Ron Yezzi

    1. He first had serious trouble over his defense of the Copernican system in 1614.

        a. His letter on religion and science was presented in 1615, but not published until much later.

        b. He was forbidden to teach the new system of the world according to the Edict of the Holy Office (1616):

"The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, and utterly heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least an erroneous belief."

    2. Publication of The Assayer (1623)

    3. Publication of the Dialogues on the Two Great World Systems (1632)

    4. Recantation before the Inquisition (1633):

"With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally every other error and heresy contrary to the . . . Holy Church, and I swear that I will nevermore in future say or assert anything . . . which may give rise to a similar suspicion of me; and that if I shall know any heretic or anyone suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to the Holy Office. . . . So may God help me, and these His Holy Gospels which I touch with my own hands."

        a. According to legend, as he left the trial chamber, Galileo muttered, "And yet it does move!"

    5. House confinement until his death

    1. Pendulum

    2. Telescope - discovery of mountains and craters on moon, sunspots, moons of Jupiter

    3. Laws for falling bodies - proportional to the square of the time

    4. Defense of Copernican system

    5. Motion of projectiles

(Note: DOG below refers to Stillman Drake, ed., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo.)

            1) There is much that Aristotle could not know since two thousand years of observations have occurred since his death (DOG, p. 143).

            2) If Aristotle were present today, he would make use of sensory observations now known to accept different claims than he made in ancient times (DOG, 118).

        1) God's message is written in Nature as well as in Scripture; and the former is inexorable and immutable (DOG, 182).

        2) The Bible is written for common people who are "rude and unlearned" and is not meant to be a scientific treatise (DOG, 181).

        3) The Bible is a guide to matters concerned with salvation and is not meant to be a scientific treatise.

        4) God would not give us the faculties of reason and sense and then want us to deny them (DOG, 183).

         5) Although the Bible is divinely inspired, it does not follow that interpretations of the Bible are likewise divinely inspired (DOG, 187).

        6) The Bible is often abstruse and leads to contradictions, if interpreted literally (DOG, 181).

        7) Theology is the queen of the sciences only in religious matters, not scientific ones dealing with the physical world (DOG, 191-195).

        8) "None of these [theologians], I think, will say that geometry, astronomy, music, and medicine are much more excellently contained in the Bible than in the books of Archimedes, Ptolemy, Boethius, and Galen." So there is no reason to think that the Bible is the final authority on science.

        9) The burden of proof with respect to scientific claims that seem contrary to the Bible should rest with those who regard those claims to be false--for them to show, scientifically (with sensory observations), why this is so (DOG, 195).

        10) To force professors of astronomy to deny what their sensory observations clearly show requires the impossible; one would have to "ban the whole science of astronomy" and to "forbid men to look at the heavens"(DOG, 193 and 195).

        11) The argument that what the Fathers of the Church (early commentators) unanimously agreed to must be accepted is arbitrary and applies only to those matters where they thoroughly considered a matter. Moreover, the Fathers themselves disagreed on issues about Nature, too (DOG, 202-205).

        12) Infidels will have little respect for the Bible (about claims like the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life) if they are asked to reject claims based upon sensory observations they clearly understand (DOG, 208).

"I cannot but be astonished that Sarsi should persist in trying to prove by means of witnesses something that I may see for myself at any time by means of experiment. Witnesses are examined in doubtful matters which are past and transient, not in those which are actual and present. A judge must seek by means of witnesses to determine whether Peter injured John last night, but not whether John was injured, since the judge can see that for himself. "                          (from The Assayer)

"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the lettters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth."     (from The Assayer)