Galileo Galilei's views briefly. Galileo, Galileo - short biography

Physicist and mechanic - Galileo Galilei truly was a star of the first magnitude in the scientific horizon.

Galileo was an ardent supporter of the heliocentric system of the world, and his scientific honesty almost led the famous astronomer to the stake.

short biography

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was born in Pisa (Italy) into a noble but impoverished family. His father Vincenzo Galilei was a musician and composer, but art did not provide a livelihood, and he had to engage in the cloth trade.

Until the age of eleven, Galileo lived in Pisa and studied at, and then moved with his family to Florence. Here he continued his education in a Benedictine monastery, and at seventeen he entered the University of Pisa to eventually become a doctor.

However, due to poverty, he had to interrupt his studies and return to Florence. There Galileo began studying mathematics and physics.

In 1586, he wrote his first scientific paper, and three years later he headed the department at the University of Pisa, where he taught mathematics and astronomy.

It was then that they carried out the famous experiments when Galileo threw various items from the leaning Leaning Tower of Pisa to check whether light bodies fall faster than heavy ones, as Aristotle claimed.

Aristotle's opinion was refuted, but this caused discontent among the university professors, and the scientist had to move to the department of mathematics in Padua.

"Star Messenger"

This was the most fruitful period in Galilee. From 1606 he became deeply involved in astronomy.

Using a telescope he built with a magnification of 32 times, Galileo discovered on the Moon mountain ranges, and peaks, and this led him to the idea that the Moon is similar to, which again contradicted Aristotle, who argued that the Earth was a completely special celestial body.

At the same time, Galileo established that the Sun rotates around its axis and concluded that rotation around an axis is characteristic of all celestial bodies, and the heliocentric system of the world proposed by Copernicus is the only correct one.

In March 1610, his work entitled “The Starry Messenger” was published, which brought the scientist European fame. The Tuscan Duke Cosimo II de' Medici invited Galileo to take the position of court mathematician, and the scientist accepted this offer.

However, six years later, eleven prominent theologians examined the teachings of Copernicus and came to the conclusion that they were false. It was declared heretical, and Copernicus’s book “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres” was banned.

Galileo was summoned from Florence to Rome and demanded to stop the spread of heretical ideas about the structure of the world. The scientist, despite the intercession of the patron duke, was forced to submit.

Trial and verdict

And yet, in 1632, Galileo’s book “Dialogue of Two major systems peace - and Copernicus."

The Church immediately banned it, and the astronomer himself was summoned to Rome for trial in the Inquisition. The investigation continued for several years.

On June 22, 1633, in the same church where the death sentence of Giordano Bruno was announced, Galileo, kneeling, pronounced the text of renunciation offered to him.

However, the matter did not stop there. For the remaining years of his life, he had to work in difficult conditions, virtually in captivity and under the constant supervision of the Inquisition, although his own villa in the town of Arcetri served as a prison.

Within two years, Galileo wrote one of his most profound works, Discourses and Mathematical Proofs, in which he outlined the foundations of dynamics. The book was published in Holland, but reached Arcetri only three years later, when Galileo was completely blind and could only feel his last creation.

The trial of the scientist was “demonstrative.” He made it clear to all freethinkers that even such a luminary as Galileo was forced to bow to church dogmas and authorities.

Galileo died on January 8, 1642, and in 1992 Pope John Paul II officially admitted that the Inquisition had made a mistake in 1633 by forcefully forcing the scientist to renounce the Copernican theory, and rehabilitated Galileo.

Galileo Galilei (Italian: Galileo Galilei). Born February 15, 1564 in Pisa - died January 8, 1642 in Arcetri. Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician, who had a significant influence on the science of his time. He was the first to use a telescope for observation celestial bodies and made a number of outstanding astronomical discoveries.

Galileo is the founder of experimental physics. With his experiments, he convincingly refuted speculative metaphysics and laid the foundation of classical mechanics.

During his lifetime, he was known as an active supporter of the heliocentric system of the world, which led Galileo to a serious conflict with the Catholic Church.

Galileo was born in 1564 in the Italian city of Pisa, in the family of a well-born but impoverished nobleman, Vincenzo Galilei, a prominent music theorist and lutenist. Full name Galileo Galilei: Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de Galilei (Italian: Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de "Galilei). Representatives of the Galilean family have been mentioned in documents since the 14th century. Several of his direct ancestors were priors (members ruling council) of the Florentine Republic, and Galileo’s great-great-grandfather, a famous doctor who also bore the name Galileo, was elected head of the republic in 1445.

There were six children in the family of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati, but four managed to survive: Galileo (the eldest of the children), daughters Virginia, Livia and the youngest son Michelangelo, who later also gained fame as a composer-lutenist. In 1572, Vincenzo moved to Florence, the capital of the Duchy of Tuscany. The Medici dynasty that ruled there was known for its wide and constant patronage of the arts and sciences.

Little is known about Galileo's childhood. WITH early years the boy was attracted to art; Throughout his life he carried with him a love of music and drawing, which he mastered to perfection. In his mature years, the best artists of Florence - Cigoli, Bronzino and others - consulted with him on issues of perspective and composition; Cigoli even claimed that it was to Galileo that he owed his fame. From Galileo's writings one can also conclude that he had remarkable literary talent.

Galileo received his primary education at the nearby Vallombrosa monastery. The boy loved to study and became one of the best students in the class. He weighed the possibility of becoming a priest, but his father was against it.

In 1581, 17-year-old Galileo, at the insistence of his father, entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. At the university, Galileo also attended lectures on geometry (previously he was completely unfamiliar with mathematics) and became so carried away by this science that his father began to fear that this would interfere with the study of medicine.

