Talk:Dynamics of the celestial spheres

Synthesis of published material

The extensive notes included with the sources and the tone of the article lead me to believe that this contains significant amounts of OR. I may try to clean up the tone myself, but the content needs help from an expert who might be able to determine which is attributable and which is WP:SYNTH. Graymornings_(talk) 04:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't be afraid to cut stuff that's fishy. There's too much bad stuff on WP. Leadwind (talk) 22:41, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Anachronisms in the article

One of the central problems with this article is its formulation of ancient and medieval discussions of dynamics in terms of mathematical equations. Such relationships were not used by any of the authors under discussion and to present their discussions in this form falsely leads the reader into the assumption that the logical conclusions one can readily draw from the mathematical formulations could be drawn from the ancient and medieval verbal expressions.

Furthermore, an article about ancient and medieval dynamics should be stated in terms of ancient and medieval concepts. The modern term "force", F in the article, was not clearly defined and generally accepted until sometime after Newton's articulation of the concept in his Principia; attributing that concept to Aristotle and his followers is profoundly misleading. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Major rewrite

I spent some time looking over this article with an intent to edit it and it soon became clear that mere editing won't suffice; a complete rewrite is called for. The central problems of the old version concern lack of balance; as it stood it failed to give the reader the broad overview of the topic expected in an encyclopedia.

• The article focused on what the principal editor sees as "a major anomaly for Aristotelian dynamics," which the article takes as the center of its discussion. Through this narrow focus, it granted excessive weight to the views of a few persons (especially John Philoponus and John Buridan) and viewed all other actors through their role in resolving this "anomaly".

• The article failed to give what the reader of an encyclopedia expects: a presentation of the variety of views of Celestial Dynamics during the period from antiquity to the renaissance when the celestial spheres were the dominant framework for understanding celestial motions.

• Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the article ignored an extensive body of recent secondary literature that investigates the causes of celestial motion, and selected its materials from primary sources, from secondary literature dealing with general questions of Aristotelian dynamics (e.g., Maier, Moody, Sorabji), and from older literature (e.g., Duhem, Koyré).

There may still be some things of value in the prior version of the article, which is available in the article's history. Other editors may wish to mine it for appropriate material, while retaining the article's encyclopedic balance.

--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:30, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Celestial force-resistance analysis in medieval physics.

The article currently claims:

"According to Grant, with only a few exceptions such as Oresme, scholastic thinkers considered the force-resistance model to be inapplicable to the motion of celestial bodies.[48]"

But the Grant source given, p541 of his 1994, is a failed verification, for what Grant says there is

"With the exception of Oresme, the force-resistance model for representing the velocity of terrestrial motions was judged inapplicable to the heavens by scholastic thinkers."

Thus Grant did not say there were a few exceptions, but rather only one exception, namely Oresme.

But of course as anybody who has read Duhem's Systeme should know, this is crucially false. For at least medieval scientists such as Averroes, Aquinas, Oresme, Paul of Venice, Kepler and Newton, amongst others, applied force-resistance models for average speed to celestial motions. References to and quotations from these medieval scientists' force-resistance celestial dynamics are provided in the previous version of this article.

This seems to be an especially powerful illustration of the crucial unreliability of some of Grant's conclusions about medieval physics, in this case stemming not from illogical and confused conceptual analysis, but apparently from simply ignoring or overlooking some of the most crucial contents of Duhem's Systeme that Grant himself acknowledges as the very founding work of the history of medieval science. For Systeme traced the medieval origins of the two key concepts of inertia and impetus in Newton's Aristotelian celestial dynamics.

I therefore propose to delete the misleading claim that only a few medieval scientists applied force-resistance analysis to celestial physics. --Logicus (talk) 11:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The appropriate procedure in a case where you disagree with the findings of a properly cited reference is not to delete it, but to provide a qualification in the article from an appropriately cited reference. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:35, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Please identify the Wikipedia policy that specifies this is the appropriate procedure. Or is this just yet another McCluskey invented procedure ? If so, please kindly apply it yourself and hence restore the previous version of this article in the first instance, with whatever qualifications you may wish to add. I suggest you may then add your own subsequent contributions to it as appropriate, rather than arrogantly wholly deleting another editor's efforts without consultation or valid reason. (I shall demonstrate the invalidity of your objections to the previous article asap.) Finally I propose this whole article then be restored to where it properly belongs, namely to the 'Middle Ages' section in the article on the celestial spheres, but from where Leadwind arrogantly and invalidly removed it without consultation. Please see my comments on Leadwind's Talk page.

