Sungenis, this is weak.

New blog on the kid :Ultra-Brief Reply to David Palm on Observational Evidence for Strict Geocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica :Sungenis, this is weak.

OK, up to here, that is up to page 15 of a total 18 on this view of the pdf, it is good.

But this is weak:

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that, if he relies on his “the Fathers were merely following Aristotle” argument, he must then explain why none of the Fathers chose to follow an equally prevalent philosopher in Greek times who believed in heliocentrism, such as Pythagoras (d. 495 BC), Philolaus (d. 385 BC), Hiketas (d. 450 BC), and Ekphantus (d. 450 BC) or Aristarchus (d. 230 BC). In fact, Pythagorus was the very individual who was condemned by name at Galileo’s confrontation with the Church in 1616 and 1633 as the originator of the heliocentric view.

The Pythagorean school did not survive to the times of the Christian Fathers.

They had the choice between Aristotle (Geocentric), Plato (less noted but probably Geocentric), Stoics (as per Seneca agnostic about Geocentrism vs Heliocentrism, quoted by Sungenis himself), and Epicureans (Geocentric). Or rather, Stoics and Epicureans were also lost schools, like ... see following:

The Pythagorean school was dead, though it had left real scientific traces everywhere in Music Theory (yes, Pythagoras, an octave is indeed 1:2 and a really pure Fifth is 2:3, no Aristotelian, no Platonic, no Stoic and even no Epicurean will dispute you that!) and real more or less superstitious traces of the Feng Shui type (saying that good, limited, masculine, odd number, light, light and four more belong together, saying that bad, feminine, even number, dark, heavy and four more belong together). But the school as such was no more.

The Ancients did not do history of philosophy in school in that way which would have made them equally familiar with Pythagoras in all respects and with Aristotle in all, or both in fewer ones. If Aristotle's view was a school in your time, you could be familiar with it at first hand. If Pythagoras' school was not a school in your time, you might know abut it from adversaries, from oblique allies, but not at first hand.

The Pythagorean school has a history which ended BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism#History

According to historians like Thomas Gale (based on Archytas account), Thomas Taler (based on the work of Iamblichus), or Cantor, Archytas (428 BC) became the head of the school, about a century after the murder of Pythagoras.[5] According to August Böckh (1819), who cites Nicomachus, Philolaus was the successor of Pythagoras.[6] And according to Cicero (de Orat. III 34.139), Philolaus was teacher of Archytas of Tarentum.[1]

According to the historian's from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Philolaus and Eurytus are identified by Aristoxenus as teachers of the last generation of Pythagoreans" (D. L. VIII 46).[1]

A Echecrates is mentioned by Aristoxenus as a student of Philolaus and Eurytus. (p. 166)

notes

[1] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Philolaus". Retrieved 30 May 2015.

[5] Walter William Rouse Ball (2013). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics.

[6] August Böckh (1819). Philolaos des Pythagoreers Lehren nebst den Bruchstücken seines Werkes. p. 14.

[7] Sandra Peterson (2011). "Socrates and Philosophy in the Dialogues of Plato".

There was also a Neopythagorean school, "Neopythagoreanism was influenced by Middle Platonism and in turn influenced Neoplatonism. It originated in the 1st century BCE and flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE."

And ended before Constantine and therefore before the post-Nicene Fathers, while the ante-Nicene ones seems to have been less interested in philosophy as such.

Its names do not seem to include Heliocentrics, unlike the original Pythagorean school:

"In the 1st century BCE Cicero's friend Nigidius Figulus made an attempt to revive Pythagorean doctrines, but the most important members of the school were Apollonius of Tyana and Moderatus of Gades in the 1st century CE. Other important Neopythagoreans include the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl. 150 CE), who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers. In the 2nd century, Numenius of Apamea sought to fuse additional elements of Platonism into Neopythagoreanism, prefiguring the rise of Neoplatonism. (Iamblichus, in particular, was especially influenced by Neopythagoreanism)"

Publius Nigidius Figulus (c. 98 – 45[1] BC)

was a scholar of the Late Roman Republic and one of the praetors for 58 BC.[2] He was a friend of Cicero, to whom he gave his support at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy.[3][4] Nigidius sided with the Optimates in the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus.

Among his contemporaries, Nigidius's reputation for learning was second only to that of Varro. Even in his own time, his works were regarded as often abstruse, perhaps because of their esoteric Pythagoreanism, into which Nigidius incorporated Stoic elements. Jerome calls him Pythagoricus et magus,[3] a "Pythagorean and mage," and in the medieval and Renaissance tradition he is portrayed as a magician, diviner, or occultist. His vast works survive only in fragments preserved by other authors.

...

Lucan concludes Book 1 of his epic Bellum civile (also known as the Pharsalia) with a portrayal of Nigidius uttering dire prophecies, based in part on astrological readings. Johannes Kepler discusses the astronomical implications of the passage with Herwart von Hohenburg in their correspondence of 1597. An English translation of the relevant letters is available online.

