Zach-Week+3

In the beginning of Galileo’s letter to Christina of Tuscany, he seems very cocky about his discoveries. He questions the intelligence of all those that oppose his ideas and doesn’t offer much room for other ideas. While he was right and it has been proved that he was right, he seems too confident in an age where the ideas of the universe were rapidly changing. Galileo says “if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them.” This is true to an extent, but until recently before this letter was written, people had no means to look into the sky and see things that Galileo was seeing. These people that he was referring to probably had looked into the sky before and had not seen any of these bodies. Galileo’s discovery would be a great shock to these people then for that very reason, they had looked for themselves and their senses told them what they saw. However, his mindset is easy to understand. In today’s society, if a group of scientists proves something, the general public takes their word for it and believes it. The general population has no way to prove advanced scientific study so they believe that other scientists would argue the science if it were wrong. Galileo did prove his findings with the simple fact that you could see things in the sky that weren’t known to be there before. Even with this solid evidence people did not believe him and fought very strongly to prove he was wrong. Anyone in Galileo’s position would be frustrated and fed up with people arguing without logic. Arguments against Galileo’s findings were based on the bible. He brought up many counterarguments to this including Copernicus’ high interest in religion. The Bible itself is also a translation from years to years and from languages to languages. It is impossible that the current Bible is the same as the word of the original. When Galileo was prosecuted 18 years after his letter to the grand duchess, he was forced to take back what he had said about the formation of the solar system. It was illegal to say that the sun was the center of the system, or anything against the church. He said, “I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God's help I will in future believe all which the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church doth hold, preach, and teach.” It is sad that at seventy years of age he was forced to publically dismiss what he had been seeking and discovering for his whole life.