Born in 1598, Giovanni Riccioli was a Jesuit Italian astronomer who liked to throw stuff down from towers (we can’t say he experimented with gravity: in the Western world, we’ll have to wait for Newton in 1684). Among his researches, he introduced the scheme for naming lunar geography that we still use today, a system endorsed by Giovanni Cassini over its competitor system developed by Johannes Hevelius.
He was a fierce supporter of geocentrism, putting forth clever scientific arguments such as “if the earth were rotating, we would feel it”, “buildings wouldn’t stand”, and “birds couldn’t fly”. His arguments are so confused that some scholars believe he was “a secret Copernican” who just had to make bullshit up to avoid trouble with his fellow Jesuits.
He’s today’s profile on my Patreon.
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