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Life and Contributions of Galileo Galilei

 

            The trial of Galileo Galilei (1633) brought a destructive impact on the world of science and humanism when it was forced to encounter scholasticism and absolutism that held power in the Catholic Church. The devastating result brought about the end of the Italian Renaissance as well as Galileo's liberty. Galileo was an individual who, as young as nineteen, displayed his overwhelming knowledge in science. After assuming his second lectureship at the University of Padua, he began to develop a strong interest in Copernican theory. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, which put forth his revolutionary idea that the Sun was at the center of the universe, opposing the popularly accepted understanding of the geocentric universe embodied by the natural philosophy of Aristotle, the astronomy of Ptolemy and the teachings of the Church that the stationary Earth had the sun and stars revolving around it. Copernicus also stated that the Earth, while rotating on an axis, completed one revolution around the sun yearly. This obviously posed a conflict and so, in the half-century since its publication, Copernicus' theory met mostly with skeptics arguing that "common sense" suggested that the Earth couldn't possibly be moving at the speed necessary to rotate every twenty-four hours while spinning around the sun.
             Galileo would move on to discover the telescope and the many answers it gave in regards to the theory, proving endlessly that Copernicus was right. He tried to broaden his audience and share his findings with the public. To no surprise, very few wanted to be shown the truth that Galileo was eagerly trying to distribute. In the end, Galileo did not persuade the Church to stay out of the controversy, but instead saw that the heliocentric model was formally declared false. It was thereupon termed heretical by the Qualifiers, since it contradicted the literal meaning of the Scriptures, though his perspective encompassed simply that the interpretation of the Scriptures should not be taken with literal meaning.


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