Galileo remained a student for less than three years; During this time he managed to thoroughly familiarize himself with the works ancient philosophers and mathematicians and earned a reputation among teachers as an indomitable debater. Even then, he considered himself entitled to have his own opinion on all scientific issues, regardless of traditional authorities.

It was probably during these years that he became acquainted with the theory. Astronomical problems were then actively discussed, especially in connection with the calendar reform that had just been carried out.

Soon, the father’s financial situation worsened, and he was unable to pay for his son’s further education. The request to exempt Galileo from paying fees (such an exception was made for the most capable students) was rejected. Galileo returned to Florence (1585) without receiving his degree. Fortunately, he managed to attract attention with several ingenious inventions (for example, hydrostatic balances), thanks to which he met the educated and wealthy lover of science, the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte. The Marquis, unlike the Pisan professors, was able to correctly evaluate him. Even then, del Monte said that since time the world had not seen such a genius as Galileo. Admired by the young man’s extraordinary talent, the Marquis became his friend and patron; he introduced Galileo to the Tuscan Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici and petitioned for a paid scientific position for him.

In 1589, Galileo returned to the University of Pisa, now as a professor of mathematics. There he began to conduct independent research in mechanics and mathematics. True, he was given a minimum salary: 60 crowns a year (a professor of medicine received 2000 crowns). In 1590, Galileo wrote his treatise On Motion.

In 1591, the father died, and responsibility for the family passed to Galileo. First of all, he had to take care of raising his younger brother and the dowry of his two unmarried sisters.

In 1592, Galileo received a position at the prestigious and wealthy University of Padua (Venetian Republic), where he taught astronomy, mechanics and mathematics.

The years of his stay in Padua were the most fruitful period of Galileo's scientific activity. He soon became the most famous professor in Padua. Students flocked to his lectures in droves, the Venetian government constantly entrusted Galileo with various types of development technical devices, young Kepler and other scientific authorities of that time actively corresponded with him.

During these years he wrote a treatise called Mechanics, which aroused some interest and was republished in a French translation. IN early works, as well as in correspondence, Galileo gave the first sketch of a new general theory of falling bodies and the movement of a pendulum.

The reason for a new stage in Galileo's scientific research was the appearance in 1604 of a new star, now called Kepler's Supernova. This awakens general interest in astronomy, and Galileo gives a series of private lectures. Having learned about the invention of the telescope in Holland, Galileo builds the first telescope with his own hands in 1609 and points it towards the sky.

What Galileo saw was so amazing that even many years later there were people who refused to believe in his discoveries and claimed that it was an illusion or delusion. Galileo discovered mountains on the Moon, the Milky Way broke up into individual stars, but his contemporaries were especially amazed by the 4 satellites of Jupiter he discovered (1610). In honor of the four sons of his late patron Ferdinand de' Medici (who died in 1609), Galileo named these satellites "Medician stars" (lat. Stellae Medicae). Now they have a more appropriate name "Galilean satellites".

Galileo described his first discoveries with a telescope in his work “The Starry Messenger” (Latin: Sidereus Nuncius), published in Florence in 1610. The book was a sensational success throughout Europe, even crowned heads rushed to order a telescope. Galileo donated several telescopes to the Venetian Senate, which, as a sign of gratitude, appointed him a professor for life with a salary of 1,000 florins. In September 1610, Kepler acquired a telescope, and in December, Galileo's discoveries were confirmed by the influential Roman astronomer Clavius. Universal recognition is coming. Galileo becomes the most famous scientist in Europe; odes are written in his honor, comparing him to Columbus. On April 20, 1610, shortly before his death, the French king Henry IV asked Galileo to discover a star for him.

There were, however, some dissatisfied people. Astronomer Francesco Sizzi (Italian: Sizzi) published a pamphlet in which he stated that seven is a perfect number, and even there are seven holes in the human head, so there can only be seven planets, and Galileo’s discoveries are an illusion. Astrologers and doctors also protested, complaining that the emergence of new celestial bodies was “disastrous for astrology and most of medicine,” since all the usual astrological methods “will be completely destroyed.”

During these years, Galileo entered into a civil marriage with the Venetian Marina Gamba (Italian: Marina Gamba). He never married Marina, but became the father of a son and two daughters. He named his son Vincenzo in memory of his father, and his daughters Virginia and Livia in honor of his sisters. Later, in 1619, Galileo officially legitimized his son; both daughters ended their lives in a monastery.

Pan-European fame and the need for money pushed Galileo to take a disastrous step, as it later turned out: in 1610 he left calm Venice, where he was inaccessible to the Inquisition, and moved to Florence. Duke Cosimo II de' Medici, son of Ferdinand, promised Galileo an honorable and profitable position as an adviser at the Tuscan court. He kept his promise, which allowed Galileo to solve the problem of huge debts that had accumulated after the marriage of his two sisters.

Galileo's duties at the court of Duke Cosimo II were not burdensome - teaching the sons of the Tuscan Duke and participating in some matters as an adviser and representative of the Duke. Formally, he is also enrolled as a professor at the University of Pisa, but is relieved of the tedious duty of lecturing.

Galileo continues Scientific research And reveals the phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, and then the rotation of the Sun around its axis. Galileo often presented his achievements (and often his priorities) in a cocky polemical style, which earned him many new enemies (in particular, among the Jesuits).

