shamelessly distorting the sense of some passage in Holy Writ to suit their

shamelessly distorting the sense of some passage in Holy Writ to suit their purpose, they dare to reprehend and to attack my work; they worry me so little that I shall even scorn their judgments as foolhardy”— included in the introduction to his book

When It was Literally Publish and Perish  Copernicus didn’t publish On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until his deathbed in 1543 ◦ He also reminded his readers that a dogged commitment to a hyper-literalistic interpretation of Scripture led Lactantius, a “distinguished writer but hardly a mathematician,” to defend a flat earth “in an utterly childish fashion”  His idea was great and explained the retrograde motion better but it failed to explain the motion of Venus and Mars (we needed 66 more years for Kepler to introduce elliptical orbits)

Enter Galileo  The man who earned the reputation for which he continues to be remembered ◦ An intellectual who would not accept an argument without evidence ◦ This earned him the moniker “father of the scientific method” ◦ His claim to fame centers around his insistence that the Copernican system provided the only plausible explanation for astronomical phenomena

Galileo Taught Aristotelianism!  But it wasn’t always this way ◦ He used to teach Aristotelian cosmology ~ for 6 years as a professor  But he began to wonder about the tides thinking they could be explained by the tilt of the Earth and the Sun (they’re not but it started a ball in motion)  And Kepler sent a copy of his book to Galileo around the same time with a note “I have preferred not to publish, intimidated by the fortune of our teacher Copernicus, who though he will be of immortal fame to some, is yet by an infinite number (for such is the multitude of fools) laughed at and rejected”  Galileo waited 7 more years to make a public outcry against Aristotelianism and 35 years until his major treatise would reach the press

But Galileo Changed His Mind With Evidence  Two major events helped embolden Galileo (who was ~35 at this time) ◦ The first was astronomical ◦ The second was technological

Kepler’s Sky in 1604

The Remnant Today https://

Sheer Coincidence?  Tycho Brahe already had seen a supernovae in 1572 which was cause for concern in the Aristotelian system ◦ The heavens were supposed to be unchanging and perfect ◦ Kepler’s supernova is the last one that was visible to the naked eye from Earth (though we’ve seen many through telescopes) and it happened at the height of the Copernican Revolution

The Public Cares All of a Sudden  So now with this new star appearing in the night sky… ◦ Galileo was forced to publicly defend his anti- Aristotelian position  Culminating in his publication of a pamphlet-length dialogue between a professor and a peasant  The second event… was the invention of the telescope!