{"id":51,"date":"2011-04-02T15:20:06","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T09:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ckraju.net\/blog\/?p=51"},"modified":"2011-04-02T15:20:06","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T09:50:06","slug":"khwaza-nasiruddin-tusi-and-copernicus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"Khwaza Nasiruddin Tusi and Copernicus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Believing the propaganda regarding trouble in Iran, I nearly postponed my visit there. However, the situation was entirely peaceful, even at Khorramshahr, the border with Iraq. There was an invasion of dust, so all flights were cancelled, and we had to travel back to Tehran by road, a distance of some 18 hours.\u00a0 Here is what the dust haze looked like.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ckraju.net\/gif\/sunken-ship-in-dust-haze.gif\" alt=\"A sunken ship as seen in the dust haze\" \/><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nRemarkably, the Iranian Deputy Minister for Education, who was among those who attended the meet at Khorramshahr,\u00a0also travelled back by bus, and stopped at wayside dhabas to eat and watch TV. I \u00a0did not see any guns, except those pointed at Iraq. I cannot imagine an Indian minister travelling thus, for they are always fearful, and\u00a0seen only with gunmen even in meetings of philosophers in this &#8220;stable democracy&#8221; called India. Even the centre of Delhi is infested with guns, but no one says there is any trouble in India!<\/p>\n<p>But then, this\u00a0sort of propaganda is\u00a0to be expected from those who passed off the priest Copernicus as a revolutionary scientist, though all he did was to\u00a0translate the work of Ibn Shatir and the Maragheh \u00a0astronomers from Greek (into which it had already been translated) to Latin.\u00a0Of course, he claimed &#8220;independent rediscovery&#8221;, as Europeans invariably did, for he could hardly have risked being tortured by the Inquisition like his friend Scultetus.<\/p>\n<p>It was a real treat to visit Maragheh and see Tusi&#8217;s observatory at first hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/ckraju.net\/gif\/tusi-observatory.gif\" alt=\"Nasiruddin Tusi\\'s Observatory\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Believing the propaganda regarding trouble in Iran, I nearly postponed my visit there. However, the situation was entirely peaceful, even at Khorramshahr, the border with Iraq. There was an invasion of dust, so all flights were cancelled, and we had to travel back to Tehran by road, a distance of some 18 hours.\u00a0 Here is what the dust haze looked like. \u00a0 Remarkably, the Iranian Deputy Minister for Education, who was among those who attended the meet at Khorramshahr,\u00a0also travelled back by bus, and stopped at wayside dhabas to eat and watch TV. I \u00a0did not see any guns, except those pointed at Iraq. I cannot imagine an Indian minister travelling thus, for they are always fearful, and\u00a0seen only with gunmen even in meetings of philosophers in this &#8220;stable democracy&#8221; called India. Even the centre of Delhi is infested with guns, but no one says there is any trouble in India! But then, this\u00a0sort of propaganda is\u00a0to be expected from those who passed off the priest Copernicus as a revolutionary scientist, though all he did was to\u00a0translate the work of Ibn Shatir and the Maragheh \u00a0astronomers from Greek (into which it had already been translated) to Latin.\u00a0Of course, he claimed &#8220;independent rediscovery&#8221;, as Europeans invariably did, for he could hardly have risked being tortured by the Inquisition like his friend Scultetus. It was a real treat to visit Maragheh and see Tusi&#8217;s observatory at first hand. \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-astronomy","category-science-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckraju.net\/wordpress_F\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}