The growing influence of Galileo, the independence of his thinking and his sharp opposition to the teachings of Aristotle contributed to the formation of an aggressive circle of his opponents, consisting of Peripatetic professors and some church leaders. Galileo's ill-wishers were especially outraged by his propaganda of the heliocentric system of the world, since, in their opinion, the rotation of the Earth contradicted the texts of the Psalms (Psalm 103:5), a verse from Ecclesiastes (Ecc. 1:5), as well as an episode from the Book of Joshua ( Joshua 10:12), which speaks of the immobility of the Earth and the movement of the Sun. In addition, a detailed substantiation of the concept of the immobility of the Earth and a refutation of hypotheses about its rotation was contained in Aristotle’s treatise “On Heaven” and in Ptolemy’s “Almagest”.

In 1611, Galileo, in the aura of his glory, decided to go to Rome, hoping to convince the Pope that Copernicanism was completely compatible with Catholicism. He was received well, elected the sixth member of the scientific “Academia dei Lincei”, and met Pope Paul V and influential cardinals. He showed them his telescope and gave explanations carefully and carefully. The cardinals created an entire commission to clarify the question of whether it was sinful to look at the sky through a pipe, but they came to the conclusion that this was permissible. It was also encouraging that Roman astronomers openly discussed the question of whether Venus was moving around the Earth or around the Sun (the changing phases of Venus clearly spoke in favor of the second option).

Emboldened, Galileo, in a letter to his student Abbot Castelli (1613), stated that Holy Scripture relates only to the salvation of the soul and is not authoritative in scientific matters: “not a single saying of Scripture has such a coercive force as any natural phenomenon.” Moreover, he published this letter, which caused denunciations to the Inquisition. Also in 1613, Galileo published the book “Letters on Sunspots,” in which he openly spoke out in favor of the Copernican system. On February 25, 1615, the Roman Inquisition began its first case against Galileo on charges of heresy. Galileo's last mistake was his call to Rome to express its final attitude towards Copernicanism (1615).

All this caused a reaction opposite to what was expected. Alarmed by the successes of the Reformation, the Catholic Church decided to strengthen its spiritual monopoly - in particular, by banning Copernicanism. The position of the Church is clarified by a letter from the influential Cardinal Bellarmino, sent on April 12, 1615 to the theologian Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a defender of Copernicanism. The cardinal explains that the Church does not object to the interpretation of Copernicanism as a convenient mathematical device, but accepting it as a reality would mean admitting that the previous, traditional interpretation of the biblical text was erroneous.

March 5, 1616 Rome officially defines heliocentrism as a dangerous heresy: “To assert that the Sun stands motionless in the center of the world is an absurd opinion, false from a philosophical point of view and formally heretical, since it directly contradicts Holy Scripture. To assert that the Earth is not in the center of the world, that it does not remain motionless and has even daily rotation, there is an opinion that is equally absurd, false from a philosophical point of view and sinful from a religious point of view."

The church prohibition of heliocentrism, the truth of which Galileo was convinced, was unacceptable for the scientist. He returned to Florence and began to think about how, without formally violating the ban, he could continue to defend the truth. He eventually decided to publish a book containing a neutral discussion of different points of view. He wrote this book for 16 years, collecting materials, honing his arguments and waiting for the right moment.

After the fatal decree of 1616, Galileo changed the direction of his struggle for several years - now he focuses his efforts primarily on criticizing Aristotle, whose writings also formed the basis of the medieval worldview. In 1623, Galileo’s book “The Assay Master” (Italian: Il Saggiatore) was published; is an anti-Jesuit pamphlet in which Galileo expounds his erroneous theory of comets (he believed that comets were not cosmic bodies, and optical phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere). The position of the Jesuits (and Aristotle) ​​in in this case was closer to the truth: comets are extraterrestrial objects. This mistake did not, however, prevent Galileo from presenting and wittily arguing his scientific method, from which grew the mechanistic worldview of subsequent centuries.

In the same 1623, Matteo Barberini, an old acquaintance and friend of Galileo, was elected as the new Pope, under the name Urban VIII. In April 1624, Galileo went to Rome, hoping to get the 1616 edict revoked. He was received with all honors, awarded with gifts and flattering words, but achieved nothing on the main issue. The edict was revoked only two centuries later, in 1818. Urban VIII especially praised the book “The Assay Master” and forbade the Jesuits to continue their polemics with Galileo.

In 1624, Galileo published Letters to Ingoli; it is a response to the anti-Copernican treatise of the theologian Francesco Ingoli. Galileo immediately stipulates that he is not going to defend Copernicanism, but only wants to show that it has solid scientific foundations. He used this technique later in his main book, “Dialogue on Two World Systems”; part of the text of “Letters to Ingoli” was simply transferred to “Dialogue”. In his consideration, Galileo equates the stars to the Sun, points out the colossal distance to them, and speaks of the infinity of the Universe. He even allowed himself a dangerous phrase: “If any point in the world can be called its [the world’s] center, then this is the center of revolutions of celestial bodies; and in it, as anyone who understands these matters knows, is the Sun, and not the Earth.” He also stated that the planets and the Moon, like the Earth, attract the bodies on them.

But the main scientific value of this work is laying the foundations of a new, non-Aristotelian mechanics, developed 12 years later in Galileo’s last work, “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs of Two New Sciences.”

In modern terminology, Galileo proclaimed the homogeneity of space (the absence of a center of the world) and the equality of inertial reference systems. An important anti-Aristotelian point should be noted: Galileo's argumentation implicitly assumes that the results of earthly experiments can be transferred to celestial bodies, that is, the laws on Earth and in heaven are the same.

At the end of his book, Galileo, with obvious irony, expresses the hope that his essay will help Ingoli replace his objections to Copernicanism with others that are more consistent with science.

In 1628, 18-year-old Ferdinand II, a pupil of Galileo, became Grand Duke of Tuscany; his father Cosimo II had died seven years earlier. The new duke maintained a warm relationship with the scientist, was proud of him and helped him in every possible way.

