what a height to fall from, to eventually have to abjure

"Villa Medici in Rome is one of the most impressive palaces in the city. Its name derives from the fact that for a long time it was the embassy of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which was ruled by the House of Medici. After receiving in 1610 the title of "Philosopher and Chief Mathematician to the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany," Galileo normally resided there during his visits to Rome. His last stay at the villa was, however, rather unfortunate: it was in fact the period during which his trial of 1633 was taking place. Galileo's visit on that particular occasion thus had the status of imprisonment, a privileged imprisonment to be sure, but a forced residence nonetheless," pp 5

The two camps of stronomy in the 17th century

"The traditional view may be labeled geostatic, insofar as it claims the earth to be motionless; or geocentric, insofar as it locates the earth at the center of the universe; or Ptolemaic, insofar as in the second century A.D. the Greek astronomer Ptolemy had elaborated it in sufficient detail to make it a workable theoretical system; or Aristotelian, insofar as it corresponded to the worldview advanced in the fourth century B.C. by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, whose ideas in a wide variety of fields had become predominant in the sixteenth century; or Peripatetic, insofar as this was a nickname given to followers of Aristotle. The other view may be called either geokinetic, insofar as it holds the earth to be in motion; or heliocentric, insofar as it places the sun at the center; or Copernican, named after the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus who in the first half of the sixteenth century elaborated its details into a workable theoretical system; or Pythagorean, named after the ancient Greek pre-Socratic Pythagoras, one of the earliest thinkers (sixth century B.C) to advance the idea in a general way. We may thus say that the scientific issue was essentially whether the geostatic or the geokinetic theory is true, or at least whether one or the other is more likely to be true" pp 7

Similar temperament. Milton evidently could look past his Romish beliefs to see a man awaiting vindication

"it is easy to see that Galileo had a penchant for controversy, was a master of wit and sarcasm, and wrote with unsurpassable eloquence. Interacting with each other and with his scientific and philosophical virtues, these qualities resulted in his making many enemies and getting involved in many other bitter disputes besides the main one that concerns us here. " pp 10

As we will see, a fastidious Catholic at that!

"Galileo's troubles developed and climaxed during a time of violent struggle between Catholics and Protestants. Since he was a Catholic living in a Catholic country, it was also a period when the decisions of that council were being taken seriously and implemented and thus affected him directly." pp 12

1546 council of Trent

"Aside from the question of papal authority, one main issue dividing the two camps was the interpretation of the Bible—both how specific points were to be interpreted and who was entitled to do the interpreting. The Protestants, of course, were inclined toward relatively novel and individualistic or pluralistic interpretations, whereas the Catholics were committed to relatively traditional interpretations by the appropriate authorities. In this regard, it is instructive to see exactly what the most relevant decrees of the Council of Trent stated. At its Fourth Session (8 April 1546), the council had issued two decrees about Holy Scripture, one of which contains the following paragraph:

Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation, has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, even though such interpretations should never at any time be published. Those who act contrary to this shall be made known to ordinaries and punished in accordance with the penalties prescribed by the law." " pp 12

"At that particular juncture Pope Urban VIII, who had earlier been an admirer and supporter of Galileo, was in an especially vulnerable position; thus not only could he not continue to protect Galileo, but he had to use Galileo as a scapegoat to reassert, exhibit, and test his authority and power. The problem stemmed from the fact that in 1632 the Catholic side led by the king of Spain and by the Bohemian Holy Roman Emperor was disastrously losing the war to the Protestant side led by the king of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus. Religion was not the only issue in the war, however, which was being fought also over dynastic rights and territorial disputes." pp 12-13

Definition of heresy according the Catholic Church

"Although the Inquisition dealt with other offenses such as witchcraft, it was primarily interested in two main categories of crimes: formal heresy and suspicion of heresy. Here, the term suspicion did not have the modern legal connotation pertaining to allegation and contrasting it to proof. One difference between formal heresy and suspicion of heresy was the seriousness of the offense. For example, a standard Inquisition manual of the time stated that "heretics are those who say, teach, preach, or write things against Holy Scripture; against the articles of the Holy Faith;. . . against the decrees of the Sacred Councils and the determinations made by the Supreme Pontiffs; . . . those who reject the Holy Faith and become Moslems, Jews, or members of other sects, and who praise their practices and live in accordance with them. . . ."20 The same manual stated that "suspects of heresy are those who occasionally utter propositions that offend the listeners . . . those who keep, write, read, or give others to read books forbidden in the Index and in ....

