Dialogue on the two systems of the world summary. Dialogues about the two main systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernican (continued)

Year and place of first publication: 1632, Italy

Literary form: scientific monograph

The work of the great Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei had a profound impact on the development of science and philosophy, laying the foundations of modern experimental science and deepening man's understanding of nature and the universe. Although the Polish astronomer Copernicus argued in On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, published in 1543, that the Sun is the center of the universe and the Earth the planet that rotates, belief in the Ptolemaic geocentric system (named after the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy) prevailed in early 17th century. Ptolemy's theory placed the motionless Earth at the center of the universe, and the Sun, Moon and five planets revolved around it, fitting into a complex system of circular motions.

When Galileo, professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, first looked at the sky through a refractive telescope he had built, half a century had passed since Copernicus came up with his theory of a heliocentric universe. However, for the first time, experimental observation of the heavens through a telescope confirmed the Copernican hypothesis. In 1610, Galileo published The Starry Messenger, a twenty-four-page pamphlet recording his astronomical observations of the moon and planets. Galileo described there four previously unknown celestial bodies he discovered moving around the planet Jupiter and proved that the Copernican theory was correct. He also noted that the Moon is not a body emitting its own light, but is illuminated by the light of the Sun.

The Senate of Venice appointed Galileo a salary for his discoveries, and he became a mathematician to the Duke of Tuscany. In 1613, he published Letters on the Spots of the Sun, in which he made public his belief in the theory of Copernicus. Galileo was accused of saying that "the book of Nature is written in mathematical symbols" and that in observation and measurement lies the science of the future. In 1632, Galileo published a work that was destined to become a turning point in the history of science - "Dialogue about the two main world systems - Ptolemaic and Copernican."

In his dialogue with the Platonic tradition, Galileo allowed his three friends to present arguments for and against the Copernican system: a Florentine who believes in the Copernican system, an Aristotelian who supports the geocentric theory, and a Venetian aristocrat, to whose benefit they carried out this argument. Galileo wrote the text in Italian for non-specialists, instead of writing in Latin, the language of scholars and intellectuals.

Structuring the "Dialogue", Galileo conformed to church instructions that the heliocentric theory can be discussed as a useful mathematical hypothesis, but not as a manifestation of physical reality. However, the views he expressed in the Dialogue clearly supported the Copernican system. Galileo discovered that the Earth, like other planets, rotated on its axis, and the planets revolved around the Sun in elliptical orbits determined by the force of gravity. The idea of ​​a finite universe, contained in some external sphere, possessing unchanging perfection, was rejected. By proving that the Earth was not the center of creation, but, on the contrary, rather an insignificant part of it, Galileo turned the medieval system of cosmology based on Aristotle's theories about the movement of bodies.

In the Dialogue, Galileo expressed two principles that have become the guiding principles of modern science. First, statements and hypotheses concerning nature must always be based on observation and not on authorities; and secondly, natural processes can best be understood if they are represented in the language of mathematics.

CENSORED HISTORY

In 1616, the Copernican system was declared dangerous to the faith, and Galileo, summoned to Rome, received a warning from Pope Paul V "not to adhere, not to teach, and not to defend" the theory of Copernicus. Galileo promised to obey the Pope's instructions and returned to Florence. Similar theories published by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the New Astronomy were banned by the pope in 1619. According to the papal bull that accompanied this ban, the study and even reading of the books of Copernicus and Kepler was forbidden.

In 1624, Galileo again traveled to Rome to pay his respects to the newly appointed Pope Urban VIII.

Despite the ban of 1616, he asked the pope for permission to publish a book comparing the doctrines of Ptolemy and Copernicus. The Pope refused his request.

Despite the warnings of the Vatican, which listed the numerous corrections that had to be made to the book before the publication of any of the Copernican theories, in 1632 Galileo published the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World. He attempted to please the authorities by including a preface by a leading Vatican theologian describing the Copernican theory as merely an interesting intellectual exercise. But dad was not convinced. The book attracted the attention of all Europe. The growing threat of Protestantism provoked the pope into an aggressive reaction - in order to preserve the unity of church dogma.

Galileo's enemies in the Vatican then suggested that by publishing the book under the colophon (publisher's emblem) of three fish - a common reprint of the Florentine printers of Landini - Galileo made a slanderous reference to the three illiterate nephews of Pope Urban VIII, whom he promoted in the church hierarchy. They further suggested that under one of the participants in the dialogue, Simplicio, a conservative defender of geocentric views of the universe, a caricature of the pope himself was drawn.

