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This article begins with a false story about Galileo being locked up for promoting heliocentrism. That is not why he was locked up. Copernicus came before Galil

This article begins with a false story about Galileo being locked up for promoting heliocentrism. That is not why he was locked up. Copernicus came before Galileo, promoted heliocentrism and was employed by the Catholic Church. Galileo was locked up for political reasons, and because he was pretty antagonizing to the pope of the time. If you want a quick cartoon describing the events Adam Ruins Everything did a section on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlRHbQEHdRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlRHbQEHdRU. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Controversy_over_heliocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Controversy_ov... [2] http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-sources/adam-ruins-everything-the-copernican-ruin-aissance.html http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-...

sambull 8y ago
I beg to differ and so do your sources, "Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture." Your just saying if he would have kept enough political clout he could have got a pardon? Because the axe was falling once they felt he 'advocated'.
- RubenSandwich 8y ago
  I'm arguing that heliocentrism was a means to an end. The Catholic Church was being accused of not taking the Bible seriously by the Protestents which is what caused the whole "heliocentrism heresy", but it wasn't really about heliocentrism it was about the Catholic Church trying to protect themselves. See also this line from the wikipedia article: "The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction. Bellarmine's instructions did not prohibit Galileo from discussing heliocentrism as a mathematical and philosophic idea, so long as he did not advocate for its physical truth." This was a political move, with heliocentrism being the vechicle.
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    But if he hadn't promoted heliocentrism would he have been locked up? I'm not sure of the answer to that, but if he wouldn't have, then it's more than reasonable to say that he was locked up because of the heliocentrism, and that there were broader reasons for their crackdown on things like heliocentrism. An analogy: if we imagined, for the sake of the argument, that in the modern world, there are political motivations for cracking down on certain drugs. A person gets jailed for possession of one of these drugs. It's fair to say that possession of the drug was the reason they were jailed, and that the law behind it was politically motivated.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      It's more like the police say they aren't enforcing minor drug crimes, but someone decides to protest by smoking weed in a police station while saying what an idiot the police chief is, and then gets arrested.
      - acqq 8y ago
        More like: one famous weed smoker is smoking against the law, the law obviously doesn't forbid "talking that some people smoke" but the "normal people" who are actually found smoking (heretics) do rot in prisons or get executed. One famous weed smoker is protected by the police chief personally for some years... until he loses that protection. The actual parts of Galileo's sentence by the Inquisition: "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 doctine 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." "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." The rest of the sentence is equally very clear. See my other post or Wikipedia for the link. Pope John Paul II, 1992: "The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture"
- pfortuny 8y ago
  No: he was told to keep quiet saying it was True. He did not (and by the way he wrote a pretty insulting book against the other party, painting them as “simplices” -idiots, simple minds). He could havo got away with everything just saying “if this is true then...” But he did not. And turns out it was not because of “honesty”... Not that the other party was quite honest anyway.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Your just saying if he would have kept enough political clout he could have got a pardon? No, he would never have had anything to be pardoned from; he was largely protected by the Pope until the Pope was personally offended by the manner in which the Pope’s own argument was presented in one of Galileo’s works. While heliocentrism was the superficial issue, Galileo’s punishment was in many ways about the failure to manage personal relations in a system that was not one governed by impersonal law (religious or otherwise) but by personal privilege and patronage.
DanAndersen 8y ago
Thanks for mentioning this -- though the Adam Ruins Everything video still falls into the same Modern view of the whole thing (for the sake of humor of course :) ). For an exhaustively detailed account of the history of heliocentrism and the Galileo affair, I've not found a better resource than Michael Flynn's blog posts "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown": http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...
- acqq 8y ago
  ...a lot of text but it is obviously not true: the author claims: "the reaction at the time was "WTF? Which heresy are you talking about here?" But the exact heresy was explicitly and very clearly stated both in the sentence by the Inquisition: "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." And in Galileo's Abjuration: "after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way" The premise of the whole series by that author is also wrong, approximately, that because the parallax wasn't observed until around 1750 Galileo couldn't prove in 1633 that the Earth is not standing still, therefore the Church was right and it wasn't a matter of faith but a personal thing. It's obviously a completely invalid argument.
tzs 8y ago
> Copernicus came before Galileo, promoted heliocentrism and was employed by the Catholic Church. Copernicus died 60 years before Galileo started promoting heliocentrism. Political organizations like the Catholic Church can change quite a bit in 60 years, so I don't think their approval of Copernicus is necessarily relevant to Galileo. For a modern example of how far political organizations can change in 60 years, just look at the Republican Party in the United States. The 1956 Republican Party platform promoted • federal assistance to low income communities, • extending social security to 10 million more people and raising benefits to over 6 million people, • providing asylum for refugees, • raising the minimum wage and extending it to cover "as many more workers as is possible", • expanding the unemployment insurance system, • protecting the right of workers to organize into unions and collectively bargain, • and fighting for equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. (I believe that Democrats have underwent changes as big over the last 60 years, too, but my Googling happened to find details for Republicans first so I went with them for the example).
acqq 8y ago
No. The very Wikipedia article that you linked to clearly does not support your claim (1). More important, the very text of the 1633 sentence by the Inquisition is available online, the link is in the Wikipedia article, so everyone can check the original 1633 text (translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro)! (2) In short (summarizing the Wikipedia article): - In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism heresy - in February 1633 [Galileo] was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged for his acts he committed since then. - "Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions" - "He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition." - "His offending [book] Dialogue was banned" The whole text of the 1633 sentence is available online (see the Wikipedia article for the link)! Some crucial parts of it, quoted: - "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 condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure" --- 1) your claim, quoting: "Galileo being locked up for promoting heliocentrism. That is not why he was locked up." The very sentence by the Inquisition is explicitly the opposite of that claim of yours. 2) Just in case, here is an alternative link to the full 1633 sentence: http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-sentence-22-june-1633/ http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-sentence-22-...
- vidarh 8y ago
  The text of the decision is relatively irrelevant. GP argues that the charge of heliocentrism was merely a pretext, and that the real reason was political, and that Galileo's heresy would have been overlooked if it wasn't for that. I don't know if that's correct or not, but it's not like they would admit in the decision that the choice to prosecute was because he'd said mean things about the pope.
imbokodo 8y ago
Copernicus was employed by the Catholic Church, but did not publish until March of 1543 - and he died in May 1543. So yes, he was employed by the church and openly promoted heliocentrism for less than two months and then died.