Another difference between formal heresy and suspicion of heresy was whether or not the culprit, having confessed the incriminating facts, admitted having an evil intention." pp 14-15

Paraphrase this for historical context leading up to Galileo

"In 1543 Copernicus published his epoch-making book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. In it he updated an idea which had been advanced as early as Pythagoras in ancient Greece but had been almost universally rejected—that is, the idea that the earth moves by rotating on its own axis daily and by revolving around the sun once a year." pp 15

Detailed summary of why heliocentricism is necessarily the simpler model. Occam's razor prevails

"In regard to simplicity, for example, there are thousands fewer moving parts in the geokinetic system since the apparent daily motion of all heavenly bodies around the earth is explained by the earth's axial rotation, and thus there is only one thing moving daily (the earth), rather than thousands of stars. Moreover, in the geostatic system there are two opposite directions of motion, whereas in the geokinetic system all bodies rotate or revolve in the same direction. That is, in the geostatic system, while all the heavenly bodies revolve around the earth with the diurnal motion from east to west, the seven planets (moon, Mercury Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) also simultaneously revolve around it from west to east, each in a different period of time (ranging from one month for the moon, to one year for the sun, to many years for Saturn). On the other hand, in the geokinetic system there is only one direction of motion since, for example, if the apparent diurnal motion from east to west is explained by attributing to the earth an axial rotation, then the direction of the latter has to be reversed (west to east), whereas if the apparent annual motion of the sun from west to east is explained by attributing to the earth an orbital revolution around the sun then the same direction has to be retained." pp 16

Despite enjoying the title of Philosopher and Chief Mathematician for the Duke of Tuscany, Galileo was a physicist

"Nor was he directly pursuing the geokinetic theory in his research. Rather his research consisted of investigations into the nature of motion and the laws in accordance with which bodies move. Here his work was original and revolutionary, for he was critical of the traditional physics of motion and was attempting to construct a new mechanics and physics. It did not take him long to realize that the physics he was building was very much in line with the geokinetic theory: what he was discovering about the motion of bodies in general made it possible for the earth to move and rendered unlikely its rest at the center of the universe. In short, Galileo soon realized that his physical research had important consequences in the astronomical field—namely, to strengthen the Copernican theory by removing the physical and mechanical objections against it and providing new arguments in its favor." pp 25

Invention* of the telescope

"We have evidence that he was aware of this reinforcement but still was dissatisfied with the Copernican theory. After all, the other objecdons were still there, especially the all-important empirical-astronomical difficulties. It was only the invention of the telescope, and the astronomical discoveries it made possible, which removed most of them and paved the way for removing the others.

Suffice it to say the following. This instrument was first invented by others in 1608, but in 1609 Galileo was able to improve its quality and magnification sufficiently to produce an astronomically useful instrument that could not be duplicated by others for quite some time. " pp 25-26

Add to TL

"On 24 February 1616 a committee of eleven consultants reported unanimously that Copernicanism was philosophically and scientifically untenable and theologically heretical. " pp 29

narrower Galileo-specific TL/ctx

"Moreover, since our story continues, let us recall the three different documents that will play a crucial role later: the private, oral warning given to Galileo by Cardinal Bellarmine in the name of the Inquisition; the public decree of the Index; and Bellarmine's certificate to Galileo. The propriety or impropriety of his subsequent behavior will depend on which of these three items is stressed." pp 31-32

New Pope

"For the next several years Galileo did refrain from defending or explicitly discussing the geokinetic theory, though he did discuss it implicitly and indirectly in the context of a controversy about the nature of comets. Even the publication of the corrections to Copernicus's book in 1620, which gave one a better idea of what was allowed and what was not, did not motivate him to resume the earlier struggle. The event that put an end to the interlude took place in 1623, when the old pope died and Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII. Urban was a well-educated Florentine, and in 1616 he had been instrumental in preventing the direct condemnation of Galileo and the formal condemnation of Copernicanism as a heresy. He was also a great admirer of Galileo and employed as his personal secretary one of Galileo's closest acquaintances. " pp 32

