Italy, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was overrun
with superstition and bigotry. Scientific education, such as it was, consisted
of smothering free thought and preaching the doctrines of Aristotle regardless
of their value. Whatever Aristotle did and said was right and there was no
arguing about it.
Aristotle said that if a one-pound ball and a hundred-pound
ball were dropped from a great height, the hundred-pound ball would strike the
ground first. If he said it, it must be so. Aristotle said that the earth was
motionless in the center of the universe and the sun turned around it. If he
said it, it was so.
In addition
to the narrow teaching in the universities, the church held complete influence
over the masses. Whatever the bible said was true and anything that tended to
contradict the Holy Scriptures was heresy, punishable by torture.
Into this
charming world was born one of the bravest and boldest thinkers in all science.
On February 15th, 1564, the wife of Vincenzio Galilee, a nobleman
and a mathematician, presented him with a son whom they named Galileo.
In 1581 Galileo
entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. But medicine was neglected
and mathematics and science substituted. Many times in class Galileo questioned
the truth of Aristotle and was booed or laughed down. Many times he tried to
show his instructors what he believed to be the truth only to have bad marks
chalked up against him.
On one
occasion when Galileo was in the cathedral at Pisa, he noticed the swing of the
long lamp which was suspended from the ceiling. This gave him food for thought
and while others were praying, the law of the pendulum was born in Galileo’s
mind. After numerous experiments and calculations, Galileo produced not only the
laws of the pendulum but also the laws of falling bodies, the laws of equilibrium and
the basic principles of the laws of motion which Newton subsequently
formulated. The idea of gravity occurred to Galileo too but it remained for Newton
to make it into a universal law.
As Galileo’s
mathematical works began to penetrate the outside world his fame spread. In 1592
he went to Venice and occupied the chair of mathematics at Padua University
having already been professor of mathematics at Pisa. Wherever he went Galileo
taught what he knew to be truth and because of his courage, he became the
outstanding man of science in Italy.
Galileo’s
greatest claim to immortality is his invention of a telescope, which took place
in 1609. This new instrument not only brought him world acclaim but it enabled
him to explore the vast universe as it had never been explored before.
He showed
that the moon’s surface contained huge craters and tall mountains, that the Milky Way was not a cloud but a huge massive collection of billions of suns,
that the planet Jupiter actually had moons revolving around it and many other
startling revelations. He wrote extensively on the solar system always
supporting Kepler’s ideas that the earth and the planets revolved around the
sun.
Naturally, Galileo’s
writings aroused the anger of the clergy and in 1616 the theologians of the
Holy Office condemned him and his theory of the solar system as evil teachings
contrary to the Holy Scriptures. The great influence of the church at that time
made it necessary for Galileo to soft-pedal his radical ideas.
When a man has
to earn his living and has several worthless dependents he usually does the
most practical thing Galileo did. He withdrew from the public eye for a
time but kept on investigating scientific truth all the while. In 1632 he could
keep quiet no longer and his famous “Dialogo dei due massinni susterni del
mondo” (Dialogue concerning two chief
world systems) was published.
This great work brought Galileo undying
approval and commendation from every corner of the scientific world but it
opened up the controversy of the scientific world but it opened up the
controversy of 1616 with clergy who immediately forbade its sale. On October 1,
1632, Galileo was called before the inquisition in Rome but he did not appear
there until February 1633.
He was threatened with torture for his daring work
but, because of his age and fame, his punishment consisted of reciting the seven
penitential psalms once a week for three years. After each psalm the old man
would say under his breath “And still the earth moves”.
Galileo fought
ignorance and bigotry to his very end which came in July 1642. His influence on
physics cannot be overestimated for he was the man who paved the way for Newton.
Tags
science