bare with me haha.
All times are GMT - 5 Hours Goto page Previous1, 2
Page 2 of 2
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
