He did not want to climb the fire of the Inquisition and therefore publicly renounced his views. But his work launched the mechanisms of changing eras. Galileo proved that scientific discoveries cannot be “closed” and cancelled.
The great astronomer, mathematician and mechanic Galileo Galilei not only created the concept of the universe, which brought Europe closer to the emergence of modern civilization. He also made revolutionary ideas available to the educated people of his time, which at that time was in itself a scientific feat. A brilliant mind and the ability to acquire influential friends opened the way for Galileo into politics and entrepreneurship. But Galileo remained true to his vocation – the natural sciences. He was so absorbed in research that he did not even bother to enter into a church marriage and lived all his life with his beloved wife Marina Gamba outside the “sacred bonds”. However, his relationship with her, their son and two daughters was filled with sincerity and warmth.
Galileo’s predecessor, Nicolaus Copernicus, fearing the Inquisition, ventured to publish his discoveries just before his death. A contemporary of Galileo, Giordano Bruno, went up to the stake, defending scientific truths. Galileo chose a different path: he preferred to stay alive for the sake of truth, rather than die for it. After all, the longevity of the researcher allows science to gain time from society – it is imbued with new ideas slowly, gradually. And who can condemn Galileo for his thirst for life? Moreover, the Vatican could not take away his freedom of thought. Living under house arrest for the last nine years, he continued to study the laws of the universe. He always behaved as if he had no doubts about the inevitable triumph of his views. And so it happened: in 1992, Pope John Paul II issued an official apology to Galileo Galilei, agreeing that he was right. What are three and a half centuries in the face of the eternal universe, the laws of which were studied by Galileo?
His dates
- February 15, 1564: born in Pisa, in a family of impoverished aristocrats.
- 1581: studied medicine at the University of Pisa.
- 1586: Galileo’s first work “Small hydrostatic balance”
- 1592: received the chair of mathematics in Padua
- 1610: Published discoveries made with a 32x telescope. Moved to Florence.
- March 23, 1611: went to Rome to bring new scientific data to the Roman College.
- February 25, 1615: formally accused of heresy
- 1632: Galileo’s main work “Dialogues on the two most important systems of the world – Ptolemaic and Copernican” was published, denying biblical ideas.
- June 22, 1633: Galileo publicly recanted his discoveries and was placed under house arrest; later blind.
- January 8, 1642: died at his estate Arcetri near Florence.
- 1737: in accordance with the last will of Galileo, his ashes are transferred to the Church of the Holy Cross in Florence and buried next to Michelangelo.
Keys to Understanding
Understand Device
Galileo saw the true task of science in explaining the structure of things, whether they be celestial bodies or man-made mechanisms. He checked any truth on his own, without relying on authorities. So, before Galileo, everyone considered the Milky Way to be a celestial road or a river. Galileo discovered that the Milky Way is made up of many individual stars.
Galileo is credited with the phrase “And yet she is spinning!”, Which he allegedly said after his forced abdication. The key word here is “rotate”. “I myself consider the Earth especially noble and worthy of admiration for those many and very different changes, transformations, occurrences … that continuously take place on it,” Galileo admitted. It is no coincidence that it was he who became the discoverer of the laws of inertia and free fall of the movement of a body along an inclined plane and a body thrown at an angle to the horizon. He stands at the origins of our era of speed and endless change.
speak clearly
“NATURE FIRST CREATED THINGS AT ITS OWN DISCRETION, AND THEN HUMAN MINDS, CAPABLE OF COMPREHENSING … SOMETHING IN ITS MYSTERIES.”
Galileo believed that it was possible to change the state of minds by patiently introducing opponents to their own vision of the world. At the same time, he set out to prove the unobvious and frightening: the Earth rotates around its axis and around the Sun. But he put the most complicated reasoning in the form of a conversation between three characters. A serious treatise is still read like a detective about the structure of the world. To connect reason and emotions, to give the complex transparent clarity and logic – Galileo’s credo.
influence minds
Galileo’s principle of personal PR is simple: introduce as many people as possible to your intellectual product and pray that there will be supporters among them. The mathematician Marquis del Monte, the first reader of Galileo’s first work, became the young scientist’s first patron. The second patron was Duke Cosimo II de Medici, in honor of whose sons Galileo named the satellites of Jupiter he discovered. Friendship with Pope Urban VIII helped Galileo publish his revolutionary scientific views. He sent telescopes to influential gentlemen and dared to invite the bishops and the Pope himself to look through the telescope. The commission at the Vatican could not resist the temptation to admire the wonders of the universe. The works of Copernicus and Galileo were banned, but telescopes continued to multiply in Europe, and astronomy became fashionable. So Galileo helped humanity step over from the Middle Ages to the New Age.
About it
- Galileo Galilei, Selected Works, vols. 1–2, Nauka, 1964.
- Galileo Galilei “Assay Master”, Science, 1987.
- Boris Kuznetsov “Development of physical ideas from Galileo to Einstein in the light of modern science”, Librokom, 2010.