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Dialogue on the Two Greatest World Systems
Galileo and William R. Shea
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in the history of science. He was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589, and in 1592 he moved to the University of Padua where he taught for the next eighteen years. In 1610 he published a number of sensational telescopic discoveries, including that the lunar landscape is like that of a barren earth, and his book, the Sidereal Message, sold out in less than a week. The next year he was awarded the prestigious position of personal mathematician and philosopher to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence. He next found that there are dark spots on the face of the sun and that gave rise to a lively international controversy that is recorded in his Letters on the Sunspots. He argued for a non-literal interpretation of the Bible, and he became involved in a dispute over the nature of comets with a Jesuit professor whom he lampooned in a witty essay, The Assayer. When the Roman Inquisition banned the Copernican theory in 1616, he refrained from writing about the motion of the Earth until a Florentine friend became Pope Urban VIII in 1623. His Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, which is not only a scientific masterpiece but an outstanding literary work, appeared in 1632. Summoned to Rome he was put on trial and condemned to house arrest in 1633. He nonetheless went on to write his Discourse on Two New Sciences, the work for which he is remembered as the forerunner of Newton. He died in Florence in 1642.
