Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[1001001]

Fantastic!

I am reminded that this series is not for us.

Watching my 11 year old son riveted to the screen makes me so proud and so grateful.

It's for him, and kids like him.

And for those of us who feel like kids again when we watch.

Excellent point.

 

[Amaris]

Did you see my post where I said they weren't dinosaurs, but synapsids? They were in the right period. It's just that we've been brainwashed into assuming all prehistoric animals that look even vaguely reptilian are dinosaurs, even though there have been many that weren't.

I didn't see that post, no.

And for those of us who feel like kids again when we watch.

Excellent point.

I thought so.

 

[Timewalker]

Um, no. You must've got that off a silly TV show. Bruno wasn't executed for having a "different worldview", he was executed for heresy and blasphemy. His "worldview" was pretty irrelevant to his trial, in which he was charged with speaking against the Catholic Church and its priests, dealing in magic, the occult, and reading omens, preaching against the divinity of Christ, the Virgin Mary, transubstantiation, mass, and the Holy Trinity, and teaching reincarnation and that souls can inhabit beasts. He was burned at the stake, his soul cast into oblivion, and his remains dumped in a river.

It wasn't his internal beliefs that got him killed, it was his religious treason and trouble making. He was sold out and accused by a Venetian nobleman in a very liberal city teaming with Muslims, Jews, Protestants. He was sold out because he had promised to teach some memorization tricks to the nobleman and then tried to leave before he'd taught much of anything, so the nobleman was enraged and locked Bruno in the attic and threatened him with dire consequences if he didn't continue his lessons. Bruno refused, so the nobleman (from a long family of doges of Venice) penned an angry letter to the Inquisition, saying:

I, Zuane Mocenigo, report by obligation of my conscience and order of my confessor that I have heard Giordano Bruno of Nola say, while conversing in my home: that it is a great blasphemy for Catholics to say that break transmutes into flesh, that he is an enemy to the Mass, that no religion pleases him, that Christ is a wretch, and that if he did such wretched work as deluding the people, he could easily have predicted that he would be hanged, that God has no distinction of persons, as this would constitute an imperfection in God, that the world is eternal and that there are infinite worlds, because he says that he wants to do what he is able to do, that Christ performed apparent miracles and was a magician, and likewise the apostles, and he had a mind to do as much as they and more, that Christ showed reluctance to die, and fled death as long as he could, that there is no punishment of sins, and that the souls created by nature pass from one animal, and that just as brute animals are born by spontaneous generation, so are human beings when they are born again after a flood.

He revealed plans to make himself the head of a new sect under the name of a new philosophy. He said that the Virgin could not have given birth, that our Catholic faith is full of blasphemies against God, that friars should have neither the right to debate nor incomes, because they pollute the world and are all asses, that our opinions are the teaching of asses, that we have no proof that our faith finds merit with God, and that to lead a good life it is enough to do to others as we would have them do to us, and that he laughs at all the other sins, and he marvels that God can bear such heresies from Catholics. He says he wants to tend to the art of divination, and draw the whole world behind him, that Saint Thomas and all the doctors of the Church know nothing in comparison with him, and he would so enlighten all the best theologians in the world that they would have not a word to say to him.

The angry letter went for several pages. That got Bruno picked up by the Inquisition in Venice, where he recanted and begged forgiveness, which was granted. But then the Roman Inquisition requested his extradition. Normally Venice denied all such requests, and Rome's interest was in Bruno's German contacts, which could spell serious trouble in a period of revolution and religious war, and there's Bruno, apparently trying to start a new powerful revolutionary sect set against the Catholic faith, and a sect that must've seemed the work of Satan, at that.

Meanwhile, back in the modern world, the University named after Cardinal Bellarmine, who convicted Bruno of blasphemy and heresy, went on to win the 2011 NCAA men's division II basketball championship! That makes it pretty obvious which side God is on. One guy gets burned to death and dumped in a river. The other guy has his team cut down the nets.

Your source for the above information? I'd be fascinated to know why God's opinion on basketball is relevant here, too.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I'm pretty sure he's just wants to have arguments with people to amuse himself.

 

[tomalak301]

I liked last night's episode, but I almost think I'm more fascinated by the space stuff rather than the Evolution/Natural Selection. I would love it if he went deeper into the Cosmic string from last week because that was awesome. Not saying the Evolution stuff was not awesome, but I almost feel like I need to see the episode again because I felt a little confused with him jumping from Dogs to Eyes to the Hall of Extinction. I almost get the sense a subject will only last for one episode and then we move on to a new subject. I almost wish they spent two episodes on certain thing, so things don't feel as rushed.