Valuable information about the life of Galileo is contained in the surviving correspondence between Galileo and his eldest daughter Virginia, who took the name Maria Celeste as a monk. She lived in a Franciscan monastery in Arcetri, near Florence. The monastery, as befits the Franciscans, was poor, the father often sent his daughter food and flowers, in return the daughter prepared him jam, mended his clothes, and copied documents. Only letters from Maria Celeste have survived - letters from Galileo, most likely, the monastery was destroyed after the trial of 1633. The second daughter, Livia, lived in the same monastery, but at that time she was often ill and did not take part in the correspondence.

In 1629, Vincenzo, son of Galileo, married and settled with his father. The following year, Galileo had a grandson named after him. Soon, however, alarmed by another plague epidemic, Vincenzo and his family leave. Galileo is considering a plan to move to Arcetri, closer to his beloved daughter; this plan was realized in September 1631.

In March 1630, the book “Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican,” the result of almost 30 years of work, was basically completed, and Galileo, deciding that the moment for its publication was favorable, provided the then version to his friend, the papal censor Riccardi . He waits for his decision for almost a year, then decides to use a trick. He adds a preface to the book, where he declares his goal to debunk Copernicanism and transfers the book to the Tuscan censorship, and, according to some information, in an incomplete and softened form. Having received a positive review, he forwards it to Rome. In the summer of 1631 he received the long-awaited permission.

At the beginning of 1632, the Dialogue was published. The book is written in the form of a dialogue between three lovers of science: the Copernican Salviati, the neutral Sagredo and Simplicio, an adherent of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Although the book does not contain the author's conclusions, the strength of the arguments in favor of the Copernican system speaks for itself. It is also important that the book was written not in learned Latin, but in “folk” Italian.

Galileo hoped that the Pope would treat his trick as leniently as he had earlier treated the “Letters to Ingoli” with similar ideas, but he miscalculated. To top it all off, he himself recklessly sends out 30 copies of his book to influential clergy in Rome. As noted above, shortly before (1623) Galileo came into conflict with the Jesuits; He had few defenders left in Rome, and even those, assessing the danger of the situation, chose not to intervene.

Most biographers agree that in the simpleton Simplicio the Pope recognized himself, his arguments, and became furious. Historians note such characteristic features of Urban as despotism, stubbornness and incredible conceit. Galileo himself later believed that the initiative of the process belonged to the Jesuits, who presented the Pope with an extremely tendentious denunciation about Galileo’s book (see below Galileo’s letter to Diodati). Within a few months, the book was banned and withdrawn from sale, and Galileo was summoned to Rome (despite the plague epidemic) to be tried by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. After unsuccessful attempts to obtain a reprieve due to poor health and the ongoing epidemic of plague (Urban threatened to deliver him forcibly in shackles), Galileo complied, served the required plague quarantine and arrived in Rome on February 13, 1633. Niccolini, the representative of Tuscany in Rome, at the direction of Duke Ferdinand II, settled Galileo in the embassy building. The investigation lasted from April 21 to June 21, 1633.

At the end of the first interrogation, the accused was taken into custody. Galileo spent only 18 days in prison (from April 12 to April 30, 1633) - this unusual leniency was probably caused by Galileo's agreement to repent, as well as the influence of the Tuscan Duke, who constantly worked to mitigate the fate of his old teacher. Taking into account his illness and advanced age, one of the service rooms in the building of the Inquisitorial Tribunal was used as a prison.

Historians have explored the question of whether Galileo was subjected to torture during his imprisonment. The documents of the trial were not published by the Vatican in full, and what was published may have been subject to preliminary editing. Nevertheless, the following words were found in the Inquisition verdict: “Noticing that when you answer, you do not quite frankly admit your intentions, we considered it necessary to resort to a strict test.”

After the “test,” Galileo, in a letter from prison (April 23), cautiously reports that he does not get out of bed, as he is tormented by “a terrible pain in his thigh.” Some biographers of Galileo suggest that torture actually took place, while others consider this assumption unproven; only the threat of torture, often accompanied by an imitation of the torture itself, was documented. In any case, if there was torture, it was on a moderate scale, since on April 30 the scientist was released back to the Tuscan embassy.

Judging by the surviving documents and letters, scientific topics were not discussed at the trial. The main questions were: whether Galileo deliberately violated the edict of 1616, and whether he repented of his deeds. Three experts of the Inquisition gave a conclusion: the book violates the ban on promoting the “Pythagorean” doctrine. As a result, the scientist was faced with a choice: either he would repent and renounce his “delusions,” or he would suffer the same fate.

“Having become acquainted with the entire course of the case and having listened to the testimony, His Holiness determined to interrogate Galileo under threat of torture and, if he resists, then after a preliminary renunciation as strongly suspected of heresy ... to be sentenced to imprisonment at the discretion of the Holy Congregation. He is ordered not to argue any more in writing or orally about what -image about the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun... under pain of punishment as incorrigible."

Galileo's last interrogation took place on June 21. Galileo confirmed that he agreed to make the renunciation required of him; this time he was not allowed to go to the embassy and was again taken into custody. On June 22, the verdict was announced: Galileo was guilty of distributing a book with “false, heretical, contrary to Holy Scripture teaching” about the movement of the Earth:

“As a result of considering your guilt and your consciousness in it, we condemn and declare you, Galileo, for everything stated above and confessed by you under strong suspicion at this Holy Judgment of heresy, as possessed by a false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scripture thought that the Sun is the center of the earth orbit and does not move from east to west, the Earth is mobile and is not the center of the Universe. We also recognize you as disobedient to the church authorities, who forbade you to expound, defend and present as probable a teaching recognized as false and contrary to Holy Scripture... So that such a grave and harmful sin your disobedience would not have remained without any reward and you would not have subsequently become even more daring, but, on the contrary, would have served as an example and warning for others, we decided to ban the book entitled “Dialogue” by Galileo Galilei, and imprison you yourself in St. judgment for an indefinite period."

Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment for a term to be determined by the Pope. He was declared not a heretic, but “strongly suspected of heresy”; This formulation was also a grave accusation, but it saved him from the fire. After the verdict was announced, Galileo on his knees pronounced the text of the renunciation offered to him. Copies of the verdict, by personal order of Pope Urban, were sent to all universities in Catholic Europe.

The Pope did not keep Galileo in prison for long. After the verdict, Galileo was settled in one of the Medici villas, from where he was transferred to the palace of his friend, Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena. Five months later, Galileo was allowed to go home, and he settled in Arcetri, next to the monastery where his daughters were. Here he spent the rest of his life under house arrest and under constant surveillance by the Inquisition.

Galileo's detention regime was no different from prison, and he was constantly threatened with transfer to prison for the slightest violation of the regime. Galileo was not allowed to visit cities, although the seriously ill prisoner needed constant medical supervision. In the early years he was forbidden to receive guests on pain of being transferred to prison; Subsequently, the regime was somewhat softened, and friends were able to visit Galileo - however, no more than one at a time.

The Inquisition monitored the prisoner for the rest of his life; even at the death of Galileo, two of its representatives were present. All his printed works were subject to particularly careful censorship. Let us note that in Protestant Holland the publication of the Dialogue continued.

In 1634, the 33-year-old eldest daughter Virginia (Maria Celeste in monasticism), Galileo’s favorite, who devotedly cared for her sick father and keenly experienced his misadventures, died. Galileo writes that he is possessed by “boundless sadness and melancholy... I constantly hear my dear daughter calling me.” Galileo's health deteriorated, but he continued to work vigorously in the areas of science permitted to him.

A letter from Galileo to his friend Elia Diodati (1634) has been preserved, where he shares news of his misadventures, points to their culprits (the Jesuits) and shares plans for future research. The letter was sent through a trusted person, and Galileo is quite frank in it: “In Rome, I was sentenced to imprisonment by the Holy Inquisition at the direction of His Holiness... the place of imprisonment for me was this small town one mile from Florence, with the strictest prohibition from going down into the city, meeting and talking with friends and inviting them... When I returned from the monastery together with the doctor who visited my sick daughter before her death, and the doctor told me that the case was hopeless and that she would not survive next day(as it happened), I found the vicar-inquisitor at home. He came to order me, by order of the Holy Inquisition in Rome... that I should not apply for permission to return to Florence, otherwise I would be sent to the real prison of the Holy Inquisition... This incident and others about which it would be worth writing too long, shows that the fury of my very powerful pursuers is constantly increasing. And they finally wanted to reveal their faces: when one of my dear friends in Rome, about two months ago, in a conversation with Padre Christopher Greenberg, a Jesuit, mathematician of this college, touched on my affairs, this Jesuit said to my friend literally the following: “ If Galileo had been able to retain the favor of the fathers of this college, he would have lived in freedom, enjoying fame, he would not have had any sorrows and he could have written at his own discretion about anything - even about the movement of the Earth,” etc. So, You see that they attacked me not because of this or that opinion of mine, but because I am out of favor with the Jesuits."

At the end of the letter, Galileo ridicules the ignorant who “declares the mobility of the Earth to be a heresy” and says that he intends to anonymously publish a new treatise in defense of his position, but first wants to finish a long-planned book on mechanics. Of these two plans, he managed to implement only the second - he wrote a book on mechanics, summarizing his earlier discoveries in this area.

Galileo's last book was Discourses and Mathematical Proofs of Two New Sciences, which sets out the fundamentals of kinematics and strength of materials. In fact, the content of the book is a demolition of Aristotelian dynamics; in return, Galileo puts forward his principles of motion, verified by experience. Challenging the Inquisition, Galileo brought out in his new book the same three characters as in the previously banned “Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World.” In May 1636, the scientist negotiated the publication of his work in Holland, and then secretly sent the manuscript there. In a confidential letter to his friend, Comte de Noel (to whom he dedicated this book), Galileo writes that new work“puts me back in the ranks of fighters.” “Conversations...” was published in July 1638, and the book reached Arcetri almost a year later - in June 1639. This work became a reference book for Huygens and Newton, who completed the construction of the foundations of mechanics begun by Galileo.

Only once, shortly before his death (March 1638), the Inquisition allowed the blind and seriously ill Galileo to leave Arcetri and settle in Florence for treatment. At the same time, under pain of prison, he was forbidden to leave the house and discuss the “damned opinion” about the movement of the Earth. However, a few months later, after the appearance of the Dutch publication “Conversations...”, the permission was canceled and the scientist was ordered to return to Arcetri. Galileo was going to continue the “Conversations...” by writing two more chapters, but did not have time to complete his plan.

Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642, at the age of 78, in his bed. Pope Urban forbade Galileo to be buried in the family crypt of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. He was buried in Arcetri without honors; the Pope also did not allow him to erect a monument.

The youngest daughter, Livia, died in the monastery. Later, Galileo’s only grandson also became a monk and burned the scientist’s priceless manuscripts that he kept as ungodly. He was the last representative of the Galilean family.

In 1737, Galileo's ashes, as he had requested, were transferred to the Basilica of Santa Croce, where on March 17 he was solemnly buried next to Michelangelo. In 1758, Pope Benedict XIV ordered that works advocating heliocentrism be removed from the Index of Prohibited Books; however, this work was carried out slowly and was completed only in 1835.

