Galileo

 

Fascinating man this.  I'm reading a book about him at the moment and apart from the fact that I'm getting all inspired with planet/star/moon gazing again, I'm just in awe of how clever and so far ahead of his time he was.

Going to bed the other night I spied what was clearly a planet, and I was guessing Mars as it was incredibly orange in colour but grabbing my telescope and scoping the beast I see it's a 3/4 Venus and I just got all excited about it.

With my telescope I have seen Venus in it's many phases (like the moon because it travels between Earth and the Sun), I have seen the moon in such detail it blows you away, I've seen Mars and its two moons, Saturn and the faint glow of the rings (but not the rings themselves) and Jupiter with its stripes and spot and the four innermost Galilean moons.  It is very humbling.

But anyway, I read yesterday that Galileo was investigated by the Inquisition for heresy as he believed in a heliocentric view which placed the sun at the centre of the universe as opposed to the church belief of the geocentric view where everything revolves around the earth as 'backed up' by quotes from the bible itself like this beauty: "the LORD set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved."

Blinkers obviously sold very well in the Vatican City back then...

So, first time round they gave him a warning and he promised to never enter into the heresy again although it would seem he was a man of very strong opinions and to shut him up was possibly akin to taming a raging bull dressed all in red.

20 years later he wrote a very famous book reasserting his beliefs in the heliocentric view and so was tried again and found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. [thankyou wikipedia]

What really got me though was this wee nugget: he was only officially cleared by the Vatican in 1992 of the supposed heresy, with Pope John Paul II admitting errors were made in the handling of the Galileo trial.  Better late than never I guess, but here's what Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope) said in a speech in 1990: 

[I am going to copy and paste this passage as I think you need to read it all.]

'Ratzinger cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called "a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today."  Some of the views he cited were those of the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whom he quoted as saying “The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.” The Cardinal did not clearly indicate whether he agreed or disagreed with Feyerabend's assertions. He did, however, say "It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views."

And this man is now the pope.

Galileo was a genius, father of Science.  Just thought I'd share what I learned in class today.