er of the universe, with the sun ,moon and stars going around it. This made sense because ancient man could see the sun and moon coming up and going down over the horizon. And if one pondered the question of why the sun and moon rose and fell it could be concluded that they, along with the Stars, rotated around the earth. This concept is called Ptolemaic astronomy. The first figure that we will discuss in the Scientific Revolution was Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian born professor of mathematics who had a great interest in the workings of the universe. Galileo had seen into the heavens with the telescope he had designed and created an even more accurate picture of the universe. The Earth was not the center of the universe, as Copernicus had stated in 1543,he claimed. Galileo's observations went against the official teachings of the church. Did not the Bible say that the sun stood still according to the Old Testament story of Jericho? The Earth not being the center of the universe would not fit into the Ptolemaic astronomy concept. The academic philosophers, who subscribed to Church doctrine, feared that if Galileo's principles are found to be true then people might question the accuracy of the Churches representation of the world, and possibly lose belief in the Bible. The Church was infuriated by Galileo's teachings and at the age of 70 indicted him for heresy. In 1615 Galileo published a letter written to the Grand Duchess of Tuskegee Christina, in which he defended his scientific positions against the accusations of the Church influenced philosophers. He states in the letter that those who accused him aren't interested in the truth and show, "a greater fondness for their own opinions than for the truth, they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they cared to look for themselves, their own senses would of demonstrated to them. He wrote that the charges made against him are sprinkled, "passages taken from...
