Continuing Debate with Mark Stahlman and John Médaille and Others (sequel I)

1) New blog on the kid : Chris Ferrara the Conspirator, 2) HGL's F.B. writings : Debate with John Médaille on Geocentrism, 3) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Getting Back to Tom Trinko on Geocentric Satellites and Some Other Things, Especially Whether Literal Belief is Protestant, 4) With David Palm and Sungenis, 5) With David Palm, Sungenis, Robert Bennet and Rick DeLano, 6) Christopher Ferrara Bumps In And I Get Angry, 7) Aftermath of the Quarrel, 8) Diatribe with Robert Bennett (Two Teas), 9) HGL's F.B. writings : Continuing Debate with Mark Stahlman and John Médaille and Others (sequel I), 10) Continuing Debate with Mark Stahlman and John Médaille and Others (sequel II), 11) Where I Get a Dislike to Mark Stahlman

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Btw, your Father made a foreword to the book on Kepler, but it was really from 1804.

Mark Stahlman
(who was MS in previous part)

Yes -- and the book on Solar and Planetary Longitudes was *all* his own (unless we're counting the IBM computer that he used, plus some help from Owen Gingerich.)

He got his PhD at Brown under Otto Neugebauer and taught at MIT, Harvard and Univ. of Wisconsin . . .

The Exact Sciences in Antiquity Paperback – June 1, 1969
by O. Neugebauer (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Exact-Sciences-Antiquity-O-Neugebauer/dp/0486223329/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426265372&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=otto+neugebower

William D. Stahlman . . .

STAHLMAN and Related Family History
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=stahlmanmaster&id=I01686

[This is where I reckon he renounced anonymity in the mirror of dialogue on my blogs.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Ha, if your father calculated solar and planetary longitudes, he was in a series which includes a sequence like:

Ptolemy (Geocentric)
Copernicus (Heliocentric)
Tycho Brahe (Geocentric)
Kepler (Heliocentric)
Riccioli (Geocentric)

Each more exact than predecessor, but the factor of "cosmological choice" has nothing to do with it, since it goes zig zag rather than any progression.

Mark Stahlman

So, you can add Stahlman (Heliocentric) . . . <g>

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Of course I do!

As to your Godfather, I started looking at his book.

He seems to be seriously overestimating the Theological value of Galileo.

Letter to Christiane of Pisa is not a pretty work. If prosecutors had concentrated on that, he might have landed on the stake or had sth to abjure already in first trial.

Mark Stahlman

Giorgio was a "modern" man (i.e. Italian Communist Party) who finished his life with a *very* strange counter-mythology book -- Hamlet's Mill . . .

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time Hardcover – November 1, 1969
by Giorgio de Santillana (Author), Hertha von Dechend (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Hamlets-Mill-Essay-Myth-Frame/dp/0876450087/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1426266353&sr=8-3&keywords=hamlet%27s+mill

And, if you are interested, I have PDF scans of Giorgio's collected essays (that I'd be glad to send you) . . .

Reflections on men and ideas. Paperback – 1968
by Giorgio De Santillana (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Reflections-men-ideas-Giorgio-Santillana/dp/B0048FAON6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426266590&sr=8-1&keywords=reflections+on+man+giorgio

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Pdf for whole collection or essay by essay?

In latter case, I would like his essays if extant on St Robert Bellarmine (having done Crime of Galileo it would be one man to reflect one), St Thomas Aquinas, and to take two other turns : Hercules and Engelbert Dollfuss.

In case they lack, any of above, I'd be glad to publish a correspondence with you starting with your supplying the lacuna.

Here is my correspondence blog btw:

http://ppt.li/kw

[long url :

Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com ]

Mark Stahlman

What I have is the whole book -- 9 scans (each of the first 8 around 25MB), broken as such by the fellow doing the scanning . . .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Ah, ok!

Btw, <g> = <grin> right?

Mark Stahlman

Yup -- pre-emoticon (i.e. I started sending public emails circa 1992) . . .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I was reflecting and remembered sth like that.

Mark Stahlman

PM (private message) me your email and I'll send you the Google Docs link to the "Reflection on Men and Ideas" scans . . .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Btw, I have started reading Giorgio.

He considered astronomy was till lately mythical.

I consider, as stars are far off objects we study with one sense only, astronomy is still necessarily so.