Apollonius of Tyana

(Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τυανεύς; c. 15 – c. 100 AD),[2] sometimes also called Apollonios of Tyana, was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Jesus, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century[3] and by other writers in modern times.

Note 3

Eusebius of Caesarea, Contra Hieroclem discusses the claim.

Moderatus of Gades

was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD, (contemporary with Apollonius of Tyana). He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.

He has been given an exaggerated importance by some commentators, who have regarded him as the forerunner of the Alexandrian School of philosophy. Zeller has shown that the authority on which this view is based is unsound. Moderatus is thus left as an unimportant though interesting representative of a type of thought which had almost disappeared since the 5th century BC.

Stobaeus, in his Eclogae, preserves a fragment of his writings; further extracts survive in the form of quotations in Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras and Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Physics.

Simplicius of Cilicia
[Not a Neopythagorean, but citing the
previous one while commenting on Aristotle]

(/sɪmˈplɪʃiəs/; Greek: Σιμπλίκιος; c. 490 – c. 560[2]) was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He was among the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire. He wrote extensively on the works of Aristotle. Although his writings are all commentaries on Aristotle and other authors, rather than original compositions, his intelligent and prodigious learning makes him the last great philosopher of pagan antiquity. His works have preserved much information about earlier philosophers which would have otherwise been lost.

List of Aristotle loci

which he commented on, limited to On the Heavens and Physics and to where an English translation is extant, simplified:

Simplicius: On Aristotle, On the Heavens 1.1-4, 1.3-4, 1.5-9, 1.10-12, 2.1-9, 2.10-14, 3.1-7, 3.7-4.6, translated by Robert J. Hankinson (2001) and by Ian Mueller (2011).

Simplicius: On Aristotle, Physics 1.3-4, 1.5-9, 2, 3, 4.1-5, 4.10-14, 5, 6, 7, 8.6-10, translated by Pamela M. Huby and C. C. W. Taylor (2011) and by Han Baltussen (2011), and by Barrie Fleet (1997) and by James O. Urmson (2002, 1992, 1997) and by David Konstan (1989) and by Charles Hagen (1994) and finally by Richard McKirahan (2001).

Publishers vary between only two, Cornell University Press and Duckworth London, some parts appearing in both.

Nicomachus,

or Nicomachus of Gerasa,[1] (Greek: Νικόμαχος; c. 60 – c. 120 CE) was an important ancient mathematician best known for his works Introduction to Arithmetic and Manual of Harmonics in Greek. He was born in Gerasa, in the Roman province of Syria (now Jerash, Jordan), and was strongly influenced by Aristotle. He was a Neopythagorean, who wrote about the mystical properties of numbers.

[an Arithmetician between Pythagoras and Boethius, truly a scientist, not a trace of Pythagorean astronomical aberrations like Heliocentrism]

Numenius of Apamea

(Ancient Greek: Νουμήνιος ὁ ἐξ Ἀπαμείας) was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century AD. He was a Neopythagorean and forerunner of the Neoplatonists.

... Numenius was a Neopythagorean, but his object was to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, and at the same time to show that they were not at variance with the dogmas and mysteries of the Brahmins, Jews, Magi and Egyptians. ... His work on the apostasy of the Academy from Plato, to judge from its rather numerous fragments,[3] contained a minute and wearisome account of the outward circumstances of those men, and was full of fabulous tales about their lives, without entering into the nature of their skepticism.

His books On the Good (Peri Tagathou - Περὶ Τἀγαθοῦ) seem to have been of a better kind; in them he had minutely explained, mainly in opposition to the Stoics, that existence could neither be found in the elements because they were in a perpetual state of change and transition, nor in matter because it is vague, inconstant, lifeless, and in itself not an object of our knowledge; and that, on the contrary, existence, in order to resist the annihilation and decay of matter, must itself rather be incorporeal and removed from all mutability,[4] in eternal presence, without being subject to the variation of time, simple and imperturbable in its nature by its own will as well as by influence from without.[5] True existence is identical with the first god existing in and by itself, that is, with good, and is defined as spirit (nous).[6] But as the first (absolute) god existing in itself and being undisturbed in its motion, could not be creative (demiurgikos - δημιουργικός), he thought that we must assume a second god, who keeps matter together, directs its energy to it and to intelligible essences, and imparts its spirit to all creatures; its mind is directed to the first god, in whom it beholds the ideas according to which it arranges the world harmoniously, being seized with a desire to create the world. The first god communicates its ideas to the second, without losing them itself, just as we communicate knowledge to one another, without depriving ourselves of it.[7] In regard to the relation existing between the third and second god, and to the manner in which they also are to be conceived as one (probably in opposition to the vague duration of matter), no information can be derived from the fragments which have come down to us. ...

... His chief divergence from Plato is the distinction between the "first god" and the "demiurge." This is probably due to the influence of Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers (especially Philo and his theory of the Logos). According to Proclus,[12] Numenius held that there was a kind of trinity of gods, the members of which he designated as "father," "maker," and "that which is made," i.e. the world. The first is the supreme deity or pure intelligence, the second the creator of the world, the third the world. Numenius also claimed that the three gods, the "Father", the "Creator" and "Creation" were actually one.

