[Avodah] Traditional Methodologies

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 06:41:38PM +0300, Eliyahu Grossman wrote:
: On 7/23/2013 3:25 PM, Lisa wrote:
: >Get back to me when you have a time machine.
: 
: Actually, we can historically see that what was seen with the eyes has been
: rejected by religious leadership. We read in Pesachim 94b that Rebbe
: preferred the non-Jewish view of the solar system, but only because he
: misunderstood their view of it (theirs was a geocentric round earth with
: concentric circles going around it while his was a flat earth with the sun
: and moon rolling on the underside of a "rakia" (dome) and going through and
: rolling back over the top. I cover this more extensively at
: http://eweirdness.blogspot.co.il/2013/07/a-proper-view-of-universe.html )
: 
: Despite his statement that "their view appears to me to be a better one" for
: centuries you would have Rabbinical leaders say "He use 'appears', so he
: would never have accepted their view of a round earth! The words of the
: Rabbis are truth!"

Sources? Because what I see here is an example of Rebbe shifting from
Persian to Greek cosmology because of empirical evidence, and some
anonymous rabbis being cited as denying its import, and you're pointing
to the latter group as indicative rather than Rebbe as per the more
straightforward understanding of the gemara. Since I don't know who they
are, I don't know the import.

: You even had the Lubavitcher Rebbe who preferred to deny provable cosmology
: and accepted the geocentric model of the Universe as Chazal did (I do not
: know if the Lubavitcher Rebbe held that the world was flat or if the sun
: went around a "rakia" dome as Chazal did). 

This is inaccurate.

RMMS noted that under general relativity, the universe could be analyzed
from a geocentric frame of reference. And therefore geocentrism vs
heliocentrism. (And vs the sun also revolving around the center of
the galaxy which is revolving around the center of a galaxy cluster,
which is...)

However, General Relativity is based on the identity between acceleration
and gravity. So the effects we see because the earth spins would in this
frame of reference would be the product of a universal gravitational
field centered in the middle of the earth, and not in a line -- in a
curve equal and opposite the spin. BUT:

1- The resulting physics does not have a conservation of angular momentum,
which is (according to Noethe's Theorem) another way of saying there is
no rotational symmetry to space. But then, the gravitational field already
said that.

2- Unlike gravitational fields caused by normal matter, it wouldn't
fall off with distance. (Gravity is stronger on the ground than in the
International Space Station.) So your physicists would really wonder
why the shape of space was so odd.

IOW, there is a reason why inertial frames of reference are preferred
over ones that involve acceleration or gravity.

...
: Those who thought like the Rambam would certainly accept confirmable
: evidence and rule otherwise, but would most likely have their words banned
: by those who really have taken to heart "even if they say that right is left
: and left is right, you accept their words. This happens today quite a lot.

But the Rambam rejects Aristo's Eternity for two reasons: (1) it wasn't
sufficiently proven, (2) to accept it, and the assumption that Hashem
couldn't override nature upon which it is based, would overturn the
entire Torah.

#2 applies here too. Especially according to the man who made dogma out
of Moshe Rabbeinu's reception of the Torah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Worrying is like a rocking chair:
micha at aishdas.org        it gives you something to do for a while,
http://www.aishdas.org   but in the end it gets you nowhere.
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