Galileo Galilei, a man too far ahead of his times
Here we have another of the great polymaths of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, representing the scientific achievements of the Renaissance. Galileo described himself as an astronomer, but besides that, he was so much more. His was an age of transition from natural philosophy to modern science. This is easily said, but against the dark and dangerous backdrop of the Middle Ages, to advance in such major degrees towards the basis of modern science was both profoundly courageous and unimaginably brilliant. This is simply part of the marvel of this elite club of men, Leonardo da Vinci among them.
This may have been the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment, but ignorance certainly still had a solid grip on the minds of the masses, and in particular the mind of the Church. Galileo’s revolutionary work in optics caused him to observe celestial movement more acutely, and from that he concluded that all things did not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolved around the sun. This, of course, quickly put him at odds with the Catholic Church, a story that has ever since been a parable of the power of ignorance over knowledge.
The concept of ‘heliocentrism’ was naturally classified as heresy, and heresy carried with it very notable risks. In 1616, Galileo was summoned to appear before the inquisition, but on this occasion he was not interrogated, but simply warned to abandon the whole idea. Nicolaus Copernicus’ book ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’ had been banned that same year, and the climate was certainly not friendly towards radical ideas challenging established church doctrine.
All of this, however, Galileo ignored, and sixteen years later, he produced his landmark Dialogue on the Two World Systems, which proved he had not desisted in this provocative area of study at all. Needless to say, before long he was seated once again before a panel of inquisitors. This time he was prosecuted, and clearly the threat was intimidating. In a plea bargain, he distanced himself from his concept of heliocentrism, and this managed to slip through the net. He was imprisoned for a day, and committed to house arrest, where he maintained his scientific position on earth and sun rather more quietly.
Nonetheless, he continued to develop the concept, passing it on to the next generation, occupying his mind in the meanwhile with the million and one things that polymaths have to think, very deeply, about.