Is this version of Galileo true?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ericc
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
E

ericc

Guest
According to CNN,

(CNN) – Dropping to his knees before the 10 cardinals of the Inquisition, dressed in the white shirt of penitence, Galileo Galilei was forced to retract his “heretic” theory that the Earth moved around the Sun. Threatened with torture and interrogated for 18 days, the scientist, who was imprisoned in the 17th century, promised to never again teach the theory and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in his small farmhouse outside of Florence.

Is this true? I read elsewhere this is not what happened.
 
I thought that Galileo was put under house arrest for not being able to back up his theory with evidence, which is why it was classed as heresy:shrug:
 
The whole Galileo case seems to be completely misunderstood by many people today, not with regards to facts but to temperament. Pope Urban VIII was actually a friend and supporter of Galileo, such that his book “Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems”, where he continued to put forward heliocentrism, was published not only with the Pope’s support but with the permission of the Inquisition (even though they had ordered him to stop presenting this theory in a serious manner about 16 years beforehand). Here’s a good example of what I mean: there was a great deal of public furor made, just as in politics today, but privately, he was treated rather well.

Even after the Pope and Galileo fell out of friendship, partly because the former became rather paranoid about attempts on his life (such were the times) and partly because stupidly Galileo (deliberately or not) put the Pope’s argument in the “Dialogue” in the mouth of a simpleton, publicly humiliating the Pope. Yet again, however, we see politics at play. During his trial, Galileo was threatened with torture, but never tortured even though he refused to say what the Inquisition wanted; he was sentenced to imprisonment (as in a gaol) but was let off with house arrest (even then, there were times when he was allowed to leave, for example, to get medical treatment); and he was ordered to read penitential psalms daily as punishment, but the Inquisition let his daughter read them instead.

The funny thing is critics often point to incident with Galileo as an example of the “evils” of the Catholic Church, especially with regards to the Inquisition. Well, these guys were puppies compared to some of secret police we’ve been privy to in the twentieth century. A lot of it was public lambast deliberately to make an impression, while privately it was rather cordial.
 
ericc said:
According to CNN,

(CNN) – Dropping to his knees before the 10 cardinals of the Inquisition, dressed in the white shirt of penitence, Galileo Galilei was forced to retract his “heretic” theory that the Earth moved around the Sun. Threatened with torture and interrogated for 18 days, the scientist, who was imprisoned in the 17th century, promised to never again teach the theory and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in his small farmhouse outside of Florence.

Is this true? I read elsewhere this is not what happened.
Click to expand...
No. To begin with, that the Earth rotated around the Sun was brought forth almost two centuries before by the Catholic ecclesiastic Copernicus. In 1533, Johann Widmanstetter, secretary to Pope Clement VII, explained Copernicus’ heliocentric system to the Pope and two cardinals. The Pope was so pleased that he gave Widmanstetter a valuable gift, and Copernicus was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise and by Cardinal Schonberg.

Second, Kepler (who was a Lutheran) also supported heliocentrism and he suffered no persecution for his open avowal of the sun-centered system, to a degree that he was allowed as a Protestant to stay in Catholic Graz as a Professor (1595-1600) when other Protestants had been expelled.

Finally, Galileo’s work published in 1633 had no proofs of a sun-centered system and his one “proof” based upon the tides was invalid. It ignored the correct elliptical orbits of planets published twenty five years earlier by Kepler. In his book, Galileo put the words that the Pope (who was in fact his friend) had told him in the mouth of a character called Simplicio, the “simpleton” in the dialogue. This was the root of his trouble. Furthermore, it was after the “trial” that Galileo did his most useful theoretical work, which was on dynamics.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top