 

[Timewalker]

If this one follows the pattern of episodes from the original, some topics will have additional coverage in later episodes.

 

[Amaris]

I liked last night's episode, but I almost think I'm more fascinated by the space stuff rather than the Evolution/Natural Selection. I would love it if he went deeper into the Cosmic string from last week because that was awesome. Not saying the Evolution stuff was not awesome, but I almost feel like I need to see the episode again because I felt a little confused with him jumping from Dogs to Eyes to the Hall of Extinction. I almost get the sense a subject will only last for one episode and then we move on to a new subject. I almost wish they spent two episodes on certain thing, so things don't feel as rushed.

I'm figuring he will. The first episode was an overview, because some of the quick snippets I saw from that have ended up in this episode, so I expect us to come back to the cosmic string question.

 

[gturner]

Your source for the above information? I'd be fascinated to know why God's opinion on basketball is relevant here, too.

Google books. Perhaps someone involved in the production of "Cosmos" should have read a book about Giordano Bruno before holding him up as martyr for science, but reading a book would be asking too much of the production crew.

The Catholic Church and scientists had some difficulties for a while, yet it took three or four hundred years after scientists feared the wrath of the Catholic Church for someone to suggest that Bruno was a persecuted scientist. Don't you think some of the scientists who feared the Catholic Church back in the day, who had experience with religious persecution of scientists, would've advanced Bruno as an example of such religious persecution if that was a viable take on Bruno's story?

Yet they didn't make such a claim, nor did anyone for hundreds of years. Almost nobody had ever thought that Bruno's story somehow related to science or freedom until someone advanced him as an example of the evil backwards ways of Catholic papists during the sweeping but profitable paranoia of Willian Randolph Hearst's Spanish American War hype.

But obviously period scientists who navigated the religious and scientific waters of that day, like Descartes, Cavendish, Huygens, Newton, Mersenne, and Galileo, were blind to the obvious. It took the investigative skills of Brannon Braga and Seth MacFarlane to ferret out the truth.

And God's opinion on basketball is not only relevant, it is controlling. As is commonly known, Kentucky coaches often call him for advice, and that call is local. There's a reason God chose to put a University named after Cardinal Bellarmine in his own backyard. Meanwhile, the college of Bruno remains nothing more than an online pretend school, probably run out of a kitchen at a Waffle House, because in the preceding four hundred years no actual scientist ever thought of Bruno as an example of religious persecution of scientists. It took bad sci-fi and comedy writers to come up with that angle.

And now millions of people have bought on to it, not realizing that their newly formed inside view into history is about as valid as Beavis and Butthead.

 

[Amaris]

Your source for the above information? I'd be fascinated to know why God's opinion on basketball is relevant here, too.

Google books. Perhaps someone involved in the production of "Cosmos" should have read a book about Giordano Bruno before holding him up as martyr for science, but reading a book would be asking too much of the production crew.

The Catholic Church and scientists had some difficulties for a while, yet it took three or four hundred years after scientists feared the wrath of the Catholic Church for someone to suggest that Bruno was a persecuted scientist. Don't you think some of the scientists who feared the Catholic Church back in the day, who had experience with religious persecution of scientists, would've advanced Bruno as an example of such religious persecution if that was a viable take on Bruno's story?

Yet they didn't make such a claim, nor did anyone for hundreds of years. Almost nobody had ever thought that Bruno's story somehow related to science or freedom until someone advanced him as an example of the evil backwards ways of Catholic papists during the sweeping but profitable paranoia of Willian Randolph Hearst's Spanish American War hype.

But obviously period scientists who navigated the religious and scientific waters of that day, like Descartes, Cavendish, Huygens, Newton, Mersenne, and Galileo, were blind to the obvious. It took the investigative skills of Brannon Braga and Seth MacFarlane to ferret out the truth.

And God's opinion on basketball is not only relevant, it is controlling. As is commonly known, Kentucky coaches often call him for advice, and that call is local. There's a reason God chose to put a University named after Cardinal Bellarmine in his own backyard. Meanwhile, the college of Bruno remains nothing more than an online pretend school, probably run out of a kitchen at a Waffle House, because in the preceding four hundred years no actual scientist ever thought of Bruno as an example of religious persecution of scientists. It took bad sci-fi and comedy writers to come up with that angle.

And now millions of people have bought on to it, not realizing that their newly formed inside view into history is about as valid as Beavis and Butthead.