From 1979 to 1981, on the initiative of Pope John Paul II, a commission worked to rehabilitate Galileo, and on October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II officially admitted that the Inquisition in 1633 made a mistake by forcefully forcing the scientist to renounce the Copernican theory.

Scientific achievements Galilee:

Galileo is rightfully considered the founder of not only experimental, but, to a large extent, theoretical physics. In his scientific method, he deliberately combined thoughtful experimentation with rational understanding and generalization, and he personally provided impressive examples of such research.

Galileo is considered one of the founders of mechanism. This scientific approach views the Universe as a gigantic mechanism, and complex natural processes as combinations of the simplest causes, the main of which is mechanical movement. Analysis mechanical movement lies at the heart of Galileo's work.

Galileo formulated the correct laws of fall: speed increases in proportion to time, and distance increases in proportion to the square of time. In accordance with your scientific method he immediately cited experimental data confirming the laws he discovered. Moreover, Galileo also considered (on the 4th day of the Conversations) a generalized problem: to study the behavior of a falling body with a non-zero horizontal initial velocity. He quite correctly assumed that the flight of such a body would be a superposition (superposition) of two “simple movements”: uniform horizontal motion by inertia and uniformly accelerated vertical fall.

Galileo proved that the indicated body, as well as any body thrown at an angle to the horizon, flies in a parabola. In the history of science, this is the first solved problem of dynamics. At the conclusion of the study, Galileo proved that the maximum flight range of an thrown body is achieved for a throw angle of 45° (previously this assumption was made by Tartaglia, who, however, could not strictly substantiate it). Based on his model, Galileo (still in Venice) compiled the first artillery tables.

Galileo also refuted the second of Aristotle’s laws, formulating the first law of mechanics (the law of inertia): in the absence of external forces, the body is either at rest or moving uniformly. What we call inertia, Galileo poetically called “indestructibly imprinted motion.” True, he allowed free movement not only in a straight line, but also in a circle (apparently for astronomical reasons). The correct formulation of the law was later given by and; nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the very concept of “motion by inertia” was first introduced by Galileo, and the first law of mechanics rightly bears his name.

Galileo is one of the founders of the principle of relativity in classical mechanics , which in a slightly refined form became one of the cornerstones of the modern interpretation of this science and was later named in his honor.

The discoveries of Galileo listed above, among other things, allowed him to refute many of the arguments of opponents of the heliocentric system of the world, who argued that the rotation of the Earth would noticeably affect the phenomena occurring on its surface. For example, according to geocentrists, the surface of the rotating Earth during the fall of any body would move away from under this body, shifting by tens or even hundreds of meters. Galileo confidently predicted: “Any experiments that should indicate more against than for the rotation of the Earth will be inconclusive.”

Galileo published a study of pendulum oscillations and stated that the period of oscillations did not depend on their amplitude (this was approximately true for small amplitudes). He also discovered that the periods of pendulum oscillations are related as square roots from its length. Galileo's results attracted the attention of Huygens, who invented the pendulum regulator clock (1657); from this moment on, the possibility of precise measurements in experimental physics arose.

For the first time in the history of science, Galileo raised the question of the strength of rods and beams during bending and thereby laid the foundation new science- resistance of materials.

Many of Galileo's arguments are sketches of discoveries much later. physical laws. For example, in the “Dialogue” he reports that the vertical speed of a ball rolling along the surface of a complex terrain depends only on its current height, and illustrates this fact with several thought experiments; Now we would formulate this conclusion as the law of conservation of energy in a gravitational field. Similarly, he explains the (theoretically undamped) swing of a pendulum.

In statics, Galileo introduced the fundamental concept of moment of force.

In 1609, Galileo independently built his first telescope with a convex lens and a concave eyepiece. The tube provided approximately threefold magnification. Soon he managed to build a telescope that gave a magnification of 32 times. Let us note that it was Galileo who introduced the term telescope into science (the term itself was suggested to him by Federico Cesi, the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei). A number of Galileo's telescopic discoveries contributed to the establishment of the heliocentric system of the world, which Galileo actively promoted, and to the refutation of the views of the geocentrists Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Galileo made the first telescopic observations of celestial bodies on January 7, 1610. These observations showed that the Moon, like the Earth, has a complex topography - covered with mountains and craters. Galileo explained the ashen light of the Moon, known since ancient times, as a result of hitting our natural satellite sunlight, reflected by the Earth. All this refuted Aristotle’s teaching about the opposition of “earthly” and “heavenly”: the Earth became a body of fundamentally the same nature as the celestial bodies, and this, in turn, served as an indirect argument in favor of the Copernican system: if other planets move, then naturally assume that the Earth is also moving. Galileo also discovered the libration of the Moon and quite accurately estimated the height of the lunar mountains.

Galileo also discovered (independently from Johann Fabricius and Herriot) sunspots. The existence of spots and their constant variability refuted Aristotle’s thesis about the perfection of the heavens (as opposed to the “sublunary world”). Based on the results of their observations, Galileo concluded that the Sun rotates around its axis, estimated the period of this rotation and the position of the Sun's axis.

Galileo discovered that Venus changes phases. On the one hand, this proved that it shines with reflected light from the Sun (about which there was no clarity in the astronomy of the previous period). On the other hand, the order of phase changes corresponded to the heliocentric system: in Ptolemy’s theory, Venus as the “lower” planet was always closer to the Earth than the Sun, and “full Venus” was impossible.