In February 1633, Galileo was called to Rome. Although he fell seriously ill in Florence and was warned by doctors that he should not undertake such a journey in the middle of winter, that it might be fatal, the pope threatened to bring him by force in chains if he did not show himself. The Grand Duke of Florence gave a litter in which Galileo was to be carried to Rome, where he was imprisoned. In June, he stood trial on charges of heresy.

The court concentrated on the formalities of what the church hierarchs had told him during his visit to Rome in 1616 and how clearly he understood the pope's disapproval of Copernican theories. The Inquisition's verdict was that Galileo "was suspected of heresy, namely, that he believed and held a doctrine which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures, according to which the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world, that this opinion can be accepted and defended as possible - after it has been declared and determined that it is contrary to Holy Scripture ... "

Galileo was sentenced to an indefinite prison term and was required to make a public and formal recantation. On the morning of June 22, 1633, at the age of 70, Galileo knelt before the court and announced: “With a pure heart and unfeigned faith, I renounce, curse and reject the errors and heresies previously expressed and also any and every sect and error that would enter contrary to the Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never say or admit orally or in writing, anything that could bring such suspicions to me ... "" And yet it [the Earth] rotates, - according to legend, he muttered after his abdication.

In 1634, the Dialogue was formally condemned and banned along with all the works of Galileo. Galileo was imprisoned in a secluded house in Arcetri, in the suburbs of Florence, where he was allowed to receive visitors only with the permission of the pope's representative. During his imprisonment, Galileo managed to complete a new work, Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences, which was smuggled out of Italy and published by the Protestants at Leiden in 1638, four years before his death. Galileo was blind for the last four years of his life. In the end, the pope allowed the young scientist Vicenzo Viviani to help him. Galileo died in seclusion on January 8, 1642, a month later he turned 78 years old.

The "Index of Forbidden Books" of 1664 confirmed the ban on the writings of Copernicus and Galileo and all other works confirming the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun. In 1753, the Benedict XIV Index issued a general ban on books that taught heliocentric theory.

It was not until 1824, when Canon Settel, a professor of astronomy from Rome, published a paper on modern scientific theories, that the church finally announced the acceptance of the "general opinion of modern astronomers." From the next papal "Index" of 1835, the names of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler were excluded. On October 31, 1992, Galileo was formally rehabilitated by Pope John Paul II - 359 years, four months and nine days later, after Galileo was forced to recant his heresy that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

GALILEO GALILEI

DIALOGUE ABOUT THE TWO MAIN SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD PTOLOMEAN AND COPERNIC

TRANSLATION A.I.DOLGOVA OGIZ - USSR STATE PUBLISHING HOUSE OF TECHNICAL AND THEORETICAL LITERATURE MOSCOW * 1048 * LENINGRAD

