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In another Columbus is showing to the Spanish monarchs the natives of the newly-found world whom he had brought home with him. In a third Galileo is showing to the astonished pope, by means of a telescope, the wonders of that other newly-found world of which he was the discoverer.
We are confident that the world will never go back to the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance that even so great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn; for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion which are within our reach, and which secure people who would not have been worthy to mend his pens from falling into his mistakes.
Along with the growth of observational astronomy which has taken place since the discoveries of Galileo, there has been developed a view concerning the physical history of the stellar world, known as the nebular hypothesis, which, though not yet fully proved, is believed by most astronomers and physicists to give us a tolerably correct notion as to the way in which the heavenly spheres were formed from an earlier condition of matter.
It is thus that they claim as their own most of Italy's great men, such as Dante, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Galileo, and it is now asserted by a number of Teuton writers that Christ Himself came of a Teutonic stock. German organisms, as well as German statesmen, display the same mania of annexation, and the Banks in especial give it free scope.
Old Kepler is filled with agitations of joy; all the friends of Galileo extol his genius; his fame spreads far and near; he is regarded as the ablest scientific man in Europe. His enemies are now dismayed and perplexed. The principal professor of philosophy at Padua would not even look through the wonderful instrument. Sissi of Florence ridicules the discovery.
Kepler was at once regarded with favour. It seems, indeed, to have been the circumstance which brought him into correspondence with Tycho Brahe. By its means also he became known to Galileo. The career of a scientific professor in those early days appears generally to have been marked by rather more striking vicissitudes than usually befall a professor in a modern university.
One of the most important of these was the Lyncean Society, founded about the year 1611, Galileo himself being a member. This society was succeeded by the Accademia del Cimento, at Florence, in 1657, which for a time flourished, with such a famous scientist as Torricelli as one of its members.
Vincenzo Galilei, father of Galileo Galilei, opened the way. He was the active champion of monody, in which a principal melody was intoned or sung to the accompaniment of subordinate harmonies, believing that in music designed to arouse personal feeling individualism should predominate.
"Cardinal Grandison is giving some lectures on science," said the vice-chancellor's lady, quietly. "It is remorse," said Apollonia. "Their clever men can never forget that unfortunate affair of Galileo, and think they can divert the indignation of the ninteenth century by mock zeal about red sandstone or the origin of species."
From the time of Galileo onwards, for some time, opponents of religion included the theory of the Earth's motion in their disputations, not so much for the love, or knowledge, of astronomy, as for the pleasure of putting the Church in the wrong. This created a great deal of bitterness and intolerance on both sides.