The Galileo Gambit (Vatican Secret Archive Thrillers)

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This Indigenous knowledge would provide deeper and richer insights into the problems and sensitivities of Global South countries. The gambit is flawed in that being ridiculed does not necessarily correlate with being right and that many people who have been ridiculed in history were, in fact, wrong. All this without using algebra (which had just arrived in Europe) let alone calculus (which was waiting for Leibniz and Newton to be born). Hold onto your seats and prepare for a tense ride as Father Michael courageously battles to unravel the enigmatic conspiracy known as The Galileo Gambit. The author also reveals the more dangerous and fearful side of wishful thinking, including Holocaust denial, the effort to incorporate creationism into public school curricula, the recovered memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare and other modern witch crazes, extreme Afrocentrism, and ideologies of racial superiority.

However, the selective reporting of cases where people who were persecuted or ostracized for beliefs and ideas that later turned out to be valid has instilled a confidence in woo promoters and pseudoscientists that is difficult to shake.

Its intention, of course, is to prove that a hopelessly-irrational woo proposition must be right because opponents are taking the trouble to criticize it. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then in a surprisingly high number of cases it turns out you're still wrong. No one is more open to criticism than the scientist; that is how we make sure we are not wrong and get closer to the truth. Galileo suggested a halfway reasonable, though incorrect, fix for the 1-tide-per-day problem: in modern lingo, resonance.

Note also that the question is what initially turned Galileo into a Copernican — once he subscribed to that view, he naturally found other evidence. Among those capable of indulging this gambit, mere opposition to their crankery alone may be sufficient to induce the belief that they are being persecuted and, hence, were right all along. The modern consensus is indeed that Galileo’s mechanics is his chief claim to fame (along with his telescopic observations), but as W. Guilt by association is similar to ad hominem arguments which attack the speaker rather than addressing the claims, but in this case the ill feeling is not created by the argument; it already exists. Since this is a science-oriented blog, we can reasonably expect commenters to understand science-based thinking, that includes asking oneself the question “what if I’m wrong?

The study delves into the role of media, highlighting the vibrant media landscape in Pakistan, which encompasses publications in Urdu, English, and regional languages.