FOREWORD

Almost four hundred years ago, on March 24, 1543, lying on his deathbed, little known until then, Canon Nicholas Copernicus of Thorn touched with his hand a freshly printed copy of his brilliant work in six books De revolutionibus Orbiumo celestium (i.e. "On the conversion celestial worlds”), which summed up his observations and reflections on this issue for more than thirty years and contained the foundations of the heliocentric system of the world. The ideas of Copernicus, presented by him in a strictly mathematical form and worked out on the basis of the richest factual material, only slowly and gradually began to spread among scientists from different countries, meeting different assessments from them. Thus, the most famous astronomer-observer of the era under consideration, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), did not recognize the Copernican system and, in contrast to it, put forward his own in 1588, according to which all the planets revolved around the Sun, with the exception of the Earth; the latter remained motionless and the Sun with the planets and the Moon revolved around it. This was a step forward in comparison with the system of Ptolemy, but a decisive step backward in comparison with the system of Copernicus (De Mundi Aetherei recentioribus phenomenis liber secundus, 1602). At the same time, Kepler (1571-1630) was not only a staunch supporter of the heliocentric system, but also a brilliant scientist who managed to develop the teachings of Copernicus, establishing three laws of planetary motions that bear his name (the first two were published by him in Astronomia sweat, 1609; the third was installed by him in May 1618). The opinion of other, less prominent scientists of the Central European countries is of no significant interest to us; one can only state that the teachings of Copernicus, however, with a delay of 50-60 years, became familiar to them and were interpreted by them as a serious * scientific theory. As the teaching of Copernicus was initially perceived in Italy, Galileo narrates very colorfully at the beginning of the second day of the Dialogue, putting into the mouth of the Sagredo a description of his conversation with visitors to the lectures of Christian Wursteisen (1544-1588), in which the latter propagated this teaching. However, even in this country there were, although few in number, adherents of the "Pythagorean" doctrine. Among them, the deep thinker Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who was burned at the stake in Rome by the Inquisition, deserves special attention. The same views were held by Giaccobo Mazzoni, teacher of Galileo, the only one of the professors at the University of Padua who did not belong to the peripatetic camp. It is also interesting that under the influence of new facts and evidence, i.e., much later, even such an honored scientist as Clavius ​​(1537-1612), the author of many reprinted comments on Sacrobosco's "Sphere", who throughout his long life he was engaged in presenting and defending it. 1* 4 PREFACE As for Galileo, he apparently inclined very early towards the ideas of Copernicus. This is evidenced by his letters to Mazzoni and Kepler, and in a letter to the latter (dated August 4, 1597) Galileo indicates that he continues to work on the teachings of Copernicus, which he adheres to "for many years." The fact that, since 1592, a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua and, as a result, a lecturer in spherical astronomy and the theory of the planets, Galileo in the initial period, at least, expounded these subjects in an established form (as evidenced by partially published after his death Lecture Trattato delta Sfera on Cosmografia, 1656) should not be taken as a fact in conflict with Galileo's own statement. Hardly any other presentation was at that time possible within the walls of the university; besides, Galileo did not yet possess any fully developed mechanical views (see, for example, his even earlier work Sermones de motu gravium, published only in 1854 and relating to the Pisan period of his activity, i.e. 1589-1592 .), nor such clear arguments against the Copernican system as the presence of the satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, sunspots, etc. Thus, slowly and gradually, the ideas of Copernicus found acceptance by a few large and independent scientists. The church treated them differently. One of the first to be frightened by the really deep "revolutionary" books of Copernicus, which shook the foundations of the geocentric system of the world, and at the same time not only the narrowly astronomical, but also much further general provisions of Aristotle's philosophy, were well-known figures of the Reformation: Luther (1483-1546) and Melanchthon (1497-1560). The first called Copernicus a fool who intends to turn the whole universe upside down, and the second, who was a scientific ideologue of the Reformation, considered it necessary that the civil authorities tame the astronomer who made the Earth move and the Sun stand still. There is no essential difference between these judgments and the later acts of the Catholic Church. The latter turned out to be only more consistent in its conclusions, as is clear from the "decree of the holy congregation" of March 5, 1616. and the sentence announced to Galileo on June 22, 1633. But this had its own, special, reasons. The nature of the official science of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which was cultivated in the universities, in particular the Italian ones, is fairly well known. The authority of Aristotle was still very high; the study of the actual phenomena of nature has long since receded into the background and has been replaced by a comparison of the opinions expressed about them by Aristotle or other authorities from among his commentators and followers; scientific works were therefore only in the nature of scholastic philological exercises; new discoveries and scientific data, which could not be ignored, were explained by summing them up under ready-made formulas, borrowed from the same rich book arsenal without new experimental verification. To this it must be added that the philosophy of Aristotle and his followers was officially shared by the Catholic Church, and a very influential Jesuit order, founded in 1534, paid great attention to ensuring that all new scientific data did not stand in apparent contradiction with the teachings of the peripatetics and in order to to ensure the unity of the direction of thought, they did not allow any of the members of the order to publish their works without the sanction of its highest spiritual administration. Thus, the criticism of the philosophy of Aristotle bordered on a speech against church canons, and the controversy with individual Jesuit priests affected the interests and dignity of this order as a whole. From this it is clear how difficult and dangerous was the scientific activity of those innovators who, under the influence of profound changes in the entire structure of their contemporary economic relations and the development of technology, were inevitably drawn into conflict with scholastic doctrines. Getting acquainted with the life and scientific activities of Galileo, we clearly see how his initial struggle against individual delusions of Aristotle, concerning the laws of the fall of bodies, their swimming, etc., flared up more and more fiercely and captured all the larger areas of knowledge, until it resulted in in the clash of two worldviews. Ultimately, Galileo was tried and condemned for propagating the teachings of Copernicus, not by the ten monks who were appointed for this, and not by the seven who signed the verdict, but by the Catholic Church, as such, which saw in the Dialogue an extremely dangerous essay that severely undermines its authority. . She was not mistaken in this: despite the reservations made by Galileo (which we will discuss a little later), the Dialogue is an exceptionally striking document directed against those provisions with which the Catholic Church has come in solidarity. Indeed, the latter took the geocentric system of Aristotle-Ptolemy under its protection, declaring that the recognition of the Sun as the fixed center of the world is stupid and absurd from the point of view of philosophy and heretical in essence, as clearly contradicting many texts of scripture; giving the Earth a daily motion is at least a delusion in matters of faith. Meanwhile, the entire main text of the Dialogue testifies that Galileo considered the heliocentric system of Copernicus to be the only real system of the world, in defense of which he collected a large number of various convincing arguments. This is the strength of the Dialogue as a work that has an objectively anti-religious character, which it has not lost to this day. The full title of the work of Galileo under consideration, placed on the title page, may mislead an insufficiently prepared reader. It is possible that he will treat it as a large mathematical work sustained in the classical style and will look for in it a detailed exposition of the teachings of Ptolemy and Copernicus, an explanation of the advantages that the latter gives in comparison with the theory of epicycles, an indication of the weaknesses of this teaching, perhaps , a partial improvement of it, an interpretation of Kepler's laws, etc. But almost nothing of this is contained in the Dialogue. Galileo, in his presentation, simplifies the Copernican system to the extreme, considering the motion of the planets as taking place exactly in concentric circles, and only in one case does he slip the expression - the average distance from the Earth to the Sun; he mentions Kepler only in passing and not at all in connection with his laws; leaves the theory of epicycles almost untouched. Instead, he sums up all the data at his disposal from the field of mechanics, physics and astronomy to prove as an indisputable child that the Earth has a daily and annual motion, and the Sun is stationary, masterfully breaking up opposing arguments and consciously allowing for reasoning that may at first glance seem to be deviations from the main train of thought, but which are actually subordinate to one holistic idea. True, both in the address to the reader, and in the final part of the fourth day of the Dialogue, and in many places in the text, Galileo speaks of the Copernican system only as a hypothesis; however, these formal and forced explanations in no way shake the most convincing arguments in favor of its reality and do not allow the reader to doubt for a moment the true intentions of the creator of the Dialogue. Galileo divides the content of his work into four days. The first is assigned to them to criticize the teachings of the Peripatetics about the completely different nature of the heavenly bodies and the Earth, and to prove their great similarity; the second day is devoted to proving the compatibility of the movements of bodies on the Earth with the daily rotation of the latter around its axis; during the third day, the question of the revolution of the Earth around the Sun is mainly dealt with, and the evidence of a large distance from the Earth of a new star that appeared in 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia is attributed to the same day, although this issue, as affecting the variability of the sky, is more likely to be related to the topic of the first day; finally, the fourth day is devoted to a consideration of how the phenomena of tides are easily explained by the presence of a diurnal rotation in the first place ...

