Descartes by A.C. Grayling

Author:A.C. Grayling [Grayling, A.C.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

What brought the Copernican question to the fore were the public pronouncements of Galileo's former pupil Castelli, by then professor of mathematics at Pisa. Castelli was asked by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II, and his mother the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, to explain the discrepancy between scripture and the Copernican model. In complying he defended the Copernican model, and wrote to Galileo to show off to his former teacher about how successful he had been in making the Copernican case. In his reply Galileo asserted his view that the Bible should always be interpreted according to what science had discovered, and not vice versa. Copies of this letter were shown by Galileo's enemies to the Inquisition, which, however, at that point did nothing—they were biding their time. Then, in 1616, Galileo wrote directly to the Grand Duchess iterating his conviction that scripture should not be taken literally if it is inconsistent with what mathematically based science reveals about the world. In the process of arguing for this view he made it clear that he took the Copernican theory to be literally true. "I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it," he wrote. "I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many on the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with the Copernican position and confirm it."33

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.