![]() ![]() If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah’s Ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?”Īnd yet, the Earth was a planet, and a planet that rotated around the sun, whether those inconvenient facts conflicted with Scripture or not. If the Earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it cannot be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. Giordano Bruno had been burned to death at the stake in 1600 for holding similar heretical beliefs, including a belief in the large, possibly infinite, size of the universe, and theologians such as the Dominican father Caccini were preaching that “geometry is of the devil” and that “mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies.” Another theologian declared, of the Copernican model of the solar system that Galileo would be tried for heresy for teaching: “It upsets the whole basis of theology. The danger of torture and death that Galileo faced was very real. In fact, some modern commentators have criticized Galileo for caving in to the Inquisition and agreeing to “abjure, curse, and detest” his work-but then, they weren’t in the power of the Inquisition, who did send thousands of people to face mutilation and horrible deaths, especially in Spain, and who were then in the full flush of their power. Galileo would have to have been suicidally rash to make such a remark to the Inquisition after having narrowly missed being sentenced to torture and death (as it was, he would remain under house arrest until his death in 1642), and records suggest instead that he was a careful, even cautious man. This famous story is almost certainly apocryphal. “Eppur si muove!” (“It still moves!” or “But it does move!” or “And yet it does move!”-depending on the translator) is what Italian scientist and pioneering astronomer Galileo Galilei is supposed to have muttered defiantly to the Court of the Inquisition in 1633 after having been forced to abjure his belief in heliocentricity, the idea that the Earth rotated around the sun rather than itself being the center of the solar system, as held by the geocentric Tychonian model officially upheld by the Church. Galileo died in 1642 and was buried at church of Santa Croce (Florence) next to Michaelangelo & Machiavelli.I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect intended us to forgo their use. “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.” “Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.” “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world. Then, in Day Two, he introduces his version of the famous principle of the relativity of observed motion. In Day One of his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Galileo argues that matter will move naturally along circular trajectories, neither speeding up nor slowing down. : and yet it does move -attributed to Galileo after being forced to recant his assertion that the earth moves around the sun. What does the phrase Eppur Si Muove mean? He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. ![]() He was required to “abjure, curse, and detest” those opinions. Trial and second judgment, 1633 Their opinions were strongly argued in favour of the view that the Dialogue taught the Copernican theory. What was Galileo forced to say at his trial? Legend has it that after he recanted his views, Galileo muttered, “And yet it moves,” under his breath, but David DeVorkin, senior curator at the National Air and Space Museum, says there’s no historical basis for that claim. ![]()
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