Oh, and please note that your procedural advice is anyway inapplicable to this case since the reference in question is not properly cited, but rather a failed verification. For as I pointed out if you care to read what I said, Grant says there was only one exception, namely Oresme, rather than a few exceptions as the article claims. Hence this is a case where the literature disagrees with an improperly cited reference, rather than a case of my disagreeing with the findings of a properly cited reference.

BTW, your contributions are most welcome, once corrected of their errors, and most especially since they also belie the ludicrous claim by some academic historians of science that there was no celestial physics before Kepler (-: --Logicus (talk) 17:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Undent.

I am reverting once again; after rereading the former version of this article (largely by Logicus) I find that it cites no evidence for the existence of a mathematical force/resistance model in either Averroës, Aquinas, or Paul of Venice. Grant's quotation explicitly speaks of "scholastic thinkers" and neither Kepler nor Newton would be considered medieval scholastics. Before restoring Logicus should cite sources from the historical evidence.

Grant examined most of the extant scholastic questions and commentaries on Aristotle's De caelo, Physics, Metaphysics, and Meteorology; as well as questions on Peter Lombard's Sentences and Sacrobosco's Sphere, including the Aristotelian commentaries of Averroës, Aquinas, and Paul of Venice. The fact that Grant did not find the Force/Resistance model that Logicus insists is there suggests that Logicus is reading something into the sources (which he does not bother to cite) that is not there. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You perhaps need to re-read the former version. To give you just one of its examples of the application of the force-resistance model in scholastic celestial dynamics, consider the case of Averroes.--Logicus (talk) 18:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

For Averroes' application see its footnote 10 reference to Sorabji's 1988 Matter, Space and Motion p284 --Logicus (talk) 18:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

You said "Grant's quotation explicitly speaks of "scholastic thinkers" and neither Kepler nor Newton would be considered medieval scholastics." But at least except of course by Grant, whose title is Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200-1687 Geddit ? --Logicus (talk) 18:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Great article

Very interesting article. Mugginsx (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Dynamics of the celestial spheres/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 21:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article. --Cerebellum (talk) 21:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Look forward to working with you. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Comments

All right, sorry it has taken me so long to get to this!

• Prose: Consider removing the phrase In considering the physics of the celestial spheres from the section on material, it doesn't seem necessary.
• Aether: What does it mean that aether took its name from the personification in mythology? I am not sure what is being personified here.
• Aether: Did Aristotle think the spheres were made of aether? Maybe change However, the spheres themselves.... to For Aristotle, however, the spheres themselves...
• Causes of motion: depending on which of the two contemporary models... What are the two models referred to here?
• Causes of motion: In On the Heavens, Aristotle was content with the view of eternal circular motion as moving itself, in the manner of Plato's world-soul, which lent support to three principles of celestial motion: an internal soul, an external unmoved mover, and the celestial material (aether) How does the idea that the spheres move themselves support the notion of an unmoved mover?
• Philoponus: This is interpreted as an application of the concept of impetus to the motion of the celestial spheres. Who interprets it this way?
• Lead: The lead is quite short and could be expanded to be more representative of the article, perhaps with brief explanations of the Platonic and Aristotelian views and how they were later modified.
• Images: It would be great to have more images here, of the thinkers themselves if no representations of the ideas are available.

These are all minor issues, however. All in all, the article is great! It is comprehensive without being excessively detailed and understandable without seeming oversimplified. I am happy to pass this as a GA, with the above comments as a basis for future work. Excellent job! --Cerebellum (talk) 11:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Aw

This article is worthless, the celestial spheres are not material but immaterial, spiritual. May I recommend some basic education before writing about it. For example study some Steiner .. to get started, the lecture of April 8, 1912 (GA136). Regarding dynamics .. see his cycles on the spiritual hierarchies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.178.54.84 (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry buddy, by our book Rudolf Steiner by and large did not write WP:SCHOLARSHIP. He wrote "cult pseudoscience", as Dan Dugan has put it. tgeorgescu (talk) 07:33, 25 February 2023 (UTC)