25 thoughts on “Giordano Bruno”

  1. This is not surprising, since Seth MacFarlane and Brannon Braga are actively in the series.

    Braga has said he wants to use Cosmos to refute “junk science,” which is ironic, since he was personally responsible for injecting the worst sort of junk science into Star Trek: The Next Generation.

    To MacFarlane and Braga, “promoting science” is more or less synonymous with “promoting atheism” (as both will admit, in their more candid moments). But it doesn’t appear either knows much science.

  2. Tyson, obviously, knows a lot about science but not much about history.

    He keeps repeating his mantra that private enterprise can never lead in space exploration because private enterprise has never led in exploration. His one data point in support of that claim is that Columbus was funded by the Spanish government. Except that’s a myth — the Spanish crown was broke at the time, and Columbus was funded by private bankers.

    Tyson is pushing a space policy (doubling NASA’s budget) that won’t fly politically and apparently thinks trashing the private sector will help him sell it, so I suspect this myth will also show up in Cosmos at some point.

  3. My “atheist” friends on FB are crowing that Tyson took a shot at Fox viewers in an interview preceding his (Fox) show…something along the lines he’s glad the show is on Fox because so many of its viewers need to see it. Truth?

    1. Then he doesn’t understand how the Fox subsidiaries are managed. Also, wasn’t just the debut episode on all the Fox stations? Think it is regularly shown on NatGeo.

  4. This reminds me of a story that my history professor told me. He said that Galileo wasn’t told not to teach heliocentrism, it was that he was told not to say it is a fact. Not to side with the Church on this case, but modern scientists have the story wrong. While Galileo was a genius, he was also a bit of a douche. He had friends at the Vatican, it was never a schism like we’re told.

    I wonder also if Tyson and Braga know the history of Boltzmann, who was mocked for his ideas on statistical mechanics so badly that he committed suicide. They used to mock his high voice. Scientists are people who create ideals that are often at odds with reality. Money and their egos are at stake.

    This is just like the Church of Global Warming and The Church of Nutrition.

  5. The Bruno cartoon material was a waste of time in any case. Sagan covered the religious suppression of science in the original with a bit more style. It’s obvious this was from McFarland’s mind, because it has all the subtlety of a Family Guy episode.

  6. He had friends at the Vatican.

    Including the Pope, who was his patron — until Galileo decided to ridicule him in his book.

    That never ends well, even today. In any institution.

    1. I agree. People are people and institutions go beyond politics and religions, as they are run by people. I think the lesson we need to learn is that institutions and people are or can be corrupt. To believe science is somehow objective and noble is to become a True Believer.

      1. Unfortunately, IMHO, science has become a victim of its own success. The bounty of science is all around us 24/7. Unlike the Church of Old, it has delivered actual miracles witnessed firsthand by everyone on Earth. Is it any wonder the attendant influence has attracted people with a yen for power, and chips on their shoulders?

        The corollary to Lord Acton’s admonition, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is “Power tends to attract the corruptible.” Unless the public wises up to when they are being played, we are in real danger, I think, of resurrecting the Church of Old with a new version, and an attendant Holy Priesthood of mediocrities who can babble in technoese, but have no other real talent.

  7. Brannon Braga: “Climate Change might result in the increase of Racisticon Particles that can disrupt Subspace. This would mean the presence of larger KKK space gobbledygook anomalies. And racism is bad m’kay…”

  8. I’ll agree in general with most comments posted, tho’ the program did describe Bruno’s ideas as imagination & Galileo’s as observational science. I have no idea who the “behind the scenes” players are in this series so am unfamiliar with the many accusations being made. Remember, the original was made just abour two generations ago and, like it or not, that times general population were better educated on most anything observable/quantifiable than today’s. I was about age 40 then, knew most of what Sagan covered, yet never felt talked down to. This iteration? Maybe it’s a precursor to the Presidents “My Brothers Keeper” initiative.

  9. On another note, what is bothersome to me is the melding of real images with CGI images without any identification of such. So, for example, those who are unaware may think we actually imaged clouds cascading into Jupiter’s red spot from a POV *below* the cloud tops. And the ultimate sin: about halfway through the show, (when we return to earth), they animated the earth rotating from east to west!

    1. Well I think the Earth rotating sfx was the camera moving orbiting west to east and not the earth Rotating the night shadow was going east to west.
      Now dunno Neil Degrass Tyson dunno dosen’t strike me as particularly brilliant as much as some particular quarters of the internet makes him out to be (People swooning over the Picture of Tyson, Nye and Obama). He smart don’t get me wrong but seems to be light on the math and more conceptional (so was Sagan) but don’t think he holds a Candle to Hawkin, Kip Thorne and several other physicist though suppose that not very fair. Comparing a Science communicator to some heavy weights of theoretical Physics/cosmology .

  10. On the Bruno thing – I didn’t watch the show (I just really don’t get NdGT; not putting him down, but he doesn’t do anything for me), but some 30-odd years ago I was taking a history of science class (antiquity through Galileo; took Newton through modern times later); the view that Bruno was persecuted for basically practicing magic and not really being a scientist at all was presented as if it were quite new. So I’m willing to cut the new Cosmos a little slack. But only a little; at least they should have talked about Bruno’s completely-nonscientific heresies too.

  11. I’ve met Neil numerous times at ISDC’s and have found him to be witty and and a great presenter. He may not agree with us New Space folks, but he’s a space geek just like the rest of us.

    I am not very worried about the “only government” space meme any more. It is a meme that is about to NOT survive its contact with the reality of the next decade.

    1. Well said, Dale. That’s why I don’t care if SLS gets funded. The cost savings from commercial space will become so apparent that it will become the predominant means of producing new launchers/spacecraft going forward. This will happen whether the SLS gets funded/built or not.

      Bob Clark

  12. Did “Cosmos” Pick the Wrong Hero?

    Yes.

    Dr. Sagan picked the correct hero in his original series: my namesake.

  13. You idiots are such scientific wimps. That article is complete tripe. Bruno was the exact right choice, he argued with idiots like you to defend his thesis, and he was right, before Galileo. You idiots just argue.

    It’s just delicious that you ignore the evidence, don’t understand the reasoning and are completely wrong.

    Cake, meet icing.

          1. Sure it is. Belief is based on either something you sensed, were taught, read in a book, or were told. It’s based on evidence. There is no such thing as ‘no evidence’.

            Faith is a pseudoscientific belief. QED.

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