e him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place in which I may be." It is widely debated as to whether torture was used to help along the process. Galileo lived out the rest of his days in house arrest, still at work in his physics. He was not a broken man. The news that his books were getting up to 18 times their previous value on the black market gave him hope. Efforts to suppress the Dialogue were in vain. The books were passed from hand to hand abroad in Italy and became accepted for the scientific finding and value. Galileo went on to write another dialogue, this time about the laws of motion and the principles of mechanics. By that time he was an old man, and was blind. He died in 1642, the same year Isaac Newton was born.It is no question that Galileo was unjustly punished; even three of the inquisitors decided not to sign the punishing document, (although one of them for purely political reasons) thinking it was too harsh. However, for the time period he was quite lucky. It could have been much worse. Galileos struggle with the Catholic Church is the essence of the problems people had introducing new ideas to the world. This was a time period during which people were often killed for what they believed by either the state or the church. Perhaps by not killing Galileo outright the church showed that times were starting to change, or maybe not. The episode will no doubt go down in history, however, as a turning point in science, and in religious thought....
