Analysis of Galileo's Letter Essay

Galileo is concerned with obtaining the truth about the world we live in, whether religion provides an answer or science. This is evident in the letter when he is discussing the “celestial bodies” concerning the work of Copernicus. Galileo believes that it would be wholly unjustified to ban Copernicus’ work after it has been confirmed over the years, he puts it: “in my judgement to be a contravention of the truth” if this were to occur. Basically Galileo believes if something is true, the basis of the truth either, religious or scientific is equally creditable. He further states that if scientific fact is unattainable, it must be a thing of faith and religion; “where human reasoning cannot reach” and there “is no science but only opinion of faith” the truth must be in the Scripture. This is demonstrated in the letter “whether the stars are animate” or “whether or not the heavens are spherical”. Galileo believes that ultimately that the science behind a phenomena will

Galileo does not support religion because he is more focused on science. Galileo was going against the Holy Scripture and religion in general. This supports the connecting of science to religion negatively. Many people agree that science and religion were the same thing and if one idea parted from the other, it was considered

Galileo refuted Aristotle works saying “So far as I can see, their education consisted in being nourished from infancy on the opinion that philosophizing is and can be nothing but to make a comprehensive survey of the texts of Aristotle, that from divers passages they may quickly collect and throw together a great number of solutions to any proposed problem. They wish never to raise their eyes from those pages—as if this great book of the universe had been written to be read by nobody

Another important figure in the Scientific Revolution was Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian born professor of mathematics who had a great interest in the workings of the universe. Galileo served as a professor at the University of Padua, and it was during this time that he began to question the accuracy of the Churches representation of the world. Galileo’s approach towards knowledge was much different then the afore mentioned Copernicus. Where as Copernicus presented his finding to the mercy of the church, Galileo wrote his conclusions and left the Roman Catholic Church interpret them as they chose. The very nature of his findings pitted him as an opponent of the church.

Also as a scientist, he did not stop with just imagining what was in the universe and how it worked, but he continued to try to discover and answer his own questions. The fact that Galileo was curious should not have been a surprise, considering that a scientist would not be a good scientist, or a scientist at all, if they did not question things. Continuously, he does not say that the Bible is wrong. He is saying that the way that the church interpreted the Bible was wrong, “passages taken from places in the Bible, which they failed to understand properly.” (document A). In this sentence that Galileo writes in a letter to the Duchess of Tuscany, Christina. He is writing to a higher authority in the church, trying to explain that he is not accusing the Bible, or the ideas in the Bible as being wrong. He seems to be using logical reasoning, science. Galileo was told to keep quiet about his ideas in 1615. Unlike Bruno, who had forcefully tried to prove that he was right and that the church and/or the Bible was wrong, Galileo seems to actually keep quiet until 1632, a good 17 years. In 1632, he published his book, Dialogue

His more relaxed viewpoint on the interpretations of the Bible and scripture allowed him to accept the Copernican theory. He even justified his stance through principals. The first principle was called biblical limitation. “I should judge that the authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of these articles and propositions which, by science, or by any other means than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.” This principle overall explained that the bible could only be understood and interpreted correctly by the Holy Mother Mary. This gave a justification against claims from previous scholars such as St. Aquinas and St. Augustine. These two scholars took ideas for the overall argument from interpretations of the Bible made from either themselves or those before them. Therefore, Galileo believed that the interpretations were false. This allowed for science to not come in conflict with Catholicism as no one truly understood it. Another principle was the priority of physical demonstration. This principle stressed more on the empirical evidence before scriptural evidence. For this principle, Galileo focused primarily on nature and this allowed him to protect the concept of the Copernican theory from the bible. Since he used empirical evidence on nature, it allowed him to determine that the sun was at the center of the universe. Thus, observation, a major part of scientific

