GALILEO AND HIS DADA DEFENDER

If any subject deserves more than others to be dealt with in this column called “Unlikely”, it probably is Tommaso Campanella’s book “In Defence of Galileo”, written in 1616 in order to persuade the Vatican of the fact that Galileo Galilei’s ideas about astronomy (i.e. the Copernican standpoint, according to which the Sun is in the centre of the universe and the Earth spins around it) was not against the teachings in the Bible, as well as in the Catholic tradition.

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A very noble aim, all the more so as Campanella did not share many of Galileo’s views, and in spite of this he was the only one who did attempt such a defence. It did not succeed.

Not only because the Vatican judges – the well and sadly known Inquisition – had to play their role as “the villains”, but also because…

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