Il ne faut pas simplified!

Let’s not simplify it!

I have already written more than once with admiration about the extraordinary flexibility of the intellect of Joseph Samuilovich Shklovsky, a world-renowned astrophysicist and a talented writer.

“Il ne faut simplifier” in French means: Do not simplify!

Shklovsky heard this, one of the two magic phrases, from his friend, mathematician Sergei Fomin, when he came to visit him recovering from his first heart attack. Then Sergei told him about the dizzying career of an ordinary KGB officer (from major to major general), made thanks to only two phrases that he uttered at any meetings.

One of them always sounded:

“Don’t complicate it!”

Or

“Let’s not oversimplify!”

Clever Shklovsky remembered these maxims, and soon, participating in one of the many empty speeches at the UNESCO meeting in Paris, he also spoke on an “urgent topic”, with gloomy thoughtfulness saying in French just one phrase given in the title!

It turned out that this phrase had the same charming effect on the clever intellectuals of UNESCO as it had on the KGB workers!

I note from myself: It is not surprising, because herd thinking is the same everywhere and in any herd, whether KGB or UNESCO.

And now let’s talk about the Inquisition,

For anyone who has studied history at school, this word evokes natural negative associations. How else could it be? According to unverified information, this very “byaka-how” sent about a million people to the stake!

Of course, all Soviet and post-Soviet citizens immediately had the image of the innocently burned Giordano Bruno, then, a little more literate, Miguel Servet and all the other martyrs.

For the information of the “literate”, Miguel Servet was burned NOT by the Inquisition, but by Calvinists in Switzerland!!!

Giordano Bruno, by the way, was also burned not for allegedly his ideas of a cosmological plan about the multiplicity of INHABITED star worlds, but for a very active occupation in “black magic”, that is, as a sorcerer!

“And in a warlock’s tongue

We prayed hard to the demons”

(It seems that in one of Vitaly Ginzburg’s interviews, many years ago, I read that he had a discussion with one of the cardinals of the Vatican, where he asked: Why did the Catholic Church recognize Galileo’s rightness and posthumously apologized to him for the persecution, but did not express the slightest remorse for Giordano Bruno? Ginzburg, I remember, pressed the correctness of the plurality of star worlds.

To which the cardinal replied to him: Galileo’s correctness has been scientifically proven!

Bruno is right about the multiplicity of INHABITED worlds, and so far it has not been proven by anything!)

Without at all justifying the crimes of the Inquisition, which, compared to Stalin’s multimillion-dollar murders of innocent Soviet CITIZENS, is just a game of sand, I will give an example of the “cruelty” of this very Inquisition.

A letter from the Head of the Italian Inquisition, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, to one of the supporters of the ideas of Copernicus and friends of Galileo:

“It seems to me that you and Signor Galileo would have acted cautiously if you had been satisfied with presumptive statements and refused absolute ones; Copernicus also acted, as I always thought…

Indeed, if it is said that the assumption of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun better explains the observed phenomena than the hypothesis of epicycles and eccentrics (Ptolemy’s geocentric system is my insert), then this is an excellent statement and it does not involve any danger!

It is quite enough for mathematics.

But when they begin to assert that the Sun really rests in the center of the world and only rotates around itself, not moving from east to west, and that the Earth is in the third heaven and rotates around the Sun at high speed, then this is a very dangerous thing and not only because it irritates all philosophers and learned theologians, but and because it harms the Holy Faith, because it implies the falsity of the Holy Scriptures.”

As can be seen from the letter, there are no threats, no teachings, but a gentle and even affectionate exhortation:

Like, friends, agree to some compromise. No one denies the best mathematical accuracy of your hypothesis, but do not get into trouble and do not become subverters of the dogmas accepted TODAY.

Il ne faut pas complique!

LET’S NOT COMPLICATE IT!

12 VIII 2024