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The Church’s benevolent stance toward science changed abruptly when astronomers
such as
Galileo Galilei
(1564–1642) and
Johannes Kepler
(1571–1630) started
questioning the ancient teachings of Aristotle and other accepted “truths.” Galileo’s work
in the fields of physics and inertia was groundbreaking, while Kepler’s laws of planetary
motion revealed, among other things, that the planets moved in elliptical orbits. Galileo
especially encountered significant resistance from the Church for his support of the
theories of Polish astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473–1543), who had stated that
the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system—not vice versa, as Church
teaching had always maintained.
Though up against considerable Church opposition, science moved into the spotlight in
the late 1500s and early 1600s. Galileo had long said that
observation
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- Fall '08
- Murphy
- astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia, Englishman Isaac Newton, inductive science stresses, considerable Church opposition, solar system—not vice
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