To begin with, for anyone with even a passing familiarity with epistemology, Rumsfeld's remark is unexceptional, a bureaucratic rendering common sense. But for someone with "an obsession with the nature of facts and evidence," Errol Morris seems to have let down his guard here:
We have been transported back to 1633. To Galileo Galilei standing before the Inquisition disputing the geocentric versus the heliocentric solar system. For the Inquisition, Galileo’s calculations conflict with dogma. But for Galileo, his calculations reveal the true nature of the universe — thetrue nature of reality.
Just what calculations are we talking about? Copernicus, Gallileo, and the Inquisitors all firmly believed that celestial orbits were circular. The heliocentric theory, as Copernicus and Galileo both knew, was not mathematically viable if celestial orbits were circular. Not until Kepler demonstrated that celestial orbits were elliptical was the heliocentric theory vindicated mathematically. And what was Galileo's reaction? He denounced Kepler in his usual intemperate manner, because, just like the Inquisitors, he believed that celestial orbits had to be circular. Choose your intellectual heroes with greater care, Mr. Morris.
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