Galileo Galileo(15641642), Italian scientist, one of the founders of exact natural science. Son of V. Galilee. He fought against scholasticism, considered experience to be the basis of knowledge. He laid the foundations of modern mechanics: put forward the idea of ​​the relativity of motion, established the laws of inertia, free fall and the motion of bodies on an inclined plane, the addition of motions; discovered the isochronism of pendulum oscillations; was the first to investigate the strength of beams. His work on the study of the nature of light, color, experiments to determine the speed of light, the creation of optical instruments stimulated the development of optics. He built a telescope with a 32-fold magnification, discovered mountains on the Moon, 4 satellites of Jupiter, phases near Venus, spots on the Sun, etc. He actively defended the heliocentric system of the world, for which he was subjected to the court of the Inquisition (1633), which forced him to renounce the teachings of N. Copernicus. Until the end of his life, Galileo was considered a "prisoner of the Inquisition" and was forced to live in his villa Arcetri near Florence. In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the decision of the Inquisition Court erroneous and rehabilitated Galileo.

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Name:
Galileo Galilei
Publisher: State Publishing House of Technical and Theoretical Literature
The year of publishing: 1948
Pages: 378
Format: DJVU+OCR
Size: 12.3 MB
Quality: Excellent, 600dpi, text layer.

Translation and preface by A.I. Dolgov. In 1632, the most famous work of Galileo was published in Florence, which served as a pretext for the trial of the scientist. The first complete Russian translation of this work. Gift edition in super and printed box. Printed in Dresden from matrices of 1 exemplary printing house. Antique book.

