There are only a few individuals in our history who’ve had as much as an influence on the world as the famous Italian intellect Galileo. He was one of the first astronomers to use a telescope to examine and observe the planet surfaces and the changes in their positions leading to the foundations of modern astronomy and physics. From our perspective today, a simple observation through a telescope may not appear that remarkable or overwhelming. As a part of the 21st century society we are constantly innovating and coming upon scientific discoveries on a nearly daily basis; researching and conducting experiments are essentially natural instincts in the academic world. The reality today, is substantially different from the reality Galileo faced …show more content…
He found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun. He also discovered Jupiter had revolving moons, which didn’t revolve around the earth”. Galileo wrote, “the surface of the moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it to be”. These observations and statements led to Galileo openly supporting Copernicus’s model of the universe. Society and non-secular scholars around him immediately lashed back calling his claims heretical and contradictory to biblical perception, “The flux and change that Galileo now revealed bespoke a more chaotic system, a less-than-godly lack of organization”. Beginning to face rejection and dissent from a traditionally focused culture, most individuals in the early 17th century would have backed down and returned to the norm medieval paradigm of: god centered, authority centered church centered, and otherworldly. The thought process of the majority, revolved around the accepted meanings of scripture and the word of the Catholic Church, “the Roman Catholic Church was all powerful in western Europe. There was no legal alternative”. If the church told them their interpretation was misguided, they accepted the Church’s explanation with legitimacy instead. However, Galileo was not intimidated (perhaps …show more content…
First and foremost, we can observe the Challenge of Authority being essential to Galileo’s achievements. Without his courage and ability to question established ideas he would not have been capable of fabricating change - his discoveries led to the formulation of western medicine and science. Galileo trusted his own observation more than the observations of the established authority. In the current scientific realm and within the Renaissance paradigm we can see this theory of observation being fundamental to the concepts of experimentation and scientific progress. The same systems Galileo pioneered in the 17th century are being used in our lives every day. If Galileo had not stood up and spoke from his individual consciousness modern medicine as we know it may not have been possible. When he, “wished to show the satellites of Jupiter to the Professors in Florence, they would see neither them nor the telescope” (con’t) but their ignorance did not stop him from following his consciousness and ambition for the truth. That is why the term Father of Science has been coined for Galileo. He is one of the many who challenged authority and past traditions during the renaissance and ultimately helped lead to the development of the paradigm and western civilization. This idea of challenging authority is a major and
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
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
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
In “Towards a New Heaven: Revolution in Astronomy,” some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were dominated by medicine, mechanics, and astronomers. Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton were some of the brilliant individuals that magnified the revolutionary astronomy. These astronomers challenged the conception and beliefs through the nature of the external world.
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.
Galileo Galilei was also a supporter of the Copernican Theory. Galileo believed the earth, and other planets, rotated on its axis around the unmoving sun. He used his new invention of the telescope to prove Copernicus’ theory. With the telescope, Galileo found sunspots on the earth’s moon, which gave proof to him that the heavens were not perfect and changeless but were more like the changeable earth. iv He also discovered Jupiter and the four moons that revolved around it. He only discovered one moon revolving around the earth. Galileo therefore stated if Jupiter were to revolve around the earth, then the earth would have to have at least four moons, and it doesn’t. v The Church objected Galileo’s theory because the Bible said the sun moved through the sky. Being totally rejected by the church, Galileo was forced to take back what he had written and was also prevented from any further teachings of his theory. Galileo was condemned by the Catholic Church for his ideas. The Church succeeded in silencing Galileo but couldn’t stop the advancements in science.
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.
Throughout history, examples of technological advances against the approval of the general populations are in abundance. In the early to mid 1600’s, Galileo Galilei made many scientific and mathematical discoveries. However, in this time period, many did not agree with his claims as when the Church ordered Galileo to keep quiet about his theories about the Earth orbiting around the Sun.
