(painting by Jean-Leon Huens copyrighted 1975, National Geographic)
On February 15, 1564 Galileo Galilie was born in Pisa, Italy. He studied medicine at the University of Pisa. When he accidentally heard a lecture about geometry, he asked his reluctant father to let him study mathematics & physics. As a result, in 1585 he came to his family without graduating any course (neither in mathematics nor in medicine) he had taken. His ideas, usually identified as anti-Aristotle and anti-Catholic, and his habitual used of jackasses against disagreeing influential people made him unpopular (hated) at Pisa. In 1609, after hearing about magnifying tube invented in Holland, he devised his own version, which he had intended to spy in to the heavens. Directing it toward the moon, Sun, planets, and stars, he discovered that the Aristotelian perfect heavens were wrong, so that, in effect, confirming what the Bible tells about changing heavens. He discovered that the Sun rotates on its axis and that Jupiter has satellites (neighbor orbiting moons), which his contemporary Johann Kepler named as Io, Europa, Ganymede, & Callisto. Galileo wrote a series of periodical "Starry Messenger", confirming some Copernican ideas and in 1611 he went to Rome to meet & try to convince some highly positioned clergymen by his devised telescopes. However, the result of this endeavor was then unwanted. His opponents, in 1616, had persuaded the Catholic so-called Pope Pius V to declare the heliocentric thesis (idea about the Sun as a center of the system) "an ignorant & peculiar philosophy & a formal heresy, since it contradicts the literal interpretation by the so-called Holy Poe & doctors of theology for the verses of the Bible.' He met cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a contemporaneously then known great Catholic theologian. The cardinal had formally advised Galileo to stop advocating the heliocentric opinion because (basing in Ptolemaic view) people- including Protestants, Catholics, Aristotelians & professors- were accusing the Bible to be the one teaching the geocentric system & immovability of the Earth. In 1631, he published the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, in which the character Simplicio was advocating Ptolemaic view and the other one in favor of Copernican view. The Inquisition ordered him to go before the court, but he went to Rome, instead. His opponents persuaded the so-called Pope Urban III that the Simplicio in the dialogue was no other than but Urban himself.Depending the Ptolemaic view, Urban III threatened Galileo to stop weakening of the ancient Catholic Church's teachings about geocentrism,and on June 22, 1633 Galileo was sentensed (so with the Science) before the Roman Inquisition as guilty of "...believing on the false doctrine,...that the Earth was moving (around the Sun) & it's not the center of the universe." If Galileo had read the Bible, then he might know the biblical truth that prophet Isaiah had told in advance about the movability of the earth and that the psalmists teach about the circuiting of the Sun around the edges of the galaxy. That's why, even before his appearance in the Inquisition Galileo said that 'the interpreter & commentators of the Bible may get wrong in various ways, one of which that is frequent & grevious was if they always want to interpret it in aliteral meaning only; hence no man can certainly insist that all interpretes are speaking under the grace of the God.' Galileo had depended the Bible & the nature against the wrong teachings of the Catholics, Protestants, & philosophers about the movability of the Earth. With his old age, however, he was coerced to renounce all views he had held against the Catholic Church, and he was in a permanent house arrest, kept silent about his discoveries until his death. Catholics, Protestants, & philosophers won against him a shameful winning. And after Galileo's death on January 8, 1642, they had even managed to refuse him to be buried in a consecrated ground. Galileo's case had ignited the 1st Scientific Revolution, which was already started by Copernicus.
◄Previous......Next►