FROM THE PREFACE
Almost four hundred years ago, on March 24, 1543, lying on his deathbed, little known until then, Canon Nicholas Copernicus of Thorn touched with his hand a freshly printed copy of his brilliant work in six books De revolutionibus Orbiumo celestium (i.e. "On the conversion celestial worlds”), which summed up his observations and reflections on this issue for more than thirty years and contained the foundations of the heliocentric system of the world.
The ideas of Copernicus, presented by him in a strictly mathematical form and worked out on the basis of the richest factual material, only slowly and gradually began to spread among scientists from different countries, meeting different assessments from them. Thus, the most famous astronomer-observer of the era under consideration, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), did not recognize the Copernican system and, in contrast to it, put forward his own in 1588, according to which all the planets revolved around the Sun, with the exception of the Earth; the latter remained motionless and the Sun with the planets and the Moon revolved around it. This was a certain step forward compared to the Ptolemaic system, but a decisive step backward compared to the Copernican system (De Mundi Aetherei recentiori-bus phenomenis liber secundus, 1602). At the same time, Kepler (1571-1630) was not only a staunch supporter of the heliocentric system, but also a brilliant scientist who managed to develop the teachings of Copernicus, establishing three laws of planetary motions that bear his name (the first two were published by him in Astronomia nova, 1609; the third was installed by him in May 1618). The opinion of other, less prominent scientists of the Central European countries is of no significant interest to us; one can only state that the teachings of Copernicus, however, with a delay of 50-60 years, became familiar to them and were interpreted by them as a serious * scientific theory.
As the teaching of Copernicus was initially perceived in Italy, Galileo narrates very colorfully at the beginning of the second day of the Dialogue, putting into the mouth of the Sagredo a description of his conversation with visitors to the lectures of Christian Wursteisen (1544-1588), in which the latter propagated this teaching. However, even in this country there were, although few in number, adherents of the "Pythagorean" doctrine. Among them, the deep thinker Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who was burned at the stake in Rome by the Inquisition, deserves special attention. The same views were held by Giaccobo Mazzoni, teacher of Galileo, the only one of the professors at the University of Padua who did not belong to the peripatetic camp. It is also interesting that, under the influence of new facts and evidence, i.e., much later, such an honored scientist as Clavius ​​(1537-1612), the author of repeatedly reprinted comments on Sacrobosco's "Sphere", who during throughout his long life he has been expounding and defending it...

Chapter XI. Dialogue on the two main systems of the world: Ptolemaic and Copernican

Of the natural things worthy of study, in my opinion, the study of the structure of the Universe should be put in the first place. Since the Universe contains everything and surpasses everything in size, it determines and directs everything else and dominates everything. If any of the people managed to rise mentally above the general level of mankind, then it was, of course, Ptolemy and Copernicus, who were able to read, see and explain so much of the high in the structure of the Universe.

Galileo Galilei. "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World", 1632

In 1597, in a Latin correspondence between Galileo and Kepler prompted by the publication of Kepler's Cosmographic Mystery, an Italian Catholic professor admitted that he had long been a "secret Copernican", but could not openly support his belief in a moving Earth for fear of being ridiculed by colleagues. In his response, the German Lutheran urged him to join the pro-Copernican movement: "Isn't it better to pull the wagon to the destination together, by joining forces?"

Galileo answered Copernicus with silence. Only in 1610, after improving the optical instrument, which he called the telescope, and discovering through its lenses such celestial wonders as the satellites of Jupiter, Galileo publicly announced his support for the concept of Copernicus.

Galileo's telescope discovery of Jupiter's four largest moons in January 1610, described and schematically illustrated here by his own hand, was further proof that the Earth is not the only center of motion in the universe.

Before Galileo's innovations made it possible to improve the primitive spyglass, instruments only helped astronomers determine the position of celestial bodies. Galileo's telescopes allowed observers to learn something about their composition. For example, the lunar landscape rose up in rocky mountains and fell into deep gorges, much like the surface of the Earth. The sun gave off dark spots that gathered and slid across its surface like clouds driven by the wind. The telescope further disturbed the calm of the heavens by showing unknown bodies - not "new" formations, such as Tycho's supernova in 1572 (or Kepler's in 1604), suddenly becoming visible to the naked eye, but objects that have never been seen before, beyond the capabilities of the human eye. vision, including the ear-like protruding sides of Saturn and the hundreds of faint stars that filled the borders of the constellations. In addition, the planet Venus showed a phase change (from a crescent to a full disk), which, without any doubt, testified to its rotation around the Sun. The phases of Venus fit equally well into the systems of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus, but the Ptolemaic Universe could not explain such a phenomenon. Galileo published his findings. The thin Starry Herald, which explained the "message of the stars," sold out within a week of being printed at Padua in March 1610. After that, Galileo did not have time to build telescopes to meet the demand.