What was it Aragorn replied after being challenged on Imladris and Lothlorien?

"Earth and heaven above it are in themselves a mighty theme of myth" or sth like that?

Mark Stahlman

Giorgio's Hamlet's Mill is an attempt to illustrate that MYTH is actually often a "scientific" description of our sensory observations about the HEAVENS (thus undercutting those like Joseph Campbell's and Carl Jung's misuse of *mythology* and reportedly leading to major problems getting it published) . . .

Hans-Georg Lundahl

On Helios driving a chariot, I agree it is scientific.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Flat Earth theories - Common Sense or Solar Mythology?
http://filolohika.blogspot.fr/2014/12/flat-earth-theories-common-sense-or.html

[But not on earth being flat, adding this for readers who might be slower than Mark Stahlman.]

I added next day

I started reading sent pdfs - now, Galileo stood for a more ancient tradition than St Robert?

I am getting a bit queezy, having some bad vibes, if you see what I mean, about his judgement, but will not make premature judgements on it. However, that part I think erroneous.

Especially if "Ancient Tradition" = tradition of Pagan Greek Philosophers.

Some of their traditions were accepted as consentaneous to Catholic tradition. Some weren't, and going back to them was not being traditional in the Catholic sense.

In Sweden the Odinist tradition probably and the Nerthus tradition nearly certainly were older than the Christian one : but if a Swede worships Odin, he is not a trad, but a reactionary or restaurationist, which is sth else.

And when I say Odinist tradition was probably older, I mean I don't know when Odinids started being Odinists, nor when the first Cristian came to Sweden, if it was St Ansgar or earlier.

Mark Stahlman

Thanks -- I have *zero* commitment to Giorgio's views on any of this (or, for that matter, Norbert's) -- unlike McLuhan, they were *not* Christians (although Giorgio was presumably baptized), so their PAGAN sympathies are likely to be flapping-in-the-wind (as indeed they are in Hamlet's Mill) . . . <g>

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The preview of Hamlet's Mill was basically giving the Hamlet story as I knew it from Saxo, as far as I read.

Now, this story is on one point giving a dialogue in which Hamlet gives clever answers about natural phenomena, and I wonder if the title is not from that dialogue.

There is nothing specifically Pagan about it, except for its participants presumably being Pagans (unless they were Arians or perhaps Easter Rite Christians if that came to Nordic countries before the Viking age flourishing of Odinism).

There is nothing clearly mythological about Hamlet either : he's as historical as Agamemnon and King Arthur and far less involved in supernatural stuff, where authors of Iliad or tragedies may have gotten it wrong, what it was about by their Paganism.

That said, I have some sympathy for Pagans, in the sense that they for instance had the good sense to become Christians many of them when hearing the Gospel. Especially if it was supported by miracles.

Mark Stahlman

Belloc was a *mentor* to McLuhan (who actually joined the Distributist League in London and went to Chesterton speeches) and I befriended John Médaille because he is also a Catholic writing about Distributism (the application of which to our current ROBO-economics I seriously doubt), so I just happened to see this exchange fly by on my Newsfeed - plus John is still associated with the University of Dallas, where Eric McLuhan got his PhD on James Joyce . . . <g>

The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake Hardcover – May 16, 1997
by Eric McLuhan (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Role-Thunder-Finnegans-Wake/dp/0802009239/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426342173&sr=8-1&keywords=eric+mcluhan

Yes, of course, none of those involved in these discussions over the past few centuries is *actually* PAGAN -- however, their "sympathies" often tend in that general direction, as Belloc suggested they would.

It took McLuhan to begin to offer a *formal* causal explanation (with some help from UofD's Fritz Wilhelmsen) for why the "moderns" would aggressively *retrieve* the pre-Socratics (with the help of some *hallucinogens* and a little ritualized initiation behavior, as was the case with Nietzsche and Steiner etc) . . . !!

By Hilaire Belloc The Great Heresies and Survivals and New Arrivals [Paperback] Paperback – November 2, 2012
by Hilaire Belloc (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Hilaire-Heresies-Survivals-Arrivals-Paperback/dp/B00RWST9PA/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1426341953&sr=8-6&keywords=belloc+survivals

Hans-Georg Lundahl

John Médaille, I am not sure if you asked Mark Stahlman to comment here or he found his way here himself, but I think you also could continue the dialogue with someone other than the other: meteorologists.

