History of Science 4: Galileo
How did Induction Change the world?
Galileo (1564-1642)
Origin
Galileo came from a poor family of musicians in the town of Pisa. His father was skeptical of authority and imposed that on Galileo from an early age.
Galileo was an intelligent young man and considered becoming a priest but his dad encouraged him to study medicine. Galileo instead took to mathematics after accidentally attending a lecture on geometry. Once he had graduated he took a job as the Professor of Math at Pisa University. He also took a position as the Ballistics Consultant at the arsenal of Venice.
He entered into public debates on calculating the “shape, location and size of hell” but also showed that bodies of different weights fell at the same speed.
With this success he got a better teaching job in Padua and then became Chief mathematician and philosopher at Florence
With the money Galileo was now making, he bought and improved telescopes. They were invented by a Dutch spectacle maker but could only zoom in 3 times. Galileo modified it to zoom in 30 times. With Galileo’s telescope, he had the best view of the universe than anyone in history. He spent hours sat out on his balcony in Florence, staring at the night sky. He was fascinated.
This is when his troubles began.
Discoveries
Galileo was the first man able to look into the night sky in incredible detail. When he did, it didn’t look the way he had come to expect.
Firstly, everyone believed that the moon was smooth, because that’s what Aristotle had claimed 1,800 years previously. However, when he looked at the moon, he could see craters and mountains even. He even tried to calculate the height of the mountains on the moon based on their shadows.
And people resented him for it.
Three observed the “supernovas” were discovered within the last 50 years. These were stars that weren’t previously observed. Galileo and others concluded that these were newly created stars. This ran counter to the common belief at the time, set by Aristotle, that the skies were unchanging.
And people resented him for it.
Most people also believed in GEOCENTRISM. That the sun and all the planets went around the earth. They believed this because that's what the bible said, (page 7 of dream of the enlightenment)
And because that’s what Aristotle said and that's what it looks like from earth. They believed the universe to be like hula hoop spinning around earth.
For Galileo it wasn’t enough that people in authority had been saying that something was true for centuries, he wanted to test these ideas and compare them to the evidence.
When Galileo looked at Venus, he saw that it has phases much like the moon but Venus was also biggest when it was fullest. He was also the first to observe four of the moons of Jupiter. Initially they were believed to be stars but Galileo observed them going “missing” and concluded that they had gone behind Jupiter and were therefore, orbiting Jupiter.
Galileo concluded that the only possible explanation consistent with these observations was that earth was not at the center of the solar system or universe and that the earth actually orbited the sun.
And people resented him for it.
In 1616 the Pope once again declared heliocentrism as heretical because it was "false and complete contrary to the define scripture."
The Inquisition
The Catholic Church had had enough with Galileo and the popularity of his ideas. The Catholic Church had an investigative forced known as the Inquisition. If someone was believed to be in contradiction or disagreeing with the Pope or the Bible, they were arrested, imprisoned and many were executed. This was the crime of heresy. Disagreeing with the Pope and/or the Catholic interpretation of the bible was seen as a deep offense and was punished severely. People were often burnt at the stake for having a diverging or independent option on anything related to their religion. They often chased down accused witches and tortured them until they confessed. They persecuted Jews and Muslims within their territories. If they couldn’t execute the person, they would burn them “in effigy” by burning a straw dummy to represent them.
Well, when these Inquisitors had heard about Galileo and his contradiction of the Catholic Churches position on the structure of the Universe. So Galileo was arrested. The Catholic Court demanded that Galileo recant his statements. Galileo agreed.
Galileo actually wasn’t the first to suggest that the earth went around the sun rather than the other way around. Some philosophers in Ancient Greece and Copernicus, a Polish man who died 73 years before the Inquisition came from Galileo, both believed in the Heliocentric model. However, Galileo was much more prominent and had a stronger case with his telescopic observations. The Catholic Church saw him as a threat, being a teacher and only 160 miles from the Vatican.
