Galileo is thankful to God because he does not allow the majority of these “common folk” as stated above to have all the authority, some learned people too have authority. Galileo is not speaking blasphemy, he is suggesting there is a place for both Holy doctrine as well as scientific doctrine and he attempts to prove this.
Galileo felt that the common opinions of others should not satisfy another’s curiosity and others should not be made to believe the opinions of others. The church as well as others that interpreted or preached from the Bible distorted the information and Galileo thought that those who did this should not be allowed to speak or preach about it.
When Galileo attempted to make his case, they branded him an enemy of the church and sentenced him to house arrest. He lived the remaining 9 years of his life in his home, continuing to develop his theories and expound on knowledge he had gained in the past as he was unable to do further any research. The church banned much of his work from entering the public sphere. They attempted to silence one of the most ingenious physicists in history and wipe away his
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.
An important thing to remember is that is the 16th and 17th centuries, there was no separation between State and the Church. Most/all rules in the State had to do something with the Bible and how it had been interpreted, and it anyone had opposed the ideas of the Bible, they would not only get punished by the church, but also by the State. This made it laborious to try to prove an idea with science, just as Galileo was trying to do. Not even the smallest accusation about the church was taken lightly, “As you know, the Council [of Trent] prohibits interpreting the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers.” (Document B). At this point Galileo had only just started his discoveries, and sharing them with the public and church. Even though Galileo never explicitly vocalized that the scriptures were wrong, just by throwing the idea out that the Earth revolved around the Sun, caused disagreement from the Church and State. The timing that Galileo started to speak about his discoveries and thoughts about the universe was not the best. He started to say his ideas only a little after Bruno. Galileo supported Bruno’s idea on how the universe worked. This was probably not the best idea for Galileo, considering that Bruno had been burned to death in 1600, for the popular belief that he was going against the Bible. The main difference between
The book really focuses on the conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church, most notably Pope Urban VIII, once
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 the Reformation, the Church was hardly opposed to making adjustments to either scientific understanding or religious interpretations in order to remain harmonious. There was no strict dogma by which each new idea had to be measured. The Protestant Reformation caused a crackdown on anything that might remotely count as dissent against the Catholic Church. While the documentary gives the impression that Galileo never met with Cardinal Bellarmine, Dear
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.
Religion and science have always been conflicting studies. Religion, being based on faith, relies on the supernatural to explain life and being. Science, on the other hand, cannot do this. Scientists need to eliminate the possibility of the unexplainable in order to maintain and control group by which to measure other groups. The unexplainable I refer to are the miracles that are commonplace in all supernatural religions. Galileo lived in a time where church was state. The land was ruled according to the words of the bible, and anyone in opposition would be in contempt. Galileo's scientific findings were therefore strongly shunned by the church. In 1615 Galileo attempted to explain how these findings came to be
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 argued in favor of physical science such as astronomy, geometry, and medicine. If we still lived oppressed under the law of the church, we would have probably never walked on the moon. Astronomy would have been a censored subject since it went against the Bible’s passages. Without astronomy we would have never been able to come up with the concept of satellites because they would have proven the sun to be in the center and everything else orbiting it. The technological world we live in would not even be close to as advanced as we are. No science means no advancements, no improvements, just stability. As he said in the introduction, “They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction” (Galilei 1). The Bible would not have been as open to interpretation as it is and people would still be scrabbling to figure out what some of the passages mean. Galileo bonded church, society, and science to create a world of advancement earning him the title of “father of modern
for people to accept. But when the actual facts are looked at it is very easy
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
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564 and was named after his ancestor Galileo Bonaiuti who was a physician, professor, and politician. His parents were Giulia Ammannati and Vincenzo Galilei, a famous lutenist, composer, and music theorist. He was the first born of six children of which three of his five siblings survived infancy. He started his education at the young age of 8 at the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa, which brought a close connection to the Christian religion.