There is nothing of value, at all, in the content of your post. You didn't address the poster, or the topic. It's nothing more than a rambling mess, and you know better than that. If you don't want to discuss the topic, don't, but spamming up the forum with nonsensical posts is petty.

 

[gturner]

So you agree with Bruno's position that human souls can end up in animals like beavers and squirrels - because science?

The reason scientists didn't hold up Bruno as an example of anything (nor did anyone else) is that there's no coherent story that you can extract from him or his fate. At most you can conclude that Catholics are the agents on the anti-Christ and that all their teaching are blasphemous, but other than that the whole Bruno line is a wet mess of less-crazy people confronting a really crazy person who could perhaps become dangerous enough to get a couple million people killed, unless he was just a nut. It seems Cardinal Bellarmine was desperately trying to get Bruno to cop to the harmless nut plea, but Bruno refused to go for it.

 

[Amaris]

So you agree with Bruno's position that human souls can end up in animals like beavers and squirrels - because science?

The reason scientists didn't hold up Bruno as an example of anything (nor did anyone else) is that there's no coherent story that you can extract from him or his fate. At most you can conclude that Catholics are the agents on the anti-Christ and that all their teaching are blasphemous, but other than that the whole Bruno line is a wet mess of less-crazy people confronting a really crazy person who could perhaps become dangerous enough to get a couple million people killed, unless he was just a nut. It seems Cardinal Bellarmine was desperately trying to get Bruno to cop to the harmless nut plea, but Bruno refused to go for it.

Bruno wasn't a scientist. This has been said already. You're purposely being obtuse.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Perhaps someone involved in the production of "Cosmos" should have read a book about Giordano Bruno before holding him up as martyr for science,

And now millions of people have bought on to it, not realizing that their newly formed inside view into history is about as valid as Beavis and Butthead.

He wasn't martyred for science. It's quite clear given the fact that Tyson said he was "no scientist." No one else here (let alone these phantom "millions of people") is calling Bruno a scientist. Apparently the only one who has "bought on to it [sic]" is yourself. I'm not sure why, though, since it's been pointed out several times that Bruno was mentioned not as a scientist, but as a free thinker - one who just happened to make "a lucky guess", as Tyson put it. As someone who is touting a rigorous approach to science and critical thinking, shouldn't this new information adjust your conclusion just a tad?

 

[Tulin]

It's as bad as Sagan giving any airtime to the ridiculous Drake Equation, which if extended can allow you to exactly calculate the number of intelligent beings in the universe who watch inter-racial midget porn and prefer Hellman's to Miracle Whip - because it's science.

Geez.

Don't ever read the "Foundation" books then.

Psychohistory will make your head explode!

 

[Timewalker]

Your source for the above information? I'd be fascinated to know why God's opinion on basketball is relevant here, too.

Google books. Perhaps someone involved in the production of "Cosmos" should have read a book about Giordano Bruno before holding him up as martyr for science, but reading a book would be asking too much of the production crew.

Now how did I know you'd come back with a variation on "Google it yourself"?

No, fellow forum member. YOU made an outlandish claim of factual information - several, actually - so it's up to YOU to say where you got your information. That's basic courtesy for discussion forums. Please provide either the authors/titles of the books or articles where you got this information, or links to your online sources. I'd like to check these out for myself. What books did YOU read that you think the Cosmos writers should have read?

And God's opinion on basketball is not only relevant, it is controlling. As is commonly known, Kentucky coaches often call him for advice, and that call is local. There's a reason God chose to put a University named after Cardinal Bellarmine in his own backyard. Meanwhile, the college of Bruno remains nothing more than an online pretend school, probably run out of a kitchen at a Waffle House, because in the preceding four hundred years no actual scientist ever thought of Bruno as an example of religious persecution of scientists. It took bad sci-fi and comedy writers to come up with that angle.

There were no SF/comedy writers involved in writing the original Cosmos series back in 1979/1980. Carl Sagan mentioned Giordano Bruno back then, which is how I first learned of him, and why I did my own reading about him after that. And while Sagan was a science fiction fan - he read Edgar Rice Burroughs books when he was a child, and he was acquainted with some of the most well-known SF writers, including Isaac Asimov - he NEVER let that interfere with asking the tough scientific questions.

You have still not offered any coherent explanation about God and basketball. And since I'm atheist and have zero interest in basketball, this explanation needs to be especially convincing.

 

[davejames]

For what it's worth, one of the co-writers (a research associate with the Musueum of Natural History) makes a strong defense of the use of Bruno in the first episode here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/o...ano-bruno-response-steven-soter/#.UyhpMoWmUfc
and another reply here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/03/16/battle-cosmos-round-3/#.Uyhp6oWmUfd

 

[gturner]

Now how did I know you'd come back with a variation on "Google it yourself"?