Ask them:

• a whether rotating cosmos or Earth rotating other way makes any difference whatsoever as to prediction of Equatorial Oceanic Streams or Equatorial West Winds
• how much these need precise prediction anyway
• and last but not least, how much the rest of their predictions are based on astronomy, except the item already mentioned.

John Médaille

Paganism isn't "wrong"; It is just incomplete, and subject to some degeneration (as are all religions, including the Catholic religion.) But the Church does recognize itself as "semper reformanda", Always in need of reform.

It makes a big difference whether the earth is stationary. Weather is an obvious example of turbulent flow. The motive power is the rotation of the solid earth, which causes flows in the more fluid atmosphere and oceans. To say the Earth is stationary and the oceans and atmosphere is moving due to astronomical influences is nonsense. And why is the Earth stationary, when we can see all the other planets revolving? What kind of mechanics would make an exception for this planet?

And why? Why does this question even come up? Is it because of something in the Bible?

My old philosophy professor, Fritz Wilhelmsen, and McLuhan were great friends, and Fritz even wrote two books on those themes. I meet McLuhan once when he came to UD at Fritz's invitation.

Mark Stahlman

Do the GEO-CENTRISTS "deny" that the Earth revolves on its axis? I thought this was about the *centrality* of the Earth in Creation, which, of course, is rather basic to the Bible . . . !!

What I should have said (instead of PAGAN "sympathies") was simply Belloc's term of NEO-PAGAN, which is the crucial "new arrival" and a HERESY (i.e. wrong) . . . <g>

TL

What I hear Geocentrists continually repeat is that if one only takes into account as yet undetected (but just you wait!) infinitely dense aethers and such, and if one makes all the computations with a triple-stationary earth, why then we've proven the earth does not move as well as physics-as-we-have-it has proven that it does move. But as best I can tell, the computations have not been made -- they're as alleged as the aethers.

They also seem to fall into two camps. The silly camp appeals to relativity to claim the earth is the center of the universe. But that doesn't work because relativity says there is no "center" in the first place. The smarter but sillier camp caught onto this, and so it denies relativity, saying that the things we use every day that we THINK work because of relativistic effects don't really work the way we think they do. They work for some other reason (see above).

As to why the earth is stationary when we can see all the other planets moving -- according to the self-styled Catholic Traditionalists, it is because the earth really is special -- it is fitting the place where God became Man is the unmoving center of creation. It is fitting because we say so, and we're confirmed in this because the Bible says it actually IS so. Just read it. So why do you hate Catholic Tradition? Are you a Catholic or a Modernist Physical Relativist John?

Which is why I dislike arguments from fittingness and most all of speculative theology.

John Médaille

While technically the stationary earth and geocentrism are different, in practice a rotating earth makes geocentrism absurd even to the geocentrist: you have the earth's movement's added to the sky's movements, and things get a little...er....complex.

MD

Damn literalists. We are the center because we are conscious, because of the Incarnation, but not because of the celestial mechanics or location. When we find someone else to talk to, we may have to think about that, but by thinking about what 'center' means - may we both be! - not denying the astronomy.

God does not care for rarity, centrality, size, or physical distinction, any more than he cares for numbers ending in a lot of zeros.

TL

Complex doesn't mean absurd; if you just do the computations...

And how do you know what God cares for?

John Médaille

" Complex doesn't mean absurd;" It does when there is a simpler explanation.

GNB

Sheesh! No wonder so many people deny evolution and human-caused climate change!

TL

Ockham, the Father of Nominalism and all Modernist Philosophy? Heretic!

John Médaille

You're cutting it close.

TL

It is all an act...

Mark Stahlman

William of Ockham was a "member" of a HERETIC end-of-the-world group of "Spiritual Franciscans" (derived, in part, from the Cathars), who were known as "Michaelists" (and his "razor" doesn't belong in this discussion) . . .

The Nature and the Effect of the Heresy of the Fraticelli Paperback – August 1, 2008
by Decima L. Douie (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Effect-Heresy-Fraticelli/dp/1597404977/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426418886&sr=8-1&keywords=nature+heresy+fraticelli

[nevertheless, it was the razor which brought him in at all]