Information about new discoveries spread quickly and to loud cheers, but Galileo also became a lightning rod for all the criticism, ridicule and rage that Copernicus feared. Partly because of Galileo's lavish praise, On Rotations came under the suspicion of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, the Church's 16th-century watchdog for banning books that it believed threatened faith or morality.

Copernicus foresaw trouble from "talkers who consider themselves experts in astronomy, but are completely ignorant of this subject" who will distort the meaning of Holy Scripture in order to condemn it. Rheticus also expected a flood of slander and tried to contain it by supplementing the provisions of the Copernican system with chapters and verses of the Bible with the sincere approval of the Bishop of Giza. Even Osiander, whose anonymous Address to the Reader so offended Giese and Kepler, probably only wanted to defend the book by writing off Copernicus's bold assertions as clever computational tricks. And indeed, as expected, "On Rotations" almost immediately provoked the wrath of the religious authorities.

Pope Paul III, to whom the book is dedicated, established the Holy Roman and Ecumenical Inquisition in 1542, a year before the publication of the book, as part of a campaign against Lutheran heresy. Through the efforts of Retik or Giza, His Holiness received a copy of On Rotations. He handed it over to his personal theologian Bartolomeo Spina from Pisa, prefect of the Sacred and Apostolic Palace. However, Spina fell ill and died before he could review the book, and the task was given to his friend and Dominican brother Giovanni Mario Tolosani. In an appendix to the treatise On the Truth of the Holy Scriptures, published in 1544, Tolosani called the late Copernicus a braggart and a fool who risked deviating from the faith.

“Get together people who are versed in all sciences and let them read the first book of Copernicus about a moving Earth and a fixed starry sky,” Tolosani challenged. “No doubt they will find that his arguments lack strength and can be easily refuted. For it is foolish to contradict a belief accepted by all a very long time ago for extremely good reasons, unless the skeptic uses more serious and undeniable evidence, completely refuting the contrary arguments. You can't say the same about Copernicus."

Criticized in this way, the book "On Rotations" for a time escaped official condemnation. However, all the works of Rhetic, along with the works of Martin Luther, Johann Schöner and many other Protestant authors, were included in the Roman Index of Forbidden Books in 1559. Petraeus's name was included in the accompanying list of banned printers that same year, prompting a number of Catholic fanatics to destroy their copies of On Rotations because of their association with the disgraced publisher. Fortunately, in 1564 his name disappeared from the Index. Two years later, when his relative Petri brought out his Basel edition, several Catholic readers obediently cut out the text of the First Narrative that was included in it with scissors and knives. Some have also removed Retik's name from the title page by crossing it out or pasting it over with a piece of paper.

In Protestant lands, where the Index had no weight, On Rotations was still attacked on religious grounds. Therefore, Kepler defended the idea of ​​Copernicus in the introduction to his New Astronomy of 1609. He argued that the Holy Scriptures, in both colloquial and poetic language, spoke of ordinary things, such as the apparent movement of the sun in the sky, "about which it has no purpose to teach mankind." Given the Bible's emphasis on salvation, Kepler advised readers to "consider the Holy Spirit as a divine messenger and refrain from dragging it into the realm of the physical without any reason."

Galileo supported Kepler in the matter of interpreting the Bible. “I believe that the purpose of Holy Scripture was to convince people of the truths necessary for salvation,” he explained his position in 1613, “which neither science nor any other means could make convincing, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit. But I do not consider it necessary to believe that God, who endowed us with feelings, speech and reason, would teach us such things instead of us ourselves, with their help, knowing the structure of nature. This applies especially to the sciences, about which there are only a few words in Scripture, and especially to astronomy, which is not given attention at all, because even the names of the planets are not mentioned in it. It is obvious that if the sacred texts were to teach people astronomy, they would not bypass this subject.”