sambull 8y ago

I beg to differ and so do your sources, "Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture." Your just saying if he would have kept enough political clout he could have got a pardon? Because the axe was falling once they felt he 'advocated'.

RubenSandwich 8y ago
I'm arguing that heliocentrism was a means to an end. The Catholic Church was being accused of not taking the Bible seriously by the Protestents which is what caused the whole "heliocentrism heresy", but it wasn't really about heliocentrism it was about the Catholic Church trying to protect themselves. See also this line from the wikipedia article: "The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction. Bellarmine's instructions did not prohibit Galileo from discussing heliocentrism as a mathematical and philosophic idea, so long as he did not advocate for its physical truth." This was a political move, with heliocentrism being the vechicle.
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  But if he hadn't promoted heliocentrism would he have been locked up? I'm not sure of the answer to that, but if he wouldn't have, then it's more than reasonable to say that he was locked up because of the heliocentrism, and that there were broader reasons for their crackdown on things like heliocentrism. An analogy: if we imagined, for the sake of the argument, that in the modern world, there are political motivations for cracking down on certain drugs. A person gets jailed for possession of one of these drugs. It's fair to say that possession of the drug was the reason they were jailed, and that the law behind it was politically motivated.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    It's more like the police say they aren't enforcing minor drug crimes, but someone decides to protest by smoking weed in a police station while saying what an idiot the police chief is, and then gets arrested.
    - acqq 8y ago
      More like: one famous weed smoker is smoking against the law, the law obviously doesn't forbid "talking that some people smoke" but the "normal people" who are actually found smoking (heretics) do rot in prisons or get executed. One famous weed smoker is protected by the police chief personally for some years... until he loses that protection. The actual parts of Galileo's sentence by the Inquisition: "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 doctine 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." "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." The rest of the sentence is equally very clear. See my other post or Wikipedia for the link. Pope John Paul II, 1992: "The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture"
pfortuny 8y ago
No: he was told to keep quiet saying it was True. He did not (and by the way he wrote a pretty insulting book against the other party, painting them as “simplices” -idiots, simple minds). He could havo got away with everything just saying “if this is true then...” But he did not. And turns out it was not because of “honesty”... Not that the other party was quite honest anyway.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Your just saying if he would have kept enough political clout he could have got a pardon? No, he would never have had anything to be pardoned from; he was largely protected by the Pope until the Pope was personally offended by the manner in which the Pope’s own argument was presented in one of Galileo’s works. While heliocentrism was the superficial issue, Galileo’s punishment was in many ways about the failure to manage personal relations in a system that was not one governed by impersonal law (religious or otherwise) but by personal privilege and patronage.

