07 Dec




















them to the doubters through his telescope: they either declared it impious to look, or, if they did look, denounced the satellites as illusions from the devil. Good Father Clavius declared that "to see satellites of Jupiter, men had to make an instrument which would create them." In vain did Galileo try to save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was "worse than Luther or Calvin." The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua, by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they can not be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of the heavens to the other."(57) (57) For principle points as given, see Libri, Histoire des Sciences mathematiques en Italie, vol. iv, p. 211; De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 26, for account of Father Clavius. It is interesting to know that Clavius, in his last years, acknowledged that "the whole system of the heavens is broken down, and must be mended," Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol. xv, p. 478. See Th. Martin, Galilee, pp. 34, 208, and 266; also Heller, Geschichte der Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, vol. i, p. 366. For the original documents, see L'Epinois, pp.34 and 36; or better, Gebler's careful edition of the trial (Die Acten des Galileischen Processes, Stuttgart, 1877), pp. 47 et seq. Martin's translation seems somewhat too free. See also Gebler, Galileo Galilei, English translation, London, 1879, pp.

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