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RANDOM ARTICLE ABOUT GALILEO:

In Italy in 1633, suggesting that the earth, that rock solid center of God's universe actually moved around another body, the Sun, was not the wisest thing to do. In fact that idea could get you killed... or worse. Galileo got off easy since he was sentenced to life in prison which lucky for him, became permanent house arrest instead.

Oh and in addition he was commanded to never mention the idea again, his book was burned and the sentence against him was to be read publicly in every university. "And yet it does move". He may not actually have said it, in fact it would have been extremely dangerous for him to do that, but he no doubt thought it.

So who was Galileo really and why was the church court so upset about his claims? He was born near Pisa, on February 15, 1564. Although he wasn't overly radical in his views he was inclined to 'march to his own drummer' a trait evidently inherited from his father Vincenzo Galilei. After an elementary education he entered the University of Pisa in 1581 to study medicine. He didn't graduate, however, and in 1585 he left the university having studied mostly philosophy and mathematics instead.

After university he pursued an interest he had developed in natural motions and the behavior of bodies of water. It was the latter that got him going on his book on tides but I'm getting ahead of myself. In spite of not having earned a degree, Galileo did manage to get a teaching post at his old alma mater in 1589 but by 1592 that career path came to an abrupt end because he had the audacity to challenge one of the fundamental teachings of an old Greek, named Aristotle.

Aristotle's beliefs and principles had achieved the status of divine writ in the Christian Church which was especially ironic since he lived and died over 300 years before the birth of Christ in pagan Greece. How this came about is a subject for another piece but getting back to our story, Galileo was inclined to doubt at least one of his assertions namely that objects of different weights fall to earth at different rates of speed⁽²⁾. He was interested in motion remember.

As I said before, he wasn't all that radical and except for the odd assertion contradicting Aristotle and by extension God himself, Galileo pretty much kept most of his ideas to himself. This allowed him to neatly slip into another teaching post this time at the University of Padua. This one lasted eighteen years until 1610. During this period he further developed his interest in math and physics doing more extensive work on falling bodies and the like.

One subject that he did not pursue especially was astronomy. In spite of this he became interested in the theories of a Polish astronomer by the name of Nikolaj Kopernik (1473-1543) who is better known by his Latin name, Nicholaus Copernicus. Kopernik came up with the notion that the traditional model which placed the Earth at the center of the universe, was probably wrong and it was more likely that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

As we've already seen this was not exactly a popular idea with the Church establishment since it was in direct conflict with the Truth namely Aristotle's idea that in God's perfect universe the Earth was the center of it all. Copernicus was no fool and he made sure not to make his heresy public in his lifetime. It should also be mentioned that his idea wasn't all that obviously superior.

If you are standing on the earth watching the Sun rise and set you can just as easily imagine the heavens revolving around you, as the earth rotating on its axis and revolving around the sun. Besides, the perfectly circular orbits described by Copernicus didn't really fit the true motion of the heavens all that much better than the traditional model. The real problem of course had to do not with science but with theology and that is what eventually got Galileo in trouble.

Underlying the tenacity with which the Church of Galileo's day clung to what to us were the utterly indefensible theories blamed on poor old Aristotle was a rather curious notion. It was this. The correct way to understand how the world functioned was to probe divine revelation. There really was only one truth and that was God's truth. If you should have any idea that did not square with God's truth then it obviously came from that other fellow, the Devil.

In such a climate, any theory you might dream up even if it was supported by actual observation had to be wrong if in some way it violated divine law. End of story! Galileo should have known better. He knew the rules but as I said before, he tended to march to his own drummer. For one thing, the Copernican model worked much better to explain his theory on tides (that book again, remember). So he made a bold decision.

He had heard in 1609 that in Holland they had invented a crude telescope. Seizing on this idea, he set out to perfect this marvelous device. Don't forget, his interest lay in physics. Working feverishly he succeeded in building a successful model which he promptly presented to the Doge of Venice. The latter seeing its potential as a navigational device immediately doubled his salary.

By the end of the year he had managed to build a model with 20 times magnification. Then he made a fateful decision. He pointed it to the heavens. The first object to appear in his wonderful glass was the Moon. Poor old Galileo. What was he going to do? You see according to divine revelation a-la-Aristotle, the moon being part of the heavens was smooth and divinely perfect. Now here, right in his telescope it was plain to see that it was anything but.

Fortunately for him, his discoveries, which subsequently also included the fact that the planet Venus had phases like those of the moon and that another planet, Jupiter had moons of its own did not get him in trouble with the Church even when he published these findings in March 1610 in "The Starry Messenger". In fact it gained him an appointment as court mathematician at Florence.

His charmed existence did not last however. Events overtook Galileo Galilei and, as we saw at the beginning of this article, his "wayward ways" eventually caught up with him. His story has been used to illustrate different things such as for example that the Church was a villain that for many years stood in the way of scientific progress. In some respects that was certainly the case.

However, was their position all that unreasonable? Given what was known at that time, the new ideas themselves required quite a leap of faith, never mind that accepting them would also mean risking the wrath of God. It should also be pointed out that the Church represented the establishment of its day and like the establishment of any age they had the weight and burden of their position to contend with.

I mention this, because as we look around us today we still see many examples of tradition-bound institutions that more often than not act as an impediment to the very endeavors they are supposed to promote. Not only do we see this in the creaky institutions of government, law enforcement and the like, even in the halls of science there are more examples of hide-bound intransigence than we like to admit.

I'm out of space, but I suspect I'll be returning to this topic again.