People/Galileo Galilei: Difference between revisions
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Suffice it to say, after giving him every grace and favor to treat Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not fact, Galileo refused, claiming he had proof when, indeed, he had none at all. The Church hierarchy simply could not put up with his roguery any longer. His former confidant, Cardinal Barberini, later became Urban VIII, and, as pope, made it a point to condemn Galileo for lack of proof.
The most egregious fact about the pre-1641 Galileo is that at the time he was vigorously defending Copernicanism before the Holy Office in 1633, he knew even then the system didn’t work and that he had no substantial proof for it. Since he rejected Kepler’s elliptical orbits (although he used Kepler’s material whenever it was to his advantage, and claimed it as his own), and refused any compromise with the [[Agencies/Jesuits|Jesuits]] who were going over to Brahe’s geocentric model, he was stuck with Copernicus’ forty-eight epicycles, yet he advertised the model as one that bypassed the earlier mechanical problems “with one single motion of the earth.” It is obvious that either Galileo was lying or he never read Copernicus’ book.
Galileo that the Church would not even consider changing its position on the cosmos unless Galileo could provide proof of his claims. In one of his more audacious moves, Galileo tried to prove his case by a strange concoction of theory and conjecture on the nature of tidal action. Having rejected as “occultish” Kepler’s explanation that the combination of the sun’s and moon’s gravity caused the daily tides, Galileo, even knowing that his own explanation could not be physically possible, nevertheless, to save his prestige, tried to convince the Catholic prelates that tides were caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis and the earth’s monthly changes in orbital velocity. In addition, his theory addressed only a 24-hour tidal cycle, but even sailors knew, and reported to the common folk, that the tides alternated every 12 hours. Galileo then tried to explain the discrepancy by postulating that the ocean floor varied in depth.
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