Galileo also noted the strange “appendages” of Saturn, but the discovery of the ring was prevented by the weakness of the telescope and the rotation of the ring, which hid it from an earthly observer. Half a century later, Saturn's ring was discovered and described by Huygens, who had a 92x telescope at his disposal.

Galileo showed that when observed through a telescope, the planets are visible as disks, the apparent sizes of which in different configurations change in the same ratio as follows from the Copernican theory. However, the diameter of stars does not increase when observed with a telescope. This refuted estimates of the apparent and actual size of stars, which were used by some astronomers as an argument against the heliocentric system.

Milky Way, which naked eye looks like a continuous glow, broke up into separate stars (which confirmed Democritus’ guess), and a huge number of previously unknown stars became visible.

Galileo explained why the earth's axis does not rotate when the earth revolves around the sun; To explain this phenomenon, Copernicus introduced a special “third movement” of the Earth. Galileo showed experimentally that the axis of a freely moving top maintains its direction by itself.

His research on the outcomes of throwing dice belongs to probability theory. In his “Discourse on the game of dice” (“Considerazione sopra il giuoco dei dadi”, the time of writing is unknown, published in 1718) he spent quite a lot of time full analysis this task.

In "Conversations on Two New Sciences" he formulated the "Galileo's Paradox": natural numbers as many as there are squares, although most of the numbers are not squares. This prompted further research into the nature of infinite sets and their classification; the process of creating set theory.

Galileo created hydrostatic balances to determine specific gravity solids Galileo described their design in his treatise La bilancetta (1586).

Galileo developed the first thermometer, still without scale (1592), proportional compass, used in drafting (1606), microscope, poor quality (1612); With its help, Galileo studied insects.

Disciples of Galileo:

Borelli, who continued the study of Jupiter's moons; he was one of the first to formulate the law of universal gravitation. Founder of biomechanics.
Viviani, Galileo's first biographer, was a talented physicist and mathematician.
Cavalieri, the forerunner of mathematical analysis, in whose fate Galileo's support played a huge role.
Castelli, creator of hydrometry.
Torricelli, who became an outstanding physicist and inventor.

Galileo Galilei, was a brilliant man who did no less important discoveries in natural science and also mainly in astronomy. He was born in Pisa in 1564. His family was of Florentine origin and, moreover, quite noble. His father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a good mathematician and gave him a thorough education. From early youth, Galileo showed a great inclination towards mathematics, was distinguished by his powers of observation and insightful mind, finding elements of sameness in intricate phenomena that seemed completely different, and discovering the laws of action of these identical elements. In the Pisa Cathedral there is still a copper lamp, the swing of which, as they say, led a young observer to the discovery of the laws of the pendulum. As a twenty-year-old youth, in 1584, Galileo already held the position of professor in his hometown; but even then he was exposed to troubles from his comrades who stuck to routine. When he publicly made an experiment showing the unfoundedness of Aristotle’s concepts about the fall of bodies (that it occurs evenly, at the same speed), the adherents of antiquity began to antagonize him so much that he was forced to leave Pisa.

Portrait of Galileo Galilei. Artist D. Tintoretto, ca. 1605-1607

Galileo went to Padua, was a professor there for a long time and gained such fame that the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1610 invited him to return to Pisa, assigning him a salary of 1000 scudi. With the relocation of Galileo to Pisa, the era of his greatest discoveries begins. According to rumors, he learned that a telescope had been invented in Holland. Not knowing how this instrument worked, he made the same one for himself and, with the help of the new instrument, began to observe the sky and made discoveries that spread his fame throughout Europe.

A man free from prejudice, who loved the truth, Galileo could not help but be an adherent of the system Copernicus. He defended it all the more because his own discoveries served as proof of its truth. He declared both in his lectures and in his books that he adhered to the thought of Copernicus, and even made many people of clergy rank its followers. One of them was the Benedictine Castelli, to whom Galileo’s letter dated December 21, 1613 was written. This famous letter, in which Galileo explains the relationship of his teaching to the Holy Scriptures, was distributed in many copies and confirmed representatives of the church authorities in the idea that Galileo’s teaching is dangerous for dogmatics . The blows were directed first at the book of Copernicus; she was condemned and ordered that in her new editions those passages that openly say that the Earth moves should be redone. The qualifiers (editors of sentences) of the Holy Inquisition condemned on February 23, 1616 the doctrine of the movement of the Earth around the Sun as heresy, and declared the doctrine of the rotation of the Earth around its axis, although not heretical, but erroneous and dangerous. Arriving in Rome in 1615, Galileo found the Inquisition already engaged in the process of his writings. But the Roman Curia then limited itself to the fact that one of its standing commissions, the so-called congregation of the Index (that is, compiling a list of condemned books), transmitted to Galileo through Cardinal Bellarmine the decision of the qualifiers approved by it. He, a pious man, did not object, and after that he presented the Copernican system not as a reliable truth, but only as an assumption. He showed the same obedience to the church by publishing the works of Copernicus in 1620.

In 1629 he wrote a treatise in the form of a conversation between three persons, one of whom defends the Copernican system, the other the system Ptolemy, and the third evaluates their arguments in such terms that apparently leaves the issue unresolved, in essence, exposing the teaching of Copernicus as fair. In his introduction, Galileo said that with this essay he wanted to defend the Ptolemaic system against the Copernican system, which was rightly condemned by the holy congregation of Index. The Roman Curia has now put forward a protocol on the interrogation made to Galileo on February 26, 1616. This protocol is undoubtedly false, written not in 1616, but only now, in 1632, when a false accusation was needed, it said that Galileo then gave in the presence of Bellarmine a formal promise never to do not mention in any form about the condemned system. To dad UrbanVIII They suggested that under the name of Simplicio, the defender of the Ptolemaic system, he was ridiculed, who, before his election as pope, was a friend of Galileo and in conversations with him presented the same arguments against the Copernican system that Simplicio sets out.