publication resulted in his being charged w/ vehement suspicion of heresy

"After a number of delays in its writing, licensing, and printing, the work was finally published in Florence in February 1632 with the title Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican." pp 33

and we forget that the sci-method had yet to be formally invented till ??? when

"One of these, the second major complaint, was that the work only paid lip service to the stipulation about a hypothetical discussion, which represented Urban's compromise; in reality, the book allegedly treated the earth's motion not as a hypothesis but in a factual, nonconditional, and realistic manner. This was a more or less legitimate complaint on the part of the pope, but the truth of the matter is that the concept of hypothesis was ambiguous and had not been sufficiently clarified in that historical context. By hypothetical treatment Urban meant a discussion that would treat the earth's motion merely as an instrument of prediction and calculation, rather than as a potentially true description of reality. Galileo, however, took a hypothesis to be an assumption about physical reality which accounts for what is known and which may be true, though it has not yet been proved to be true." pp 35

Sentencing

"There is one other interesting detail about the sentence: only seven of the ten cardinal-inquisitors signed it; two of the three who did not were Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope's nephew, who was the most powerful man in Rome after the pope himself, and Cardinal Gaspare Borgia, the Spanish ambassador and leader of the Spanish party, who a year earlier had threatened the pope with impeachment on account of his behavior in the Thirty Years War." pp 39

INFO ABOUT 30 YEARS WAR

1. Failure to fully support Catholic powers Although the war began as a religious conflict (Catholic vs. Protestant), Urban VIII often acted more like an Italian political ruler than a confessional leader.

• He refused to give strong, consistent support to the Habsburgs (Spain and the Holy Roman Empire), the main Catholic champions.

• Instead, he sometimes favored France, even though France was backing Protestant forces against the Habsburgs. 👉 This made many Catholics feel he was betraying the Catholic cause for political balance-of-power reasons.

2. Fear of Habsburg domination

• Urban VIII’s policies make more sense when you see his priorities:

• He feared that a decisive Habsburg victory would surround and dominate the Papal States.

• So he pursued a strategy of weakening both sides, especially the Habsburgs. 👉 In other words, he prioritized Italian independence and papal political autonomy over religious unity.

3. Limited financial and military support Compared to earlier popes:

• Urban VIII did not fund Catholic armies aggressively

• He avoided committing papal troops on a large scale 👉 Critics accused him of lukewarm commitment to defending Catholic Europe during a crisis.

4. Diplomatic isolation and loss of influence

By the war’s later years:

• The papacy was increasingly marginalized in peace negotiations

• The Peace of Westphalia (1648) was negotiated largely without meaningful papal input 👉 This was a huge symbolic blow: the pope was no longer the central arbiter of European Christendom.

5. Condemnation of the Peace of Westphalia

After the war, The papacy formally rejected the treaties, especially because they:

• Recognized Protestant states
• Limited Catholic restoration
• Undermined papal authority in political affairs
• But this condemnation had no practical effect, reinforcing the perception that the papacy had lost power.

Bottom line

Urban VIII was criticized because he:

• Put Italian and papal political interests above confessional unity
• Failed to decisively support Catholic forces
• Presided over a period when the papacy lost influence in European diplomacy

From one perspective, he looks like a pragmatic statesman. From another, especially to contemporaries, he looked like a pope who let the Catholic cause slip at a decisive moment.

BARS FROM G MAN

"So you see, if I am not mistaken, how disorderly is the procedure of those who in disputes about natural phenomena that do not directly involve the Faith give first place to scriptural passages, which they quite often misunderstand anyway" pp 52

Sad irony from the man whou would be forced under threat of torture to abjure 20?? years later

"However, consider that, as I just said, whoever has truth on his side has a great, indeed the greatest, advantage over the opponent, and that it is impossible for two truths to contradict each other; it follows therefore that we must not fear any assaults launched against us by anyone, as long as we are allowed to speak and to be heard by competent persons who are not excessively upset by their own emotions and interests." pp 52

