The Martyr of Modern Science
Among ten other men dressed in long blood red robes with elaborately decorated gold and jeweled crosses draped around their necks. you are centralized with seamlessly all the attention upon you, as if they were judging you. You are Galileo Galilei and it is 1633, you are being tried by the Roman Inquisition. you have been found guilty of heresy with an abnormal sentencing to confinement within your home.
The fifteenth cold day of February in 1564 is the birthday of Galileo Galilei. His father Vincenzo Galilei and Mother Giulia Deli Ammannati were both nobles but lacking wealth. Galileo was the eldest of the six children, then Virgina Galilei his sister, and a couple years later Michelagnolo Galilei. Galileo was one of the fortunate children to live through infancy among his other four brothers and sisters. He was baptized in the cathedral of Pisa. in 1574 Galileo’s family decided to move to Florence from Pisa. During this transition Galileo decides to stay behind at the monastery of Santa Maria di Vallombrosa. While he is staying at the monastery he takes real consideration of joining the order. It doesn’t take to long for Galileo to decided to return to his Family in Florence sometime in July of 1579. Vincenzio, Galileo’s father was a recognized musician known for his lute play. Likely due to his father's influence Galileo also studied music theory but let his youngest brother Michelagnolo go on to be the noted lutenist successor to Vincenzio. Vincenzio desired for his eldest son to become educated with focus of becoming a doctor, likely contributed to not being wealthy himself and wanted more for his son. Beginning his education at the University of Pisa in 1581, Galileo chooses to enroll as a st...
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Rivkha Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: political inquisition or critical dialogue? Cambridge 1995
Steele Philip, Galileo: the genius who faced the inquistion , Washington, D.C., 2005
Allan-Olney, Mary. The private Life of Galileo: Compiled Principally from his Correspondence and that of his Eldest Daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. London : Macmillan, 1870
Machamer Peter, The many trials of Galileo Galilei, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2005
Maurice Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2005
Websources:
Albert Van Helden, Elizabeth Burr, http://galileo.rice.edu/, February 16, 2012, Rice University
Dr. Jack L. Arnold, http://www.thirdmill.org/newfiles/jac_arnold/CH.Arnold.RMT.1.html, March 1, 1999, IIIM Magazine Online
Donald Demarco, http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0043.htm,
In papal Rome in the early 16th century the “Good Book” was the reference book for all scientists. If a theory was supported in its holy pages, or at the very least not contradicted, then the idea had a chance of find acceptance outside the laboratory. Likewise, no theory no matter how well documented could be viewed with anything but disdain if it contradicted with the written word of, or the Church’s official interpretation of scripture. For these reasons the Church suppressed helio-centric thinking to the point of making it a hiss and a byword. However, this did not keep brave men from exploring scientific reason outside the canonical doctrine of the papal throne, sometimes at the risk of losing their own lives. While the Vatican was able to control the universities and even most of the professors, it could not control the mind of one man known to the modern world as Galileo Galilei. Despite a wide array of enemies, Galileo embarked on a quest, it seems almost from the beginning of his academic career, to defend the Copernican idea of a helio-centric universe by challenging the authority of the church in matters of science. Galileo‘s willingness to stand up for what he held to be right in the face of opposition from Bible-driven science advocates set him apart as one of the key players in the movement to separate Church authority from scientific discovery, and consequently paved the way for future scientific achievement.
After reading this letter I feel that Galileo had a very opinionated outlook on life and was heavily involved in a struggle for freedom of inquiry. Galileo was a person who had many strong beliefs and would not let people or a document have a say in what he believes.
Galileo was born in Pisa Italy on February 15, 1564. Galileo was the first born child to Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati. His family moved to Florence Italy after living in Pisa for ten years. In Florence he received education at the Camaldolese monastery in Vallombrosa. Later on in his life he decided to study medicine at the University of Pisa to study medicine. Wh...
In his Letter to The Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo challenged the widely accepted religious beliefs of the time, claiming that the conflict lies in their interpretation, not the context. In Galileo’s eyes science was an extremely useful tool that could and should have been used in interpreting the Scriptures. He argued that “the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven not how heaven goes” (Grand Duchess). The purpose of science was not to counter what the bible teaches; rather its purpose was to help explain the teachings of the scriptures. Furthermore, it was “prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood” (Grand Duchess). However, because of the terminology in which the bible was presented the perception of what the Scripture defined as truth was skewed. The Bible was written so that the common man could understand it and follow its commandments. The people also showed a greater inte...
Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist, often referred to as “the father of modern physics”. He was one of the inventors of the telescope and a strong proponent of Copernicanism. Galileo used his invention to make astronomical observations which supported Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the universe. These discoveries led to a fierce dispute, because they contradicted the theory which was prevalent at the time – that the universe followed a geocentric model, a theory, which had been accepted by the Catholic Church. To address this dispute, Galileo wrote a letter to Tuscany’s Grand Duchess Christina, in which he presented his position on the relation between science and religion, stating that the Bible does not contradict science.
