scienceillustrated.com.au | 25exhibition in Rome in 1624 and built a
much improved version, probably while
simultaneously busting out some really
awesome licks on the lute.
Galileo did not invent the first microscope
but he was certainly an alum of the
institution (the Accademia dei Lincei - go
Lynxes!) that coined the names “telescope”
and “microscope”. Since this was all Greek to
everyone else, the names stuck.
In 1623, Galileo published The Assayer,
a neat little book that was well-received at
the time and is today recognised as
nothing less than one of the pioneering
works of the scientific method.
THAT THING WITH THE POPE
Since by this point, doing anything else
probably seemed trivially easy, Galileo
decided to round out the final phase of his
incredible life of scientific discovery with
something big. How big? Big, as in: taking
on the entire human race and its belief
that the Sun went around the Earth.
Initially, Galileo had papal approval to
publish Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems, which was his theory of
heliocentrism, which we now know to be
correct. Because Pope Urban VIII had just
been elected and, some historians believe,
was trying to show that the Vatican was
down with all this new science stuff, and
maybe if people talked about weird things
like the sun being the centre of the
universe, they didn't need to be tortured
and burned. Necessarily.
The only rule (well, not the only rule,
but the most important rule) was that
Galileo wasn’t allowed to claim that
heliocentrism was definitely real,
he had to say it was just a theory.
At first everything was cool,
but after the Inquisition’s
book club finished reading
Dialogue, things very
quickly became not
very cool at all.
Galileo was
accused of
disobeying a direct
Papal injunction -
the Inquisition
reminded him that
he'd received an
official warning
against promoting
heliocentrism as early as
- In 1633, after what
was probably a very shouty trial, Galileo
was found guilty of heresy.
Anyone else would probably have spent
the rest of their lives in a dank cell, but this
was Galileo Galilei. The Inquisition knew its
limits. There’s burning Templars, there’s
expelling Jews, and then there’s putting
everyone’s favourite maths
geek in the hole.
Also, as heresy goes,
Galileo did play it pretty cool.
He was, after all, still a
devout Catholic. And by
sticking to the science and
not extending his theories to
a wholesale denial of the
Holy Trinity, the divinity of
Christ, and the virginity of Mary, Galileo was
never on the hook to the same extent as
fellow cosmologist Giordano Bruno had been
back in 1600. They burned him at the stake.
(Incidentally, the last person executed
for heresy by the Catholic Church was
Spanish schoolteacher Cayetano Ripoli, in1826, for teaching kids that maybe, given
the evidence, God doesn’t answer prayers.)
Anyway, after what was no doubt a very
intense evening of legal wrangling,
Galileo’s sentence was commuted to house
arrest the very next day - 23 June 1633.
He returned to his villa near Florence
where he remained for the
rest of his life. He went
totally blind in 1638, and
eventually died in 1642. In
a world where scientists
were as likely to be burned
alive as they were to get
tenure, Galileo had
survived for 78 years.AND ANOTHER THING
Galileo did all this, lived his whole life -
made his discoveries and built his
inventions, fought the entire Catholic
Church, got threatened with physical
torture by the actual Inquisition - all while
supporting his family and running a bunch
of complicated businesses.
He also had to deal with the, uh, social
issues of fathering three children out of
wedlock, and he had to pay for his sisters’
dowries from his own personal fortune
after his father died..
And on top of all this, he had a brother
who was a stereotypical drunk bankrupt
idiot who kept asking him for money. That
brother's name, because the universe is
hilarious, was Michelangelo.
So yeah. If you’re stuck on a flight
to London sat next to a
guy who says he got a
PhD at age 18 and has
invested in
cryptocurrency, and he
think’s he’s a
supergenius gaming
the system because
he’s made a bit of
money... you’re
probably justified in
telling him to get
some perspective.
Galileo could
teach him that
perspective.
Because he lectured
in perspective at the
Accademia delle Arti
del Disegno, in
Renaissance Florence.
Smart kid.Galileo wasn't
allowed to claim
that heliocentrism
was defi nitely
real