Seven Planets Because Seven Orifices
A contemporary of Galileo offered this as a refutation of Galileo's discovery of moon orbiting Jupiter. Part 5 of 10 on the history of philosophy.
When Galileo discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter, a contemporary of his, Francesco Sizzi, published a refutation, saying it was impossible for there to be any moons of Jupiter. In all the heavens, there could only be, Sizzi wrote, seven celestial bodies because there are seven orifices in the human body. Don’t go counting your orifices, Reader! That’s gross, and it’s not the point. Here’s what Sizzi said.
There are seven windows given to animals in the domicile of the head, through which the air is admitted to the tabernacle of the body, to enlighten, to warm and to nourish it. What are these parts of the microcosmos? Two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth. So in the heavens, as in the macrocosmos, there are two favorable stars, to unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury, undecided and indifferent. From this and from many other similarities in nature, such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven.
It is important to realize that Sizzi’s explanation would have satisfied nearly everyone at the time. Such an explanation did not satisfy Galileo and it certainly does not satisfy us today. That is why we say Galileo had a part in ushering in a new era, our era—because he helped change which kinds of explanations were acceptable and which unacceptable. Galileo initiated a paradigm shift, which, according to Nietzsche, requires an impressive will to power. Because he esteemed differently, Galileo created values—an activity germane to the true philosopher. They were epistemic values and norms of epistemology, but values nonetheless. And they are our values.