[In other words, as much supernatural stuff as Giordano Bruno accepted after his apostasy from Orthodox Christianity - but he didn't add Heliocentrism to it or apostasising from baptism.]

Iamblichus,

also known as Iamblichus Chalcidensis, or Iamblichus of Apamea (Greek: Ἰάμβλιχος, probably from Syriac or Aramaic ya-mlku, "He is king"; c. 245 – c. 325 AD), was a Syrian[1][2] Neoplatonist philosopher who determined the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy.

[Nothing about astronomical disputes.]

In other words, Neo-Pythagoreans have some in common with Christians and with New Agers, but they did not forcefully revive the Pythagorean tendency to Heliocentrism, for what we know.

This means, Palm has a point in Church Fathers following Aristotle. Pythagoras was no more around, except mainly in the sanitised version of mathematics and music theory.

The real answer is turning the point around and also follow Aristotle, except of course where he disagrees with Holy Bible and Fathers, or where he disagrees with more recent real discoveries.

This was the plan of today's Saint, Albert of Cologne, and of his famous disciple, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Both of whom were, like Aristotle, Heliocentric, both of whom were, like Aristotle, proving existence of God as first mover from Geocentrism.

Obviously, what you wrote about other things, Sungenis, on pages 1 to 14 and most of page 15, is a bit not my own subject but seems all right. On this one, I think you should trust a Classicist. A Medievalist. A - formally at University - Latinist and, a little less, no longer functional, Grecist.

Now I'll return to the last three pages of your work, hoping they are better than this weak paragraph, but will give a little hint about method.

None of these schools except Epicureans who up to Tycho Brahe had one, would have cared for Gravitational models for Geocentrism working out. And they were, as mentioned, as dead as a doornail by the time of the Church Fathers.

When Church Fathers all agree with Aristotle and Plato on Geocentrism and on ignoring gravitation as irrelevant, there are two options.

One can either say they were all misled by Aristotle, which is what Palm is saying. Or one can say that this happened by providence. Which is what I am saying.

You seem to shilly shally - ignoring their take on Angelic movers (yes, St Augustine mentioned such) because Fathers didn't know modern science yet (which Palm would agree on), while accepting their take on Geocentrism, which I do agree on. But, with above paragraph in mind, are you doing it for the right reason? Or are you simply wrong about what Church Fathers had access to?

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Albert*
15.XI.2016

* Coloniae Agrippinae sancti Alberti Episcopi et Confessoris, ex Ordine Praedicatorum, cognomento Magni, sanctitate et doctrina celebris, quem Pius Papa Undecimus Doctorem universalis Ecclesiae declaravit, et Pius Duodecimus cultorum scientiarum naturalium caelestem apud Deum Patronum constituit.

PS, when starting to read on:

Following two paragraphs
on page 16

I

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that when the Church was arguing against Galileo, it didn’t once make the argument that the Fathers’ view was either weak or irrelevant because some of them had the same geocentric view as Aristotle, and it never once made the argument that the Fathers were devoid of Scriptural evidence for their view.

Comment

Very correct.

II

Mr. Palm doesn’t like the fact that the Church, despite the competing views from the Greeks and Indians who were promoting heliocentrism from 600 BC to 900 AD, never deviated from its geocentric understanding of the universe.

Comment

Very incorrect.

As for Greeks, Pythagorean school was dead as a doornail and had been so for centuries, even among Pagans (Seneca allowing agnosticism between views was probably last death gasp of Heliocentrism in Antiquity), as shown above.

If Sungenis believes the opposite, he must have gotten it from some really bad source on Classics, like probably some Historian of Science.

As for Indians, apart from the Churches founed by St Thomas, these were pretty irrelevant for nearly all dioceses and the Church Fathers who usually were not living in or even visiting those Churches, and the promotion of Heliocentrism was also very probably limited to Brahmin caste, and irrelevant both to non-Hindoos and to Hindoos of other classes.

Also, if the number 900 AD is cited, we are getting close to Arabic precursors of Tycho Brahe - and yes, there were such.

PPS, And the final paragraph from St Basil is a good enough argument to consider any ivestigation into Newtonian or Einsteinian gravitational factors as possibly rather irrelevant - even if done for Geoecntrism. That was a good one!

9. You do not reflect that the idea of the earth suspended by itself throws your reason into a like but even greater difficulty, since from its nature it is heavier. But let us admit that the earth rests upon itself, or let us say that it rides the waters, we must still remain faithful to thought of true religion and recognize that all is sustained by the Creator’s power. Let us then reply to ourselves, and let us reply to those who ask us upon what support this enormous mass rests, “In His hands are the ends of the earth.” It is a doctrine as infallible for our own information as profitable for our hearers.

St. Basil : Nine Homilies of the Hexaemeron, Homily I.

He's got the whole world, in his hand ...