Galileo wasn’t against the Catholic church at all. Galileo was a devout Catholic, he just believed that the observations he had gathered. He said, “The bible teaches us how to go to heaven not how the heavens go.”
He advocated for an allegorical reading of the bible.
He decided to try and publish his findings in a less provocative manner and wrote the book called “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”. In the book Galileo tries to present a conversation between two characters, one advocating for the heliocentric model and the other for the geocentric model. However, this didn’t work and the Catholic church still believed he was trying to spread heresy.
So the Inquisition again arrested him and brought him before the court. The Grand Inquisitor announced:
"We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the above-mentioned Galileo, because of the things deduced in the trial and confessed by you as above, have rendered yourself according to this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture: that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared and defined contrary to Holy Scripture. Consequently you have incurred all the censures and penalties imposed and promulgated by the sacred canons and all particular and general laws against such delinquents. We are willing to absolve you from them provided that first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in front of us you abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, in the manner and form we will prescribe to you.”
Galileo agreed to recant.
“Furthermore, so that this serious and pernicious error and transgression of yours does not remain completely unpunished, and so that you will be more cautious in the future and an example for others to abstain from similar crimes, we order that the book Dialogue by Galileo Galilei be prohibited by public edict. We condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure. As a salutary penance we impose on you to recite the seven penitential Psalms once a week for the next three years.”
Galileo was sentenced and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. In that time he continued to study and observe the solar system. He wrote another book but had to have it smuggled to the Netherlands to get it published. After examining the sun over the years he ended up going blind. He died after being under house arrest for 10 years. His book continued to be banned by Catholics for almost 100 years.
"There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must … invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth." - Martin Luther
"We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil posses them..." - Jean Calvin
In 1992, the Catholic Church admitted it was wrong to condemn Galileo. 350 years after his death.
Legacy
Albert Einstein called Galileo the father of modern science.
In 1989, when NASA planned to explore Jupiter with an unmanned spacecraft. They named it Galileo.
Question: If Galileo continued his original career choice and became a priest, how do you think he would've reacted to his own paper?
Page 84 of the great guide
Legend tells of him going to the top of the tower of pisa and dropping two cannonball of different sizes and watching them falling at the same rate. This story doesn't seem to be true but is fun to imagine. Today we can test it by dropping two objects of the same air resistance but different weights such as a bowling ball and a basketball.
Another experiment he performed tested was with ice. People couldn't understand why ice floated.
https://youtu.be/JAnZMzmCe9Q
Scientific method
https://youtu.be/SMGRe824kak
Science takes claims and finds who is more likely to be true. It doesn't necessarily claim absolute truth. There's always a possibility that an experiment was done incorrectly or results were misunderstood. Science leaves room for error. Anything and everything can be questioned. There are no forbidden questons. Science also has built in error correcting. Other scientists can test your results, read your findings and try to prove you wrong. The openness to new ideas and rigorous scrutiny brings forth the strongest ideas. It doesn't matter how smart or popular you are. You have to prove your case. Debate is encouraged.
Science goes through great efforts to disprove itself. The greatest awards in science are awarded to those that disprove or improve upon those theories that are held more reliable. Scientific method is used in more than science. It's used to discover truth. Police lineups, the officer leading doesn't know who the prime suspect is. When one state passes a law such as marijuana legalization, we can compare the results next state over. Drug companies to trials with placebos.
P256 of demon haunted - In science, teamwork prevails
If you want to know when the next eclipse will be, you could consult a magician or mystic but they won't do better than scientists. Scientists can tell you where on the earth to stand, what time and whether it'll be a partial or total eclipse. You could pray to save your child from a virus or you can get them vaccinated. If you want to know the sex of a baby, there's tons of old wives tales but they've never proven better than a 50/50 accuracy. Go to a doctor and they'll be 99% accurate. This is all possible through science.
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