The sun gives motion; motion is life, acc to Plato

"For I have discovered and conclusively demonstrated that the (288) solar globe turns on itself,'1 completing an entire rotation in about one lunar month, in exactly the same direction as all the other heavenly revolutions; moreover, it is very probable and reasonable that, as the chief instrument and minister of nature and almost the heart of the world, the sun gives not only light (as it obviously does) but also motion to all the planets that revolve around it; hence, if in conformity with Copernicus's position the diurnal motion is attributed to the earth, anyone can see that it sufficed stopping the sun to stop the whole system, and thus to lengthen the period of the diurnal illumination without altering in any way the rest of the mutual relationships of the planets; and that is exactly how the words of the sacred text sound. Here then is the manner in which by stopping the sun one can lengthen the day on the earth, without introducing any confusion among the parts of the world and without altering the words of the Scripture." pp 54

Pitfalls of blindly literal interp of scripture acc to G MAN

"So the reason they advance to condemn the opinion of the earth's mobility and sun's stability is this: since in many places in Holy Scripture21 one reads that the sun moves and the earth stands still, and since Scripture can never lie or err, it follows as a necessary consequence that the opinion of those who want to assert the sun to be motionless and the earth moving is erroneous and damnable.

The first thing to note about this argument is the following. It is most pious to say and most prudent to take for granted that Holy Scripture can never lie, as long as its true meaning has been grasped; but I do not think one can deny that this is frequently recondite and very different from what appears to be the literal meaning of the words. From this it follows that, if in interpreting it someone were to limit himself always to the pure literal meaning, and if the latter were wrong, then he could make Scripture appear to be full not only of contradictions and false propositions but also of serious heresies and blasphemies; for one would have to attribute to God feet, hands, eyes, and bodily sensations, as well as human feelings like anger, contrition, and hatred, and such conditions as the forgetfulness of things past and the ignorance of future ones. " pp 92

sensory contradiction

"in St. Augustine (Letter to Marcellinus, section 7), one reads: "If, against the most manifest and reliable testimony of reason, anything be set up claiming to have the authority of the Holy Scriptures, he who does this does it through a misapprehension of what he has read and is setting up against the truth not the real meaning of Scripture, which he has failed to discover, but an opinion of his own; he alleges not what he has found in the Scriptures, but what he has found in himself as their interpreter."" pp 96

"Thus, after first demonstrating that the motions which appear to us as belonging to the sun or the firmament (335) really belong to the earth, then, in the process of compiling their tables and applying them in practice, he speaks of them as belonging to the sun and to the part of heaven above the planets; for example, he speaks of the rising and setting of the sun and the stars, of changes in the obliquity of the zodiac and in the equinoctial points, of the mean motion and the anomaly and the prosthaphaeresis43 of the sun, and other similar things, which really belong to the earth" pp 107

FIRE BARS FROM CATHOLIC G MAN REVERENT AND CIRCUMSPECT AND SOBER

"Finally, let us grant these gentlemen more than they ask—namely, let us submit entirely to the opinion of wise theologians. Since this particular determination was not made by the ancient Fathers, it could be made by the wise ones of our age. The controversy concerns questions of natural phenomena and dilemmas whose answers are necessary and cannot be otherwise than in one of the two controversial ways; so they should first hear the experiments, observations, reasons, and demonstrations of philosophers and astronomers on both sides of the question, and then they would be able to determine with certainty whatever divine inspiration will communicate to them. No one should hope or fear that they would reach such an important decision without inspecting and discussing very minutely all the reasons for one side and for the other, and without ascertaining the facts: this cannot be hoped for by those who would pay no attention to risking the majesty and dignity of the Holy Writ to support their self-righteous creations; nor is this to be feared by those who seek nothing but the examination of the foundations of this doctrine with the greatest care, and who do this only out of zeal for the truth and for the majesty, dignity, and authority of the Holy Writ, which every Christian must strive to uphold. No one can fail to see that this dignity is desired and upheld with much greater zeal by one group than by the other—by those who submit in every way to the Holy Church and do not ask for the prohibition of this or that opinion, but only that they be allowed to present things whereby she could more reliably be sure of making the safest choice; and not by those who, blinded by their own interests or incited by malicious suggestions, preach that she immediately flash the sword since she has the power to do it, without considering that it is not always useful to do all that one can do. " pp 110

