DOC A-A Little History of the World: Galileo by Ernst Hans Gombrich and Caroline Mustill Emst Gombrich (1909–2001) was a noted art historian and writer. He wrote A Little History of the World in 1935 in Vienna when he was 26 years old. He died at the age of 92 while translating the book into English. Caroline Mustill worked with Mr. Gombrich as his assistant from 1995 until his death. She finished translating the book into English. The following excerpt from their book describes the short term and long-term influences and effects of the scientific discoveries of Galileo Galilei. The first man to understand the extraordinary magical power of applying mathematical calculation to things in nature was an Italian called Galileo Galilei. He had devoted many years to observing, analysing and describing such things when, one day, someone denounced him for writing exactly what Leonardo had observed but not explained. What he had written was this: the sun does not move-on the contrary, it is the earth which moves round the sun, together with the planets. denounced: reject publicly This discovery had already been made by a Polish scholar named Copernicus, after many years of calculation. It had been published in 1543, not long after Leonardo's death and shortly before his own, but heretical: having an the theory had been denounced as un-Christian and heretical by Catholic and Protestant priests alike. They pointed to a passage in the Old Testament in which Joshua, the great warrior, asks God not to let dusk fall until his enemy is destroyed. In answer to his prayer, we read: The sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies.' If the Bible says the sun stood still, people argued, then the sun must normally be in motion. And to suggest that the sun did not move was therefore heretical, and contradicted what was written in the Bible. So in 1632, when he was nearly seventy years old, Galileo, who had devoted his whole life to scholarship, was brought before the religious tribunal known as the Inquisition, and made to choose between being burned as a heretic or renouncing his theory about the movement of the earth around the sun. He signed a declaration saying that he was but a poor sinner, for he had taught that the earth moved round the sun. In this way he avoided being burned, the fate of so many of his predecessors. Nevertheless, when he had signed the declaration, he is said to have muttered under his breath: 'And yet it moves.' None of these fixed ideas was in the end able to prevent Galileo's ideas and methods and all the discoveries he made from influencing and inspiring people in ever-increasing numbers. opinion that is rejected by the majority And if today, thanks to mathematical formulas, we can make nature do whatever we want, so that we have telephones, aeroplanes and computers, and all the rest grateful to all those who, like Galileo, investigated nature's mathematical laws at a time when it was almost as dangerous a thing to do as it was to be a Christian in Nero's day. our modern technology, we should be

DOC A-A Little History of the World: Galileo by Ernst Hans Gombrich and Caroline Mustill Emst Gombrich (1909–2001) was a noted art historian and writer. He wrote A Little History of the World in 1935 in Vienna when he was 26 years old. He died at the age of 92 while translating the book into English. Caroline Mustill worked with Mr. Gombrich as his assistant from 1995 until his death. She finished translating the book into English. The following excerpt from their book describes the short term and long-term influences and effects of the scientific discoveries of Galileo Galilei. The first man to understand the extraordinary magical power of applying mathematical calculation to things in nature was an Italian called Galileo Galilei. He had devoted many years to observing, analysing and describing such things when, one day, someone denounced him for writing exactly what Leonardo had observed but not explained. What he had written was this: the sun does not move-on the contrary, it is the earth which moves round the sun, together with the planets. denounced: reject publicly This discovery had already been made by a Polish scholar named Copernicus, after many years of calculation. It had been published in 1543, not long after Leonardo's death and shortly before his own, but heretical: having an the theory had been denounced as un-Christian and heretical by Catholic and Protestant priests alike. They pointed to a passage in the Old Testament in which Joshua, the great warrior, asks God not to let dusk fall until his enemy is destroyed. In answer to his prayer, we read: The sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies.' If the Bible says the sun stood still, people argued, then the sun must normally be in motion. And to suggest that the sun did not move was therefore heretical, and contradicted what was written in the Bible. So in 1632, when he was nearly seventy years old, Galileo, who had devoted his whole life to scholarship, was brought before the religious tribunal known as the Inquisition, and made to choose between being burned as a heretic or renouncing his theory about the movement of the earth around the sun. He signed a declaration saying that he was but a poor sinner, for he had taught that the earth moved round the sun. In this way he avoided being burned, the fate of so many of his predecessors. Nevertheless, when he had signed the declaration, he is said to have muttered under his breath: 'And yet it moves.' None of these fixed ideas was in the end able to prevent Galileo's ideas and methods and all the discoveries he made from influencing and inspiring people in ever-increasing numbers. opinion that is rejected by the majority And if today, thanks to mathematical formulas, we can make nature do whatever we want, so that we have telephones, aeroplanes and computers, and all the rest grateful to all those who, like Galileo, investigated nature's mathematical laws at a time when it was almost as dangerous a thing to do as it was to be a Christian in Nero's day. our modern technology, we should be