In this discussion I will argue that during the Scientific Revolution, Galileo was indeed a cynical opportunist. He was also a patient genius who, by luck, was given a chance to become an engineer, but he died a coward with the impact of a modern Socrates.
Galileo Galilei was an italian scientist. He performed a famous experiment that proved mass has no effect on the acceleration of a free falling object. His results disproved a famous theory by Aristotle and is still a major point of discussion and experimentation today. Aristotle thought that when you drop two things with different masses that the heavier one would hit the ground first, his theory of gravity states that objects fall at speed relative to their mass. . Galileo found that the mass of an object does not affect how quickly it accelerates due to gravity.
Moreover, Pope Urban had affirmed that God had limited man’s understanding of the universe but Galileo had different thoughts. According to him, God gave man the explicit mandate to reason and discover the world. This statement was contrary to the belief that the Pope was not supposed to be disputed but Galileo had just done that. He was thus arrested and after trial, he was fo...
He took his teaching duties very seriously, while he was preparing lectures for his charge on variety an of topics about science. The first scientific work dates were all from this period. It involves topics, which would continue to occupy him throughout his life. In 1571, he began publication of his track. It was intended to form a preliminary mathematical part of a major study on the Ptolemaic astronomical model. He continued to embrace the Ptolemaic (Parshall 1).
In the history of the Catholic Church, no episode is so contested by so many viewpoints as the condemnation of Galileo. The Galileo case, for many, proves the Church abhors science, refuses to abandon outdated teachings, and is clearly not infallible. For staunch Catholics the episode is often a source of embarrassment and frustration. Either way it is undeniable that Galileo’s life sparked a definite change in scientific thought all across Europe and symbolised the struggle between science and the Catholic Church.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian philosopher born in 1564. As an adult, he didn’t believe the universal geocentric theory of the planets and heavens which was established by the Catholic Church. The church taught that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around our planet. Another theory that the Church supported was that the Earth stood still while the sun rose and set every day. Society in the 1500’s believed that the Pope spoke for God through a divine connection and to against the church was to go against God. To speak out against the church in this time was strictly taboo. If one was to speak against the church was considered to be heresy, which is exactly what happened to Galileo. Galileo invented the telescope and began studying the heavens above and noticed that changes within the stars and planets. He noticed that the “stars” that surrounded Jupiter moved. He came to the conclusion through rational thinking, that the Copernicus’ heliocentric theory was correct. Copernicus was a scientist and philosopher whose theory proposed that the sun was stationary and the heavens orbit around the sun. Galileo tried to convince the church not to aboli...
Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei were two rising scientists in the 1600s who pushed for the reasoning of science. Both acknowledged the existing role of religion and understood that their ideas could not advance until they were somehow compromised. For Copernicus, his discovery of heliocentrism made significant impacts to the realm of science and ideas as he states in his work, On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres. However, he initially “hesitated for a long time and even resisted” from publishing his theories. Because of the major religious status quo during the 1500s, Copernicus felt uncertain and ambivalent about progressing his scientific ideas forward. He also felt “fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of [his] opinion” which almost led him to “abandon completely the work which [he] had undertaken”. New scientific beliefs emerged, but as Copernicus mentions, these ideas seemed too different and unorthodox. This illustrates the great extent Copernicus took to settle his ideas while tolerating religious values. The strong religious ties had impeded society’s acceptance of new scientific theories; therefore, a compromise in the advancement of these scientific beliefs had to be made to sustain the prominent religious
The struggle for power and balance between the young, developing academies and the formidable Church affected the lives of prominent Italian Scientists, such as Copernicus and Galileo, during the Scientific Revolution
In 1612, he published his Discourse on Bodies in Water, refuting the Aristotelian explanation of why objects float in water, saying that it wasn’t because of their flat shape, but instead the weight of the object in relation to the water it displaced. In 1623, a friend of Galileo, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, was selected as Pope Urban VIII. He allowed Galileo to pursue his work on astronomy and even encouraged him to publish it. but it had to be on one condition, it be objective and not advocate Copernican theory.
Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15th, 1564. His father, Vincenzo was a music teacher and musician. After his family moved to Florence, Galilei was sent to a monastery to be educated. He was so happy there that he decided to become a monk, but his father wanted him to be a medical doctor and brought him home to Florence. He was never really interested in medicine and studied mathematics at the University of Pisa. He was especially interested in famous mathematicians like Euclid (geometry) and Archimedes. In fact in 1586 he wrote his first book about one of Archimedes theories. He eventually became head of mathematics at the University of Pisa where he first wrote about a very important idea that he developed. It was about using experiments to test theories. He wrote about falling bodies in motion using inclined planes to test his theories.