Good faith rebuttal to the Joshua argument acc to Ptolemaic view

"Given the heavenly motions in accordance with the Ptolemaic system, this is something which in no way can happen. For the sun's motion along the ecliptic57 takes place in the order of the signs of the zodiac, which is from west to east; this is contrary to the motion of the Prime Mobile from east to west, which is what causes day and night; therefore, it is clear that if the sun stops its own true motion, the day becomes shorter and not longer and that, on the contrary, the way to prolong it would be to speed up the sun's motion; thus, to make the sun stay for some time at the same place above the horizon, without going down toward the west, (344) it would be necessary to accelerate its motion so as to equal the motion of the Prime Mobile, which would be to accelerate it to about three hundred and sixty times its usual motion. Hence if Joshua had wanted his words taken in their literal and most proper meaning, he would have told the sun to accelerate its motion by an amount such that, when carried along by the Prime Mobile, it would not be made to set; but his words were being heard by people who perhaps had no other knowledge of heavenly motions except for the greatest and most common one from east to west; thus he adapted himself to their knowledge and spoke in accordance with their understanding because he did not want to teach them about the structure of the spheres but to make them understand the greatness of the miracle of the prolongation of the day." pp 114-15

Catholic employs proper Catholic derence to licensor

"Bad-sounding, too, are those words on the fourth page that read, "Let us then assume and concede,"15 etc., for in this statement one sees only a desire to concede the story of the sun stopped by Joshua as truly in the text of Holy Scripture, although from what follows those words can be understood in the right sense.

For the rest, though it sometimes uses improper words, it does not diverge from the pathways of Catholic expression." pp 136

From G man's reply to Ingoli

Again, v circumspect

"I will not say thatthe regard for your reputation made me disregard my own, for I never believed mine is that tenuous; indeed I felt no one who has carefully examined your objections to that opinion which I then considered true could infer from my silence that I have less intelligence than is sufficient to refute them all. I say all, except the theological ones, concerning which it seems to me one must proceed differently from the others; in fact, they are not subject to refutations but are only liable to interpretations. However, I have now discovered very tangibly that I was completely wrong in this belief of mine: having recently gone to Rome to pay my respects to His Holiness Pope Urban VIII, to whom I am tied by an old acquaintance and by many favors I have received, I found it is firmly and generally believed that I have been silent because I was convinced by your demonstrations; some even regard them as necessary and unanswerable. Although their being so regarded is of some relief for my reputation, nevertheless experts as well as nonexperts have formed a very low opinion of my competence: the former because they understand the ineffectiveness of the objections and yet they see me being silent, the latter because they are capable of judging only by the results and so from my silence have inferred the same conclusion. Thus I have found myself being forced to answer your essay, though, as you see, very late and against my will. Note, Mr. Ingoli, that I do not undertake this task with the thought or aim of supporting as true a proposition which has already been declared suspect and repugnant to a doctrine higher than physical and astronomical disciplines in dignity and authority. Instead I do it to show that earlier I was not so blind and stupid that, because I had not seen or understood your objections, I was thereby led to think (511) the Copernican hypothesis could and should be true and the common Ptolemaic one false. " pp 154-55

Lol at te whole p

"For, Mr. Ingoli, if your philosophical sincerity and my old regard for you will allow me to say so, you should in all honesty have known that Nicolaus Copernicus had spent more years on these very difficult studies than you had spent days on them; so you should have been more careful and not let yourself be lightly persuaded that you could knock down such a man, especially with the sort of weapons you use, which are among the most common and trite objections advanced in this subject; and, though you add something new, this is no more effective than the rest. Thus, did you really think that Nicolaus Copernicus did not grasp the mysteries of the extremely shallow Sacrobosco? That he did not understand parallax? That he had not read and understood Ptolemy and Aristotle? I am not surprised that you believed you could convince him, given that you thought so little of him. However, if you had read him with the care required to understand him properly, at least the difficulty of the subject (if nothing else) would have confused your spirit of opposition, so that (513) you would have refrained or completely abstained from taking such a step." pp 156-57

This letter has to be one of the treasured documents of Western History

"Look what self-interest and pride can lead to! What I mean is this (so that you and others can understand better): in order to destroy Copernicus's doctrine, you take it as a very powerful criticism to object that his position cannot be true because a quantity of 22 should be 18; yet in your Ptolemaic position you are not at all worried that this same quantity, which should be 400, is rather ^i, namely that what should be 8400 is 1. " pp 165

Conservation of energy/motion advanced

"If you ask me for the cause of all these effects, at the moment I answer: "Because the general motion of the ship is indelibly conserved in all those things contained in it, being transmitted to the air and to them, and not being contrary to their natural inclination."" pp 187

