DEFENSE FOR GALILEO.

...configurations, and that the construction of the universe has been discussed—indeed, that it cannot even be exactly described—is proved from the Holy Scriptures and the diversity of hypotheses among the wise. First, in Job 38 it is said: “Do you know the order of heaven, and will you set down its reason upon the earth?” original: "Nunquid nosti ordinem cœli, & pones rationem eius in terra?" In modern bibles, this is usually Job 38:33. And a little further down: “Who will declare the reason of the heavens?” Then Solomon also, in Ecclesiastes 9, says: “God delivered the world to their disputation, so that man might not find the work that God has wrought from the beginning even to the end.” original: "Mundum, ait, tradidit Deus disputationi eorum..." This refers to Ecclesiastes 3:11 in modern numbering. Campanella uses it to argue that God intended the physical world to be a subject of ongoing investigation and debate. And in chapter 8, he repeats the same points and more.

    Therefore, those who think that the truth about celestial things was established by Aristotle and that nothing further remains to be investigated are delusional. For Aristotle, in the second book of On the Heavens, writes—just as he had received from the Egyptians—that there are eight spheres, counting the starry one; and that this is the primum mobile The "first moved" or outermost sphere in the ancient model of the universe, which was believed to drive the rotation of all other spheres., which moves all the spheres of the planets every 24 hours against their own inclination from East to West in a violent motion, while they are carried by their natural motion from West to East in very short journeys. For the moon moves only 12 degrees out of the 360 that all the spheres complete by that "violence" in their daily motion. Then, in the twelfth book of his Metaphysics, he does not want the other spheres to be dragged by the first sphere, but rather each by its own intelligence original: "intelligentia." In medieval and Renaissance philosophy, "intelligences" were celestial beings or angels responsible for moving the planets.; and he multiplies these intelligences to match the number of appearances and motions. Yet he does not give the causes of these appearances, as Saint Thomas, Simplicius Simplicius of Cilicia (c. 490–560 AD) was one of the last great pagan commentators on Aristotle., and other commentators admit. He even posits a kind of "war" between God and the angels, since the latter move against the motion of the former; and while they are said to imitate Him, they do the opposite. Similarly, he posits war among the angels; for one strives to move toward the East, another to the West, another to the North, and another to the South. He posits some as movers and just as many as resistors, so that he not only imposes "violence" upon the heaven and even upon the angels—suggesting either discord or exhaustion in their moving—but he also cannot provide any cause for why the stars sometimes appear to move further up or further down, nor why the planets become stationary, fast, retrograde, or slow, nor concerning the change of eccentricities, apogees, and equinoxes. He cannot give a cause because he composes the heaven out of a fifth essence original: "quinta essentia" or quintessence. Aristotle taught that the heavens were made of an unchangeable, incorruptible element, unlike the four earthly elements.. Therefore, he cannot explain why Mars is observed by Tycho Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), the Danish astronomer whose precise observations proved that the heavens change and that planets do not move on solid spheres. at its acronychal original: "acronychius." This refers to a planet being at "opposition," when it is directly opposite the sun as seen from Earth and thus at its closest point. position to descend below the sphere of the Sun, nor how "little clouds" Sunspots. can occur on the Sun, or new stars in the starry sphere, or comets above the Moon. Whence it is necessary that his astronomy is entirely false, as it does not admit these phenomena, which are proven by the senses and the most certain instruments. Therefore, Saint Basil and Saint Ambrose judge those to be heretics who, like Aristotle, make the heaven out of a fifth essence and deny that the Sun is formally hot, as we shall teach below and in our inquiries for...