No, fellow forum member. YOU made an outlandish claim of factual information - several, actually - so it's up to YOU to say where you got your information. That's basic courtesy for discussion forums. Please provide either the authors/titles of the books or articles where you got this information, or links to your online sources. I'd like to check these out for myself. What books did YOU read that you think the Cosmos writers should have read?

Giordano Bruno, Philosopher/Heretic.

You could also go with Giordano Bruno, the Forgotten Philosopher, which goes on to say:

While in England Bruno had a personal audience with Queen Elizabeth. He wrote of her in the superlative fashion of
the time calling her diva, Protestant Ruler, sacred, divine, the very words he used for His Most Christian Majesty
and Head of The Holy Roman Empire. This was treasured against him when he was later brought to trial as an
atheist, an infidel and a heretic. Queen Elizabeth did not think highly of Bruno. She thought him as wild, radical,
subversive and dangerous.

It's like the man was running around inspiring a pool on "who will kill Bruno?"

The UK Guardian even ran an article called Cosmos and Giordano Bruno: the problem with scientific heroes, which links to lots of other articles about why Cosmos screwed up with the pick.

If Bruno is an example of anything, it is 'philosophers that Galileo met, who applied for the same job that Galileo took, who were burned to death by the same Cardinal that tried Galileo, and who Galileo never once bothered to pen a single word about.' That's how important Bruno's story is, even to scientists who promoted a heliocentric solar system and suffered the attentions of the Church. I figure that Galileo is probably a better judge of someone he met himself than either Seth MacFarlane and Brannon Braga.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

You do realize that neither Braga nor MacFarlane wrote Cosmos, and had nothing to do with the content of the Bruno segment, right? That'd be Ann Druyan and Steven Soter - who were co-writers of the original Cosmos.

 

[Timewalker]

Now how did I know you'd come back with a variation on "Google it yourself"?

No, fellow forum member. YOU made an outlandish claim of factual information - several, actually - so it's up to YOU to say where you got your information. That's basic courtesy for discussion forums. Please provide either the authors/titles of the books or articles where you got this information, or links to your online sources. I'd like to check these out for myself. What books did YOU read that you think the Cosmos writers should have read?

Giordano Bruno, Philosopher/Heretic.

You could also go with Giordano Bruno, the Forgotten Philosopher, which goes on to say:

While in England Bruno had a personal audience with Queen Elizabeth. He wrote of her in the superlative fashion of
the time calling her diva, Protestant Ruler, sacred, divine, the very words he used for His Most Christian Majesty
and Head of The Holy Roman Empire. This was treasured against him when he was later brought to trial as an
atheist, an infidel and a heretic. Queen Elizabeth did not think highly of Bruno. She thought him as wild, radical,
subversive and dangerous.

It's like the man was running around inspiring a pool on "who will kill Bruno?"

The UK Guardian even ran an article called Cosmos and Giordano Bruno: the problem with scientific heroes, which links to lots of other articles about why Cosmos screwed up with the pick.

If Bruno is an example of anything, it is 'philosophers that Galileo met, who applied for the same job that Galileo took, who were burned to death by the same Cardinal that tried Galileo, and who Galileo never once bothered to pen a single word about.' That's how important Bruno's story is, even to scientists who promoted a heliocentric solar system and suffered the attentions of the Church. I figure that Galileo is probably a better judge of someone he met himself than either Seth MacFarlane and Brannon Braga.

Thank you for the links. I will check them out.

But please stop criticizing Braga and MacFarlane. They didn't write this version of Cosmos, nor did they write the original Cosmos series that was on TV over 30 years ago.

 

[RoJoHen]

Fantastic!

I am reminded that this series is not for us.

Watching my 11 year old son riveted to the screen makes me so proud and so grateful.

It's for him, and kids like him.

And for those of us who feel like kids again when we watch.

Dammit, now I need to watch. I keep forgetting that this is on. I want to feel like a kid and get excited about space and science and things!

 

[gturner]

For what it's worth, one of the co-writers (a research associate with the Musueum of Natural History) makes a strong defense of the use of Bruno in the first episode here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/o...ano-bruno-response-steven-soter/#.UyhpMoWmUfc
and another reply here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/03/16/battle-cosmos-round-3/#.Uyhp6oWmUfd

Thanks. Those articles also have some very good discussions down in the comments, going into more depth about much of what we're bouncing back and forth here.