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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 76, Galileo:
September 6, 2004:
One of the greatest all around geniuses of the renaissance was the Italian Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 ). He was a natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials. He also used a telescope to verify Copernicus' theory of the heliocentric universe. Now, you got to know that was going to get him in trouble.
Another thing Galileo did along the way was to develop what is know as the scientific method. For the record, I offer this explanation of the scientific method. It is a four step set of activities for discovering scientific truths. First is the observation of some phenomena. The second step is to produce some sort of theory or hypothesis from that observation. Next, experiments must be designed and executed to test the theory. The test results may be inconclusive or result in proof or disproof of the theory. In the fourth step, if our theory is proved, we publish the results. If it is disproved we go back to step two and modify the theory and start over. If the test results are inconclusive we design better tests.
Galileo got a good start by being born to a musician with a scientific bend. That was Vincenzo Galilei who developed musical theories and did experiments with strings to prove them. Later Galileo was sent to a monastery near Florence. He actually took to the life and was prepared to join up, as it were. That did not work for his pop who wanted him to become a doctor. Galileo was yanked from the order. Unlike America now, in those days parental meddling in the career decisions of their offsprings was widespread and widely accepted as proper. We can wonder what Galileo's life would have been, had he actual become a monk.
Instead, he ended up ostensibly studying medicine at the University of Pisa. There he spent a good deal of his time in the study of mathematics and natural science instead of medicine. later he met the mathematician of the Tuscan Court, one Ostilio Ricco. Galileo prevailed upon him to con pop into letting him continue his study of mathematics. It worked and Galileo was on his way.
Later he dumped even the pretext of studying medicine and began to teach math. He also published his first book, La Balancitta (the little balance), describing Archimedes methods for finding relative densities using the balance. Later he tried for an appointment to the math department at the University of Bologna, but that did not work out. He did receive another invitation from the Academy of Florence to lecture on Dante's version of hell.
Because of his lectures at Florence he did get an appointment to the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. While there he wrote a series of essays on motion that were never published. In these essays he expressed some of his thoughts which later became the scientific method. This was the notion that theories can be tested using experiments. What is obvious to us now was not so obvious then. He went on to conduct one such experiment using an incline plane to slow the motion so he could test the theories of falling bodies.
In 1591 his father had the poor fortune to die and that put the eldest son, Galileo in a tough spot. He had to become the family provided and a professor's pay at Pisa just did not cut it. He managed to triple his pay by wangling a professorship at the University of Padua. He became so comfortable there that he remained18 years. He was as happy as a the proverbial possum in a pea patch.
It was at Padua that he first went publicly against Aristotle and proved his arguments that Kepler's new star was not at all close to the earth within Aristotle's realm of fixed stars. it was way out there. For meticulous adherence to truth, we must note here that Kepler's star was actually discovered by his assistant, but who's keeping score? Galileo also, through various experiments, managed to formulate the law of falling bodies. He also showed that a projectile will follow a parabolic path.
Galileo is also credited with the invention of the telescope, but we should notice that it was based on the spyglass developed earlier by a Dutchman. Pretty much all of science is like that. Many people lay the groundwork, but fickle history gives all credit to one or two people. At any rate, Galileo applied all of his considerable skill and knowledge to the invention of a much superior instrument. In fact ,he learned to grind his own lenses to achieve a magnification of nearly nine. When he showed it to the Venetian Senate he got a fat raise in pay and gave them all rights to the instrument.
After that he turned his attention to the heavens and began making earth shaking discoveries. For sure he shook up the establishment. He published his discoveries in a book entitled Starry Messenger. In just two months he proved that the Milky Way was really made up of stars, he saw mountains on the Moon, and noticed four satellites around Jupiter. Ever the politician, he named them the Medicean stars. Recall that the Mediceans were Italian nobles. He also built a fine telescope and sent it to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
After that he moved right up. He resigned from Padua and took the position of Chief Mathematician at the University of Pisa. He also became Mathematician and Philosopher to the Grand Duke who he had buttered up. In addition he was made a member of the Accademia dei Linvei at the College of Rome.
He continued to study the heavens and proved that Venus did not orbit the Earth but the Sun. We can notice how all of these scientists manage to get on thin ice with the church with these heliocentric ideas. There was still no conclusive evidence for the Copernican theory, but Galileo was piling up the circumstantial evidence. Everything he did tended to support Copernicus. He was starting to annoy the Jesuits.
So far the Roman Inquisition could not find much on which to indict Galileo. Although he made many discoveries and published some, he kept a low profile where the church was concerned. He did not challenge them directly. In fact, the big shot in the church at the time, Cardinal Bellarmine was not really gung-ho about suppressing Copernicus and his theories anyway. However, Galileo went a bit too far in 1616 by stating in a letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine that Copernicus' theory was more that a theory, it was fact. For sure, that piqued Pope Paul V and he ordered an investigation.
They did not call Galileo to testify, but the inquisition did forbid Galileo to accept Copernicus' theory. My goodness! How do we forbid thoughts or detect that they are being entertained? At any rate, this silliness prevailed until Paul V kicked off and was replaced with Pope Urban VIII. Urban VIII kind of admired Galileo. Conveniently, Galileo was publishing another book, The Assayer, at the time. He had the good sense to dedicate it to Urban VIII. This book was the description of the scientific method.
Urban continued to treat Galileo well, but it only had the effect of setting Galileo up. He decided to publish a book called Dialogue. We could write a lot of verbiage about this book, but is was really a clever device for presenting the Copernican view of the universe. It takes the form of a dialog between two characters, Salviati making the case for Copernicus and Simplicio defending the Ptolemaic view. We can guess who won. Although some of Galileo's reasoning later proved to be faulty, the book had a profound impact.
Galileo published the book without the permission of the censors in Rome and the stuff hit the fan. The inquisition forbade the sale of the book. Then he was called to Rome for trial. They dug up some old inquisition rulings and got a hokey conviction based on the unsupportable notion that the Copernican theory had been declared to be false. Never mind the facts.
He was sentenced to life long imprisonment, but he was never imprisoned. Instead he was kept under watch by officers of the inquisition. This is a great deal better than Bruno had been treated a few years earlier for the same alleged crime. It turns out they did not watch him closely enough. He wrote another book called Discourses. It was on the problems of impetus, moments, and centers of gravity. It was smuggled out of Italy and published in Holland.
Galileo died in 1642 still under condemnation for heresy. Years
later in 1992 Pope John Paul II admitted that the church had made
what he called errors in the case of Galileo and closed the case.
He did not admit the main fact, that the church was wrong in convicting
Galileo. So much for integrity. It seems incredible that an institution
like this can continue to maintain credibility among the rabble
of the world. So much for human progress.
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