Galileo Galilei's Afro-Afro-Eurasia

Afro-Eurasia in 1300 CE to 1500 CE saw much death but also rebirth. The black plague decimated the population, killing nearly two-thirds of the people in Europe in the middle of the 14th century, and leading most to believe God’s wrath was the cause. This struck panic throughout the population which led to different radical groups, causing the church to struggle to regain power. Eventually, the church began persecuting heretics and selling indulgences as it worked to reconstruct the divided religion (Textbook 423). Soon after, began the renaissance, which was a political and cultural revival that stimulated the pursuit of knowledge in Europe. One of this time’s great thinkers was Galileo Galilei, a scholar who confirmed the theory that the

He concludes in his letter that literally interpreting the Bible does not make science any less valid. Instead, Galileo writes that although the Bible cannot be verified by science, he believes that “God, who gave us sense, reason, and intellect, should [not] have wished upon us to postpone using these gifts…nor that he should want us to deny the sense and reason when sensory experience and logical demonstration have revealed something to our eyes and minds” (Source). The church at this time, however, was the authority for science and later denied Galileo’s work. This letter makes it clear that essentially whatever the church said, even if it’s out of context, passed as truth to accommodate everyone’s understanding. Galileo thinks that one should read the Bible with some scrutiny, that the words of the Bible can be bent and interpreted differently, but the laws of nature are unchanging. He believes that sensory experience and logic can trump the Bible’s word because not every scripture is connected to conditions like the laws of nature are (Source). Galileo was a devout Catholic, so he was not trying to denounce the church, he was just trying to further improve science. Religion easily created a monopoly over science during this time because of a lack of education for some, and through the sheer authority it had as well. Scientists, and many others, were persecuted for