(^106) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
• The existence of countless stars previously unseen, suggesting that there was much about
the cosmos that was not known
• The rugged, crater-filled surface of the moon, suggesting that it was not created of per-
fect celestial matter
• Four moons orbiting the planet Jupiter, suggesting that it would not be so strange for
Earth to have a moon as well
Unfortunately, Galileo mistakenly believed that both a combination of his growing
fame and his value to his powerful patron (the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo de’ Medici)
would protect him from the wrath of the Catholic Church. Because of this mistaken belief,
Galileo began to promote more boldly both the Copernican theory and his method of
knowing nature through the application of reason to empirical observations. In 1615, he
was summoned to Rome, where he narrowly escaped being branded a heretic only because
he had a powerful friend, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, who interceded on Galileo’s behalf
and managed to convince the Church to brand the Copernican theory “erroneous” rather
than “heretical.” Galileo was set free with a stern warning. In 1623, Barberini became Pope
Urban VIII. The following year, Galileo returned to Rome for a series of discussions with
the Pope. He left having been given permission to teach Copernicanism as a theory, but not
as a true account of the cosmos.
Over the next decade and a half, Galileo continued to promote his particular brand of
natural philosophy. In 1632, chafing against the constrictions put upon him, Galileo effec-
tively took his case to the public by abandoning the Latin prose of the scholarly elite for
the vernacular Italian of the masses and publishing a thinly veiled attack on what he con-
sidered to be the absurdity of the Church’s defense of the Aristotelian model. His Dialogue
on the Two Chief Systems of the World dismantled the arguments in favor of the traditional,
Aristotelian view of the cosmos and presented the Copernican system as the only alterna-
tive for reasonable people. Early the following year, Galileo was summoned before the
Inquisition and forced to recant. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life under house
arrest and forbidden ever to publish again. The long-term effect of Galileo’s condemnation
was to shift the locus of the Scientific Revolution to the Protestant countries of Europe.
Advances in Anatomy, Physiology, and Medicine
During the sixteenth century, the fields of anatomy, physiology, and medicine were heavily
influenced by the work of a Greek physician Galen, whose ideas were derived from observa-
tion and dissection of animals. He postulated that there were two vascular (blood) systems:
muscular, with bright red blood in arteries; and digestive, with darker blood located in
veins. He also believed humans had four “humors,” or liquids in the body whose balance
was integral to health. An imbalance of blood, yellow bile, black bile, or phlegm would be
diagnosed through observation of the urine.
Galen’s views were rejected by Paracelsus (an adopted name, meaning “greater than
Celsus”). Influenced in part by his childhood in a mining town where he observed that
metals “grow” in the earth, he developed an interest in alchemy, chemistry, and metallurgy,
specifically that illness resulted from chemical imbalance. He also placed great weight in
the folk remedies and wisdom of commoners. Due to his irascible and egotistical nature,
his ideas were not widely adopted. He did identify metals as the cause of silicosis (through
inhalation) and goiter (through drinking water) and used combinations of metals in treat-
ment of diseases like syphilis and others. His advances laid the foundations for using chem-
istry in drug therapies and homeopathy.15_Bartolini_Ch15_099-118.indd 106 27/04/18 1:54 PM