Galileo Galilei
In 1632, astronomer Galileo Galilei was ordered to appear before the Holy Office in Rome to defend his work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. His work compared the Copernican system, which theorized that the Earth circled the Sun, with the Ptolemaic system, the mainstream belief that the Earth was the center of the Universe. In 1633, Galileo stood trial for his dissenting beliefs and advocacy of Copernicanism.
Galileo did not stand trial because he had created the theory that the Earth circled the Sun; instead, Galileo faced condemnation because he had celestial evidence to support this theory. Galileo had proven, with the use of a telescope, that Jupiter’s four moons orbited that planet. He used this scientific observation to argue in favor of Nicholas Copernicus’s theory that the Earth circled the Sun, a theory which had been dismissed six decades earlier. Scientists and religious authorities had fiercely rejected Copernicanism, as a result of its conflict with contemporary religious beliefs and scripture, which upheld that the Earth was at the center of the Universe. (more…)

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