Dialogue Containing the Two World Systems

Galileo Galilei is known for taking advantage of the newly developed telescope to look at the stars. He discovered the mountains on the moon, that planets are different than stars, the four moons of Jupiter, and sunspots. Dialogue Containing the Two World Systems was published in 1632 in Italy, geographically near the heart of the Catholic Church. Galileo’s proximity to Rome meant that he was a target of persecution from the Pope. His explanations of the universe conflicted with traditional religious interpretations of the world, which threatened the Church’s authority and caused friction between Galileo and the Pope. Galileo was far ahead of his time in terms of his use of technology and his detailed observations of the sky. Therefore, his work is very reliable although not up to today’s scientific standards. Galileo knew that his work would be controversial, so it is possible that he wrote in a manner that was somewhat purposefully inflammatory, because his audience would have been the well-educated members of European society and members of the clergy. Galileo’s goal was to share his research and, to some extent, to prove to the Catholic Church that he was not going to give up on his work because of censorship. Dialogue Containing the Two World Systems compared Ptolemaic (earth-centered) and Copernican (sun-centered) views of the universe. The Pope was enraged at the publication of this work, and Galileo was sentenced to house arrest. However, he still managed to publish his Discourse on Two New Sciences, widely regarded as the foundation of modern physics.

To read selections from Dialogue Containing the Two World Systems, please visit http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/dialogue.html.