Twitter Ye Not - Galileo
A regular piece for the Daily Mail Weekend magazine about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.
On the 25th February 1616, scientis, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer Galileo Galilei was formally warned by the Roman Catholic inquisition that his support for the theory that the Earth revolved around the sun was heretical. Here, we imagine the reaction to that controversial injunction on Twitter.
What the warning actually stated was 'the idea that the Sun is stationary is foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.' Presumably in Latin.
I have shown old Galileo with his telescope in hand. Across from him is Pope Paul V, born Camillo Borghese, based on the famous seated portrait by Caravaggio.
Between them stands, just about, the Leaning Tower of Pisa off which GG conjectured that different weights would fall at the same speed. When I was an Engineering student at Imperial College many, many moons ago my personal tutor was Prof. John Burland, who was working at that time in preventing the Leaning Tower from leaning any further.
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