In the midst of this, Cardinal Bellarmine wrote him a letter explaining why his ideas were not going to be accepted. He said: “But to want to affirm that the sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself (i.e., turns upon its axis) without traveling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false” (Document B). The Cardinal explains how Galileo is contradicting the teachings of the theologists, philosophers, and the Bible. Also, he is doing a dangerous deed because the Church was afraid of these contradicting ideas because they could have destroyed the perspective on the Church and caused a major decrease in power. Galileo contradicting the Church impacted the future by causing more people to begin and question the ways of life, leading to new

Prior to Galileo’s time, the Greek and medieval mind, science was a kind of formalism, a means of coordinating data, which had no bearing on the ultimate reality of things. The point was to give order to complicated data, and all that mattered was the hypothesis that was simplest to understand and most convenient. Astronomy and mathematics were regarded as the playthings of intellectuals. They were accounted as having neither philosophical nor theological relevance. There was genuine puzzlement among Churchmen that they had to get involved in a quarrel over planetary orbits.

Towards the conclusion of Galileo's letter he offers an argument of truths. The argument basically states this: if the truth of the Bible conflicts with the truth of fact, and two truths cannot contradict, then one or the other is wrong. Since the truth of fact cannot be wrong, except for ignorance, then the scientific interpretations found in the Bible may therefore be in err. Galileo's doesn't exactly feel that the Bible is wrong, he is just providing one more argument towards the difference in science and the Bible. The errors themselves, he states, are most likely due to the inability to "affirm that all

In 1611, Galileo went to Rome to demonstrate his telescope. Already being accepted at Rome, Galileo wrote letters to formally take his position on the heliocentric theory. The letters were publicized and the Church, influenced by the Aristotelian Scholars, proclaimed that Galileo was contradicting scriptures and that the Copernican theory was a heresy. The Catholic Church banned books that supported the Heliocentric theory and ordered Galileo not to hold or defend his doctrines. Galileo obeyed this for seven years because he was a Catholic, and also to make his life a bit at ease. He went back home to Bellosguardo in Florence. After seven years, he returned to Rome hoping that the Pope would revoke the decree. The Pope did not annul the decree,

Even though Galileos beliefs were held in practicing Catholicsim, his writings were showing evidence for “Copernican heliocentrism.” The Catholic Church, however, disapproved of heliocentricity, feeling that it was contrary to the statements in the Bible: if God created human beings as His supreme creation, He would place man at the center of His cosmos. (At that time the more literal Biblical interpretation was prevalent with the church fathers, especially among the Dominican Order, facilitators of the Inquisition)2 However, real power layed with the Church, and Galileo's arguments were most fiercely fought on the religious level. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine insisted that Galileo furnish more adequate proof of his new theories before he would be allowed to teach them as true or even as probably true.

Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems uses powerful logic and simply described concepts to overcome the Aristotelian bias of the populous and argue in favor of Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the universe. Copernicus theorized that the earth, along with the other planets in the sky, is in motion around the sun. The Aristotelian’s geocentric worldview, that the earth is the motionless center of the universe, was deeply ingrained into the minds of the people and the teachings of the church. Galileo’s argument had to be not only incisive and logical to have any sway, but it also had to avoid offending or denying the ancient principles of thought proposed by Aristotle. He walked this delicate line between educating the public and

truth of his theory of evolution." In the world of Galileo proof was what was

In summer of 1609, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) pointed his revolutionary astronomical telescope to the heavens under the starry Venetian sky; his greatly important observations unveiled the mysteries of universe and would end up changing the course of scientific thought forever. Galileo lived in an age where there was much status quo, when scientists and philosophers would accept scientific and religious doctrine that had stood for hundreds, if not thousands, of years instead of challenging the accepted knowledge in favor of intellectual progress. Galileo’s scientific methods lead to significant discoveries explaining key scientific laws, such as the

This document shows the sort of plea that Galileo gives to the Duchess in hope of some kind of sympathy and to prove that his new concepts are not being accepted and also that he’s being accused for the wrong reasons. And he could also be trying to impress her in way, like in the first sentence he writes, “Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in