In the charges again G man for not explicitly hypothesizing

"That many times in the work there is a lack of and deviation from hypothesis, either by asserting absolutely the earth's motion and the sun's immobility, or by characterizing the supporting arguments as demonstrative and necessary, or by treating the negative side as impossible." pp 221

Tyranny

"Here I interjected that I knew His Holiness had appointed a Commission for this purpose, and that, because it might have members who hate Mr. Galilei (as it does), I humbly begged His Holiness to agree to give him the opportunity to justify himself. Then His Holiness answered that in these matters of the Holy Office the procedure was simply to arrive at a censure and then call the defendant to recant. " pp 229

lol like rhyme-slaves

"10. Page 317, paragraph "I do not ask": He says that Peripatetics are slaves to Aristotle and would rather say the world is as Aristotle wrote about it than as nature wishes it to be.34" pp 269

[sentencing verbiage] p 271

Basically recants in his deposition. sadge

"Now, I freely confess that it appeared to me in several places to be written in such a way that a reader, not aware of my intention, would have had reason to form the opinion that the arguments for the false side, which I intended to confute, were so stated as to be capable of convincing because of their strength, rather than being easy to answer. In particular, two arguments, one based on sunspots and the other on the tides, are presented favorably to the reader as being strong and powerful, more than would seem proper for someone who deemed them to be inconclusive and wanted to confute them, as indeed I inwardly and truly did and do hold them to be inconclusive and refutable. As an excuse for myself, within myself, for having fallen into an error so foreign to my intention, I was not completely satisfied with saying that when one presents arguments for the opposite side with the intention of confuting them, they must be explained in the fairest way and not be made out of straw to the disadvantage of the opponent, especially when one is writing in dialogue form. Being dissatisfied with this excuse, as I said, I resorted to that of the natural gratification everyone feels for his own subtleties and for showing himself to be cleverer than the average man, by finding ingenious and apparent considerations of probability even in favor of false propositions. " pp 278

Summary of publication snafu

"To publish his book, he came to Rome and presented it to the Father Master of the Sacred Palace. The latter had it reviewed and gave him permission to print it in Rome. Forced to leave, he asked by letter for permission to publish it in Florence. The Father Master answered that he wanted to review the original again, but then, because of the risks of sending it to Rome due to the plague, he handed the case over to the Inquisitor of Florence. The latter had it reviewed by Father Stefani and then gave permission to publish it, in accordance with every order given by the Master of the Sacred Palace." pp 284

Forced to recant

"A: A long time ago, that is, before the decision of the Holy Congregation of the Index, and before I was issued that injunction, I was undecided and regarded the two opinions, those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, as disputable, because either the one or the other could be true in nature. But after the above-mentioned decision, assured by the prudence of the authorities, all my uncertainty stopped, and I held, as I still hold, as very true and undoubted Ptolemy's opinion, namely the stability of the earth and the motion of the sun." pp 286

Summary of sentencing

"Therefore, by our order you were summoned to this Holy Office, where, examined under oath, you acknowledged the book as written and published by you. You confessed that about ten or twelve years ago, after having been given the injunction mentioned above, you began writing the said book, and that then you asked for permission to print it without explaining to those who gave you such permission that you were under the injunction of not holding, defending, or teaching such a doctrine in any way whatever." pp 289

Maybe use this as an epigram to the chapter on simile

"I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, seventy years of age, arraigned personally for judgment, kneeling before you Most Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinals Inquisitors-General against heretical depravity in all of Christendom, having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with God's help I will believe in the future all that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church holds, preaches, and teaches. However, whereas, after having been judicially instructed with injunction by the Holy Office to abandon completely the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and does not move and the earth is not the center of the world and moves, and not to hold, defend, or teach this false doctrine in any way whatever, orally or in writing; and after having been notified that this doctrine is contrary to Holy Scripture; I wrote and published a book in which I treat of this already condemned doctrine and adduce very effective reasons in its favor, without refuting them in any way; therefore, I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed that the sun is the center of the world and motionless and the earth is not the center and moves." pp 292

Definition of nature

"The traditional Aristotelian definition of nature reads: "Nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which [one] belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not in virtue of a concomitant attribute" (Aristotle, Physics 192b21—24, italics in the original)." pp 349

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