Pierre Duhem, the Galileo myth, and historical revisionism.

Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) was a French physicist and historian of science. He understood that all of chemistry and physics, including mechanics, electricity, and magnetism, could be understood from thermodynamic first principles [matter and energy]. These proofs are by the way, rejected by evolution – a theory which is bio-chemically and physically impossible. Duhem's works are also and most importantly, amongst the earliest which tell the true history of medieval affairs – one detached from the bigotry, the nonsense, the lies, and the propaganda emanating from the 'enlightenment', and from cultural Marxist theology.

Duhem apostatized from various cults now deemed 'progressive'. Ergo he is not taught. Duhem believed that the basis of modernity rests solely and squarely, within the medieval era, not from the 'enlightenment' or the magically-initiated scientific revolution of the 17^th century [whose main scientists were Christian], which simply continued what came before it, and which certainly did not arise from nothing.

Consider for a matter Duhem's heretical position on Galileo. Duhem presented Galilean theory as a continuous development out of medieval experimentation. Of course this is true – unless you are a committed Atheist, anti-deist or a-historian. Duhem traces the late medieval theory of impetus, back to John Philoponus' criticism of Aristotle and to mature calibrations made in the fourteenth century works of John Buridan and Nicole Oresme:

“The role that impetus played in Buridan's dynamics is exactly the one that Galileo attributed to impeto or momento, Descartes to ‘quantity of motion,’ and Leibniz finally to vis viva. So exact is this correspondence that, in order to exhibit Galileo's dynamics, Torricelli, in his Lezioni accademiche, often took up Buridan's reasons and almost his exact words” (1917, 163–62; 1996, 194).

In other words, Galileo, who copied Copernicus' theory of heliocentricity, but could never prove the math [he famously thought that tidal patterns confirmed heliocentricity, whoops]; purloined much of his motion-dynamics from the 1300s.

Duhem then sketched the extension of impetus theory from terrestrial dynamics to the motions of the heavens and earth:

“Nicole Oresme attributed to the earth a natural impetus similar to the one Buridan attributed to the celestial orbs. In order to account for the vertical fall of weights, he allowed that one must compose this impetus by which the mobile rotates around the earth with the impetus engendered by weight. The principle he distinctly formulated was only obscurely indicated by Copernicus and merely repeated by Giordano Bruno. Galileo used geometry to derive the consequences of that principle, but without correcting the incorrect form of the law of inertia implied in it.” (1917, 166; 1996, 196.)

Galileo borrowed much from his predecessors – without sourcing these findings, nor without attributing and acknowledging them as the inventors of the theorems. This is called plagiarism. To be fair, plagiarism was not considered illegal or immoral in the medieval period. But let's dispense with the inane notion that Galileo was fighting against the darkness of ignorance and superstition. He himself offered very little in mathematical proof to support heliocentricity. That was left to another Christian – Kepler.