Dangerous Concept, Dangerous Times - Galileo, Kepler And The Church Sixteen Years To Indictment - Closing In On The Man Galileo

Chapter Five

-II-
Dangerous Concept, Dangerous Times - Galileo, Kepler and the Church
Sixteen Years to Indictment - Closing in on the man Galileo.

"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth." - from Galileo's book Il saggiatore (The Assayer)

"You cannot help it, Mr. Sarsi, that it was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else. This is the truth which neither malice nor envy can suppress" - from Galileo's book Il Saggiatore, The Assayer, 1623

"Men pay heed to an astrologer who contends that it is the earth that moves, and not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. If a man yearns for a reputation as a profound scientist, he should invent some new system. This madman would subvert the whole science of astronomy; but Scripture tells us that Joshua bade the sun, and not the earth, to stand still." - Luther's Table-Talk of Astronomy and Astrology [ 1 ] & [ 2 ]

"In general, Galileo's deceptiveness has created no end of difficulties for his interpreters. One scholar has made the comment that perhaps, "All the pronouncements of Galileo have to be taken cum grano salis [ with a grain of salt - k.p. ]. Many of Galileo's dissimulations were no doubt rooted in prudence. Nevertheless, those whose ridicule he feared were not members of the clergy, but his own lay colleagues who occupied chairs of astronomy and philosophy at Bologna, Pisa, Padua, and elsewhere. The risk of ecclesiastical censure during the first fifty years of his life never occurred to him. On his own...