Galileo greatly expanded his comments two years later, in 1615, in response to rumors that the Inquisition was planning to add "On Rotations" to the Index. Addressing the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Christina of Lorraine, he pointed out the shortsightedness of such an action:

“Forbid Copernicus now, when his doctrine is reinforced daily by many new observations and scientists reading his book; after this opinion has been tolerated and tolerated for many years without being much popular or confirmed, it would, in my opinion, be a contradiction to the truth and an attempt to hide and suppress it, which revealed itself so clearly and undoubtedly. If not to destroy and ban his entire book, but only to condemn it as false individual parts, then this would (if I am not mistaken) still more damage to the minds of people, since it would allow them to see a proven statement, which is considered heresy to believe. And banning all science is almost the same as censoring hundreds of passages of Holy Scripture that teach us that the glory and majesty of Almighty God are miraculously discernible in all His creations and read in the open book of Heaven.

Galileo Galilei, philosopher and mathematician at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Painting by Ottavio Leoni

Galileo also spoke decisively about Joshua. He considered this miracle first from a Ptolemaic (geocentric and geostatic) point of view, and then stated that the Copernican universe was much more capable of answering the prayers of Jesus.

“Now let us consider to what extent it is true that the famous passage from the Book of Joshua can be taken literally, and under what conditions the day could be greatly lengthened as a result of the Sun's execution of the order given to it by Jesus to stop.

In the Ptolemaic system, this is not possible at all. The fact is that in it the movement of the Sun along the ecliptic occurs from west to east, which means that it is opposite to the direction of movement prime mobile(the celestial sphere farthest from the Earth, which was considered the cause of the movement of the entire system of heavens), which in this system causes the change of day and night. Thus, it is obvious that if the Sun stopped its own movement, then the day would become shorter, not longer. It would be possible to prolong the day by accelerating the own motion of the Sun; and in order for the Sun to remain above the horizon for some time in one place, without declining to the west, it would be necessary to accelerate this movement until it would be equal in speed to prime mobile. To do this, the generally accepted speed of the Sun would have to be increased by about 360 times. Therefore, if Joshua wanted his words to be taken literally in their true and exact sense, he would have ordered the Sun to speed up its movement so that the driving force prime mobile did not take him to the west. But since his words were intended for people who probably did not know anything about the movements of heavenly bodies, except for the movement of the Sun from east to west, he condescended to their abilities and spoke according to their understanding, since he did not intend to explain to them the location of the spheres, but only show them the greatness of your miracle."

Following this, Galileo considered the possibility that Joshua meant stopping prime mobile, and with it all celestial motions. “Indeed, Jesus meant that the entire system of the heavenly spheres would come to a halt. This is clear from his simultaneous order to the Moon, which has nothing to do with the lengthening of the day. And the order to the Moon applies to other planets, although they are not mentioned in any way here, nor anywhere else in the Bible, which was not written to teach us astronomy.

Returning to the theory of Copernicus, Galileo reminded the Grand Duchess Christine of his own discovery that the Sun rotates on its axis with a period of about a month, which he described in his Letters on Sunspots.

“If we take into account the greatness of the Sun and the fact that it is a font of light (which I am going to convincingly prove), which illuminates not only the Moon and the Earth, but also other planets, dark in themselves, then, I believe, it will be from a philosophical point of view view it is permissible to say that the Sun - as the supreme ruler of Nature and in a certain sense the heart and soul of the Universe - by its rotation transmits to other bodies surrounding it, not only light, but also movement. And just as if the heart of an animal stopped beating, it would paralyze all its other members, so the cessation of the movement of the Sun would cause the stop of all the planets.

So stopping the Sun was enough to immobilize "the whole system of the world." As a result of it, all rotations of celestial bodies stopped and "the day miraculously lengthened." For greater persuasiveness, Galileo noted how "gracefully" his script corresponded to "the literal meaning of the sacred text."

Vivaciously continuing, Galileo moved on to the question of the Sun standing still "in the midst of the sky" as written in chapter 10, verse 13 of the Book of Joshua, and carefully dismantled "Authoritative theologians raise the issue of this passage, for it seems very probable that, when Jesus wanted to lengthen the day, the sun was setting, but not at its zenith... After all, if it had been at its zenith, then either a miracle would not have been needed, or it would have been enough to pray for some delay.” This conundrum caused several biblical scholars, whom Galileo named by name, to shy away from interpreting the phrase "in the midst of heaven." But all contradictions were removed, “if, in accordance with the Copernican system, we place the Sun “in the middle”, that is, in the center of the celestial orbits and circular motions of the planets, as it should be done. Then at any hour, even at noon, even in the evening, the day would lengthen and all celestial rotations would stop as a result of the Sun stopping in the middle of the sky, that is, in the center where it is located.

