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With the study of the heavens, in particular, Galileo asserts that he is attempting to learn more about what Bible refers to as the place of man's salvation, and what is assumed in the popular conception of the cosmos to be the place of God's residence at the far reaches of the spheres. Understanding, according to Galileo, is automatically holy, just as real truth is divine.
A Response Letter to the Same Duchess
To the Most Exalted Grand Duchess
I hope this finds you well and most unmoved on the point of Galileo Galilei's new conception of the motions of the heavenly bodies. Though his supposed observations, if indeed they have been confirmed by men of reputable science, do bear some further consideration and calculation, it is far too premature to cast out the model of the heavens that has accurately predicted the motions of the various celestial spheres for many thousands of years. Though the simplicity of the structure as it has traditionally been perceived was admittedly lacking in certain explanations, I have full confidence that careful considerations of the matter will result in a more satisfactory explanation.
It is entirely possible, for instance, that the point about which Venus' epicycle turns somehow distorts, reflects, and/or blocks the light emanating from the more distant Sun, causing the appearance of the phases that Galileo claims to have observed. A more complex system of layered epicycles quite neatly explains the existence of the stars noted orbiting Jupiter; doubtless these smaller luminaries revolve on their own spheres around Jupiter's...
This conclusion neatly explains the existence and movements of these stars without necessitating the celebrity-seeking conclusion that thousand's of years worth of thinkers and observers were wrong.
Conclusion
The difficulties in composing this imaginary letter, and especially in coming up with a reasonable alternative explanation for the observations Galileo made, reflect the reasons that Galileo -- and through him Copernicus -- were ultimately proved correct regarding the theory of a heliocentric universe. This reason had nothing to do with politics, religion, or ultimately even with mathematics and observation. Galileo's theory won out against the Aristotelians because it was right, and all of the objective scientific minds at the time knew it just as we know it now. The Scientific Revolution that Galileo helped to foment if not carry out was built on a quest for truth, and would have been pointless if it had ended b accepting older dogmas simply because they used to work, and did so for so long. Galileo's careful observation and calculation led him to the right answer; unlike others of his era, Galileo made discoveries instead of facts.
Works Cited
Drake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. New York: Dover, 2003.
Galilei, Galileo. The Starry Messenger. 1610. Accessed 26 September 2009. http://www.bard.edu/admission/forms/pdfs/galileo.pdf
Galilei, Galileo. "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany." 1615. Accessed 26 September 2009. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.html
Works Cited
Drake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. New York: Dover, 2003.
Galilei, Galileo. The Starry Messenger. 1610. Accessed 26 September 2009. http://www.bard.edu/admission/forms/pdfs/galileo.pdf
Galilei, Galileo. "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany." 1615. Accessed 26 September 2009. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/galileo-tuscany.html
How did Galileo respond to the edict? What did he do to protect himself? The original 1616 edict was not taken entirely seriously: "The Sun-Centered universe still remained an unproven idea -- without, [Pope] Urban believed, any proof in its future" (Sobel 138). However, Galileo still undertook steps to protect himself, defending his writings as a way: "to show Protestants to the north…that Catholics understood more about astronomy" (Sobel 140).
On orders of Pope Paul V, Galileo is ordered not to hold or defend the Copernican theory. Later, in 1624, Galileo was allowed to write about the Copernican theory provided that he treated it as a mathematical hypothesis. When Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in1630, comparing the Ptolemaic and Copernican models, the Church stopped its distribution and condemned Galileo to house arrest for the rest
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' His ground-breaking "Principia Mathematica" published in 1687 argued that the universe could be explained completely through the use of Mathematics without resorting to theology or the scriptures; that the universe behaved in an entirely rational and predictable way explainable by the laws of physics. Newton thus argued, and proved his arguments by observation and the use of mathematics, that the universe was 'mechanistic' and behaved like a vast machine
Of course there exist different concepts of anti-modernism, which state that scientific revolution and modernism lead the society to the moral and spiritual decline. But their appeal to refuse from the achievements of scientific progress sounds absurd or as a regressive religious appeal of fundamentalists, who want to contradict natural matter of facts, set by the dynamic laws of nature. Making a conclusion it's important to say that scientific revolution
The new universe made room for God because the collective mind was opened to the notion of a divine entity controlling all aspects of the universe not just one corner of it. The Industrial Revolution can call Britain "home" (Craig 627) because at the time, Britain was the "single largest free-trade area in Europe" (627). Mechanical inventions spark the beginning of this revolution. In 1769, the spinning jenny was patented,