Enlightenment
;} “It therefore helped shift authority in the observation of nature from men to instruments. In short, it was the prototype of modern scientific instruments.” (The Galileo Project, Helden)
MC Vejvanovsky Harmonia Romana 7
It was not until 1835 that all of Galileo’s works had been removed from the banned book list. In 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s trial, Pope John Paul II apologized for how Galileo’s affair was dealt with and officially said that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.
The invention of the telescope brought with it new astronomical knowledge, but more importantly it opened our eyes to the heavens by bringing in a new way of observing them. The invention was the telescope while the innovation was a new and improved way of learning about our universe.
We cannot see any of the discoveries made with the telescope on our own, and therefore it opened our eyes to the idea that our view of the structure of the universe may be wrong. “We’ve been able to look back and say…that the pivotal division between the world we inhabit today and the world of our ancestors was the invention of this instrument” (Panek, 4). Although many refused to accept heliocentrism during Galileo’s life, most had accepted the heliocentric view by the end of the 1600s. The discoveries made using the telescope played a large role in the shifting of views from geocentric to heliocentric and also showed that the use of the telescope in astronomy could lead to huge discoveries.
The invention of the telescope brought with it new astronomical knowledge, but more importantly it opened our eyes to the heavens by bringing in a new way of observing them. The invention was the telescope while the innovation was a new and improved way of learning about our universe.
We cannot see any of the discoveries made with the telescope on our own, and therefore it opened our eyes to the idea that our view of the structure of the universe may be wrong. “We’ve been able to look back and say…that the pivotal division between the world we inhabit today and the world of our ancestors was the invention of this instrument” (Panek, 4). Although many refused to accept heliocentrism during Galileo’s life, most had accepted the heliocentric view by the end of the 1600s. The discoveries made using the telescope played a large role in the shifting of views from geocentric to heliocentric and also showed that the use of the telescope in astronomy could lead to huge discoveries.
Today, heliocentrism is widely accepted and Earth is just another planet in our solar system
Today, we readily accept the use of the telescope, an example of this is the Hubble telescope. With the Hubble, we have discovered that our universe is always expanding, something probably unimaginable 400 years ago. Scientists have learned about the age of the universe, what happens when a comet hits a planet, and the birth of stars. We have come a long ways on the knowledge of the universe, and it all began 400 years ago with the Galilean telescope.
Galaxy Messier 101, taken from the Hubble