Galileo before the Inquisition. Artist J. N. Robert-Fleury, 19th century

The Inquisition demanded Galileo to Rome and threatened him with torture on June 21, 1632. The next day, in the Church of Maria sopra Minerva, he knelt down and renounced his opinion about the movement of the Earth as erroneous and contrary Holy Scripture. It is said that in indignation at the violence, he quietly said: E pur si muove (“Still she moves”). Until the end of his life, Galileo remained under the supervision of the Inquisition. country house near Florence, and she constantly threatened to throw him into prison. He died under this house arrest on January 8, 1642.

Galileo(Galilei) Galileo (1564-1642)

Italian scientist, one of the founders of natural science.

He made his first discovery - the law of pendulum oscillation - in his youth. From 1589 he lectured at the University of Pisa. In 1590, Galileo wrote a treatise “On Motion”, in which he made sharp objections to the views of Aristotle and discovered that the acceleration of free fall of bodies does not depend on their mass. In 1592 he received the chair of the university in Padua.

Galileo's most important achievement in dynamics was the creation of the principle of relativity, which became the basis of the modern theory of relativity. Having decisively abandoned Aristotle’s ideas about motion, Galileo came to the conclusion that motion (meaning only mechanical processes) is relative, that is, one cannot talk about motion without specifying in relation to which “body of reference” it occurs; the laws of motion are irrelevant, and therefore, being in a closed cabin (he figuratively wrote “in indoors under the deck of the ship"), it is impossible to establish by any experiments whether this cabin is at rest or moves uniformly and rectilinearly (“without shocks,” as Galileo put it).

"Leaning" tower in Pisa. It was here that Galileo refuted Aristotle

Title page"Dialogues"

The first news of the invention of the telescope in Holland reached Venice already in 1609. Having become interested in this discovery, Galileo significantly improved the device. On January 7, 1610, a significant event occurred: pointing the constructed telescope (with approximately 30x magnification) at the sky, Galileo noticed three bright points near the planet Jupiter, these were the satellites of Jupiter (later Galileo discovered a fourth). By repeating observations at certain intervals, he became convinced that the satellites orbited Jupiter. This served as a clear model of the Keplerian system, of which Galileo’s thoughts and experience made him a convinced supporter.

The invention of the telescope made it possible to detect the phases of Venus and make sure that the Milky Way consists of a huge number of stars. Having discovered sunspots and observing their movement, Galileo correctly explained this by the rotation of the Sun. A study of the surface of the Moon showed that it is covered with mountains and pitted with craters. Even this cursory list would allow us to classify Galileo among greatest astronomers, but his role was exceptional because he made a truly revolutionary revolution, laying the foundation for instrumental astronomy as a whole.

In the tenth years of the 17th century, persecution began. Galileo managed to defend his teaching, but not for long: after the publication of the “Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow” in 1632, where in the form of a conversation between three interlocutors an idea of ​​the two main systems of the world of Ptolemy and Copernicus was given, he was ordered to appear in Rome. Interrogations and the threat of torture broke the sick scientist, and on June 22 in the monastery of St. Minerva Galileo renounces his views and brings public repentance. Now, for the rest of his life, he became a prisoner of the Inquisition and was forced to live in his villa Arcetri near Florence. And only in 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the decision of the Inquisition court erroneous and rehabilitated Galileo.

Galileo before the Inquisition

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). The fame of this scientist was great during his lifetime, and, growing with each century, to our time has made him one of the most revered figures in science.

Galileo Galilei was born into an aristocratic Italian family; his grandfather was the head of the Florentine Republic. After studying at the monastery, he entered the University of Pisa. Lack of money forced the young man to return home (1585). But his abilities were so great and his inventions so ingenious that already in 1589 Galileo was a professor of mathematics. He teaches at famous universities and studies mechanical processes. The young professor gains enormous popularity among students and authority among the authorities. While in Padua, Galileo developed new technologies for the industry of the Venetian Republic.

The scientist's studies in astronomy led to his first conflicts with the church. Galileo Galilei modified the newly invented telescope to observe the sky. He discovered mountains on the Moon, established that the Milky Way is a cluster of individual stars, and discovered the satellites of Jupiter. Added to the suspicions of the Inquisition was the mistrust of colleagues who claimed that what was seen through the telescope was an optical illusion.

Nevertheless, Galileo's fame becomes pan-European. He becomes an advisor to the Tuscan Duke. The position allows you to do science and discoveries follow one after another. Study of the phases of Venus, sunspots, research in the field of mechanics and the main discovery - heliocentrism.

The claim that the Earth moves around the Sun seriously alarmed the Roman Catholic Church. Many scientists also opposed Galileo's theory. However, the Jesuits became the main enemy. Galileo Galilei expressed his views in printed works, which often contained caustic attacks on the powerful order.

The church's ban on heliocentrism did not stop the scientist. He published a book where he presented his theory in the form of polemics. However, in one of the stupid characters in the published book “Dialogues...”, the head of the Catholic Church recognized himself.

The Pope was furious and the intrigues of the Jesuits fell on fertile ground. Galileo was arrested and kept in prison for 18 days. The scientist was threatened the death penalty at the stake, and he chose to renounce his views. The phrase “And yet she turns” was attributed to him by journalists when compiling his biography.

The great Italian spent the rest of his days under a kind of house arrest, where his longtime enemies the Jesuits were his jailers. A few years after the death of the scientist, his only grandson became a monk and destroyed the Galileo manuscripts that he kept.