Did you know that when America was young it was believed that
tomatoes were poisonous? That if people rode in trains that went
faster than 24 miles an hour they would get heart attacks and
die? And that nobody would ever be able to fly? That's a pity,
because life always gets better when truth comes out. That's why
some of the greatest people of all time have given their lives
to the study of truth.
One of the most famous of these was born in Florence, a beautiful
city in Italy, in 1564. His name was Galileo. Even as a young
boy, he was interested in a great many things and how they worked.
Above all, he believed everything should make sense. Nothing should
be believed just because somebody had said so — not even if it was
a man named Aristotle. Aristotle was a famous scholar who had
lived about two thousand years before Galileo. Because he had
discovered many wonderful things, people had come to believe that
everything he had said and written was true. In fact, in Galileo's
day, when somebody declared that Aristotle said so, that was the
last word; no one was supposed to argue.
But Galileo thought that was wrong. He knew that people make mistakes;
most likely that included Aristotle. He told this to his teacher
in school. That made his teacher very angry, and he scolded Galileo.
"How dare you doubt Aristotle!" he shouted at him one
day.
Can't you just imagine how Galileo must have felt? After all,
he was just a young boy. Who was he to challenge what scholars
had believed for almost two thousand years? But he had to prove
that Aristotle had made errors. That was the only way to convince
others. So he had to keep his eyes wide open, to find something
somewhere that showed Aristotle had actually made a mistake. Eventually,
his opportunity came.
As you know, back then there were no electric lights. People used
candles or torches. Sometimes they hung from the ceiling. They
had to be lit. Sometimes, in the process, they started swaying
a little. Galileo once watched that. He immediately remembered
what Aristotle had written — that big and heavy things fall faster
than small and light ones. Galileo now believed, after having
seen torches and candles of various sizes swing the same way,
that Aristotle had been wrong.
His big chance to prove this came when he was a professor at the
University of Pisa. Perhaps you've heard of this city; it is famous
because it has a tower that leans. What better way to prove that
things with different weights fall equally fast than to drop two
such objects from the top of the tower?
Of course, Galileo couldn't just walk up there and drop them.
He had to get permission, and set a time for what he had planned-someone
below might get hurt by walking by at the wrong time!
It wasn't easy for Galileo to get permission. After all, the very
idea of even questioning Aristotle was unheard of. Wasn't he supposed
to always be right? But finally Galileo got permission; a time
was set; people would come and watch.
One object weighing about ten pounds was to be dropped, another
of just one pound. They both reached the ground at exactly the
same time. Galileo had proved he was right! But do you suppose
the people cheered him? Only a few stayed to shake his hand; most
just walked away. They didn't know what to make of it. Should
they stick with what they had been taught all their lives, or
believe what they had seen?
The leaders of the university knew what to do: they told Galileo
to get out. Shouldn't they instead have rewarded him? But no,
they said he had been hired to teach old knowledge, not to challenge
it. They said he had disturbed the minds of his students, and
that was not a very nice thing to do.
So Galileo had to look for other places to teach, like Padua and
Florence. Most important, he was now more sure than ever that
Aristotle had not always been right. That got him interested in
a book he came across that had been written by a man named Nicholas
Copernicus, a former student at Padua, where he happened to be
teaching at the time.
In that book he read that Aristotle had been wrong to believe
the Sun moves around the earth; it was the other way round, but
it could not be proved. It made perfect sense to Galileo; it helped
him understand a great many other things. But he couldn't prove
it.
Not until 1609, that is, when he heard a traveler from a country
far away tell an amazing tale. Someone in the Low Countries (presently
known as Belgium and Holland) had invented something to make objects
far away appear to come closer and look much bigger. This, of
course, you know as the telescope.
But there was something wrong with the telescope that old man
had invented: when one looked through it, things looked upside
down. That was confusing. Galileo set about to correct this. And
now, when one looked through it, distant objects could be magnified
almost a thousand times and they were right side up. Galileo received
much honor and fame for making his improvement, but of course
his real interest was still in finding out whether the Sun moved
round the earth, or the other way round.
He was greatly encouraged by one fact: shortly before, a beautiful
bright new star had appeared in the heavens. But Aristotle, 2,000
years earlier, had said no new stars would appear. Since he was
mistaken in this fact about the heavens, could he not also be
wrong as to what moves around what?
Galileo now spent practically all his time looking through his
telescope. At times he forgot to eat and sleep. But even though
his health was not the best, he kept on pushing himself, afraid
he might not live long enough to learn the truth as to what's
in the center, sun or earth.
He made it. How? He knew that if Venus and Mars moved around the
Sun, then the earth did too. He also knew that if they did, they
would appear to get smaller and at other times bigger, like the
moon does when it becomes New Moon and then Full Moon. And that
is exactly what he saw Venus and Mars do.They seemed to change
size.
Galileo also discovered "spots" on the Sun, though there
were not supposed to be any. The more he studied the heavens with
his telescope, the more he realized that hearsay is often just
that-hearsay.
Galileo wrote everything down in a book, so that as many people
as possible might read about it. Nowadays, some people become
rich and famous after writing books. Not Galileo. He was thrown
in jail. Those in authority tried to get him to "recant,"
that is, to take back what he had said and written and to promise
that he no longer believed it.
But how could he? Just because most people had for a long time
believed the old way, that didn't make it right. And if people
should some day tell you to believe something just because it
had been believed by many for a long time, you'll know what to
tell them, won't you? You'll just tell them about Galileo, What
else!
— A Probationer
— Rays from the Rose Cross Magazine, September/October, 1995
This web page has been edited and/or excerpted from reference material, has been modified from it's original version, and is in conformance with the web host's Members Terms & Conditions. This website is offered to the public by students of The Rosicrucian Teachings, and has no official affiliation with any organization.