Fascinated by the Copernican system, Galileo apparently forgot that Catholic law forbade the laity from interpreting religious texts. Only the holy fathers were allowed to explore the depths of biblical meanings. The Protestant Kepler in his own country could follow Luther's footsteps to a personal understanding of the Scriptures with impunity. However, Galileo, in accordance with the decrees of the Council of Trent issued in 1564, did not dare to interpret Scripture "other than in accordance with the unanimous agreement of the Fathers."

The “fathers” included not only ancient saints and martyrs, but also cardinal inquisitors of Galileo’s time, among whom was the theological adviser to the pope, the Jesuit Roberto Bellarmino, who hit Galileo’s arguments with his authoritative statement:

“The words “the sun rises and the sun sets. Rising, it hurries to its place where it rises, etc. belong to Solomon, who not only spoke with divine inspiration, but was also wiser than other people, versed in human sciences and knew about all created things, and his wisdom was from God. Therefore, he would hardly have asserted anything contrary to proven truth. And if you tell me that Solomon spoke only about the visible side of phenomena and that it only seems to us that the Sun revolves around the Earth, while the Earth actually moves, as if standing on the deck of a ship it seems that the shore is moving away from the ship, I will answer, that although the traveler may have this impression, he still knows that it is an illusion, and is able to correct it, because he clearly understands that it is the ship that is moving, and not the coast. But as regards the Sun and the Earth, there is no need for an intelligent person to correct his opinion, because his experience leaves no doubt that the Earth is at rest, and his eyes do not deceive him when they say that the Sun, Moon and stars are in motion.

On February 23, 1616, a commission of eleven theologians put the idea of ​​Copernicus to a vote. They concluded that "the idea that the Sun is fixed at the center of the world" is "formally heretical" because it is contrary to Scripture. In addition, they decided that the concept of a heliocentric universe was philosophically "stupid and absurd". Although the movement of the earth seemed to them no less ridiculous idea, they simply called it "erroneous belief" because it did not explicitly deny the truths of the Holy Scriptures. These judgments formed the basis of the edict adopted on March 5, in which the teachings of Copernicus were called "false and contrary to Holy Scripture." "On Rotations" will later be mentioned in an edict related to the Index of Forbidden Books. But instead of being destroyed (the fate of other banned books), further distribution of the book "On Rotations" was suspended until corrections were made. In the decades since its publication, this book has become so useful that the Church could not openly condemn it. Indeed, the much-needed calendar reform that Copernicus was engaged in has since been carried out with the help of this text. "On Rotations" and "Prussian Tables" provided data on the average length of the tropical year and synodic month, which enabled the Jesuit Father Christopher Clavius ​​of the Roman College of the Jesuits to create the so-called Gregorian calendar, which replaced the Julian in 1582, during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII .

In 1619, another decree related to the Index was passed, banning Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and "all other works of this author." The following year, another decree listed ten corrections to be made to "On Rotations". These few changes (only ten points on more than four hundred pages) harmonized Copernicus's text with Osiander's address. They rephrased every piece of evidence for the Earth's motion to sound like it was purely hypothetical. The censors removed the part of the preface that stated that "astronomy is written for astronomers" because they appropriated this science to themselves. A line appeared in the paragraph that embodied Copernicus's fears about "talkers who consider themselves experts in astronomy, but are completely ignorant of this subject" who can distort "some passage of Scripture for their own benefit" and hit the author with it.

In his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, Galileo described a four-day conversation between three intellectuals. On the frontispiece of the first edition, these men appear as Aristotle, Ptolemy and Copernicus (on the right, with the symbol of the heliocentric cosmos in hand)

Each owner of "On Rotations" had to independently make the indicated changes in his copy of the book. Galileo obediently submitted them all, perhaps fearing scrutiny by church authorities. He himself, being in Rome in 1616, was instructed by Cardinal Bellarmino to stop teaching and writing about Copernicus and obeyed him. However, a few years later, in 1624, the new Pope Urban VIII, a seemingly open-minded man, encouraged Galileo to write a detailed comparison of the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Galileo's book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, Ptolemaic and Copernican, published in Florence in 1632, soon attracted accusations of heresy. The formal trial of the Inquisition over Galileo took place the following year and ended with his abdication. Then "Dialogue" took its place next to "On Rotations" in the Index of Banned Books. Both works, which caused continuous discussions and comments, remained in it for two centuries.

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