DanAndersen 8y ago

Thanks for mentioning this -- though the Adam Ruins Everything video still falls into the same Modern view of the whole thing (for the sake of humor of course :) ). For an exhaustively detailed account of the history of heliocentrism and the Galileo affair, I've not found a better resource than Michael Flynn's blog posts "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown": http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-table-of.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

acqq 8y ago
...a lot of text but it is obviously not true: the author claims: "the reaction at the time was "WTF? Which heresy are you talking about here?" But the exact heresy was explicitly and very clearly stated both in the sentence by the Inquisition: "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." And in Galileo's Abjuration: "after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way" The premise of the whole series by that author is also wrong, approximately, that because the parallax wasn't observed until around 1750 Galileo couldn't prove in 1633 that the Earth is not standing still, therefore the Church was right and it wasn't a matter of faith but a personal thing. It's obviously a completely invalid argument.

tzs 8y ago

> Copernicus came before Galileo, promoted heliocentrism and was employed by the Catholic Church. Copernicus died 60 years before Galileo started promoting heliocentrism. Political organizations like the Catholic Church can change quite a bit in 60 years, so I don't think their approval of Copernicus is necessarily relevant to Galileo. For a modern example of how far political organizations can change in 60 years, just look at the Republican Party in the United States. The 1956 Republican Party platform promoted • federal assistance to low income communities, • extending social security to 10 million more people and raising benefits to over 6 million people, • providing asylum for refugees, • raising the minimum wage and extending it to cover "as many more workers as is possible", • expanding the unemployment insurance system, • protecting the right of workers to organize into unions and collectively bargain, • and fighting for equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. (I believe that Democrats have underwent changes as big over the last 60 years, too, but my Googling happened to find details for Republicans first so I went with them for the example).

acqq 8y ago

No. The very Wikipedia article that you linked to clearly does not support your claim (1). More important, the very text of the 1633 sentence by the Inquisition is available online, the link is in the Wikipedia article, so everyone can check the original 1633 text (translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro)! (2) In short (summarizing the Wikipedia article): - In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism heresy - in February 1633 [Galileo] was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged for his acts he committed since then. - "Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions" - "He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition." - "His offending [book] Dialogue was banned" The whole text of the 1633 sentence is available online (see the Wikipedia article for the link)! Some crucial parts of it, quoted: - "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 condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure" --- 1) your claim, quoting: "Galileo being locked up for promoting heliocentrism. That is not why he was locked up." The very sentence by the Inquisition is explicitly the opposite of that claim of yours. 2) Just in case, here is an alternative link to the full 1633 sentence: http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-sentence-22-june-1633/ http://www.creatinghistory.com/galileo-galileis-sentence-22-...

vidarh 8y ago
The text of the decision is relatively irrelevant. GP argues that the charge of heliocentrism was merely a pretext, and that the real reason was political, and that Galileo's heresy would have been overlooked if it wasn't for that. I don't know if that's correct or not, but it's not like they would admit in the decision that the choice to prosecute was because he'd said mean things about the pope.

imbokodo 8y ago

Copernicus was employed by the Catholic Church, but did not publish until March of 1543 - and he died in May 1543. So yes, he was employed by the church and openly promoted heliocentrism for less than two months and then died.