The scientific revolution was one of the greatest times in the 16th century and its ideals have proved to last to this very day. The great minds of the scientific revolution brought forth new concepts and vastly complex while each one is rooted in a basic fundamental. Some of these ideas and fundamentals were of the outside world, aka space, the planet and the stars, motion, and physics. One of the best minds of this time was, of course, Galileo Galilei. This great astronomer was a marvel at his work, he introduced controversial concepts that the church did not accept but those that he believed were to be true. Written by Galileo himself, this letter to the Grand Duchess professed his great discoveries and how they changed old ideas and
During most of the 16th and 17th centuries, it was not easy for scientists to make new discoveries and present them to the world. The Catholic Church, a dominating force during that period, persecuted anyone who would spread ideas and opinions that contradicted what the Bible stated. Both Copernicus and Galileo believed in the heliocentric theory, also called Copernicus theory, which stated that the sun was at the centre of the universe and the earth revolves around it. However, the Catholic Church did not agree with this idea because the Bible stated that the earth was at the centre of the universe and the sun revolved around it, which is the complete opposite. Due to this disagreement, Copernicus and Galileo were threaded by the Catholic Church and
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.
During 1564-1642 in Western and Eastern Europe, Galileo was the first to use direct observation by observation selection on natural inquiries using telescopes. He saw the world full of unanswered questions that nobody would extend their minds to answer them because they saw the world created by someone perfect than themselves. They lived by faith and that’s what their norms abided by because they had to encompass themselves around the teachings of the church; if they didn’t, then it wouldn’t content the church since it was one of the most powerful institutions. Men were blinded by ignorance and errors by higher ups with more power who wanted to hide the truth of the world believing there wasn’t much to look for since all their questions were
Galileo, a renowned physicist and astronomer, was considered to be a rebel in many in his era. This was because he had created a model of sun-based system of planets which was completely different from powerful church’s and most people’s model of Earth-based system of planets. Few other scientists had come up with ideas similar to that of Galileo before, but their ideas were forgotten when they conformed to the
He was an Italian physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, and engineer who played a large role in the scientific revolution (1564-1642). Galileo was often faced with controversial arguments about his findings. Based on the shared knowledge of the Catholic Church, it tried to compress the personal knowledge of Galileo. This is where the idea of personal and shared knowledge shaping each other comes into perspective, as Galileo was continuously faced with the knowledge of the Church. Continuously his personal knowledge was rejected, because shared knowledge had such an influence among the people. His hypothesis frightened both the Protestant leaders and Catholic Church because it went against their teachings and authority. If people believed that the church could be wrong about this, they would question the church teachings as well. The Church warned Galileo of his theories, however silently he continued to research. The Church's greatest fear was that Galileo's personal knowledge would ultimately change the shared knowledge of the Church. In 1632, he published a book which presented both of the ideas of Copernicus and Ptolemy, and it was clear that Galileo supported the Copernican theory which stated that the Earth moved around the Sun. Galileo was sentenced to court and found guilty. Under torture, he admitted his findings were false. Only in 1992, the Catholic Church
I sat on the left side of the theater down at the bottom while I was intrigued by the play Galileo.The play Galileo was about how Galileo attempted to pass on his heliocentric plans to the Catholic Church. Shockingly, things would not end to support him. In the start of the play, it depicts Galileo as a normal man with a youthful understudy. Galileo would, in the end, locate an amazing "discovery," and construct a telescope, the first of its kind. Or, then again, so they thought. All through the play, Galileo would need to defeat many obstacles keeping in mind the end goal to demonstrate his discoveries revise. Through the course of the play, I saw various things that emerged. The Catholic Church endeavored to inspire Galileo to reprove his thoughts. This is vital because this demonstrated how essential it was for the Catholic Church to keep up its picture. Had Galileo Proved them off-base about this, maybe they would begin to ponder what else the Catholic Church wasn't right about. The most critical thing to me was, telescopes had just been invented. History and many individuals acknowledge Galileo for the creation of the telescope. In fact, the telescope had just been concocted in Holland by Hans Lippershey