Movie summary - Galileo's Battle for the Heavens

Movie Summary - Galileo's Battle for the Heavens
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Movie Summary - Galileo's Battle for the Heavens
The movie is based on “Galileo’s Daughter”, Dava Sobel’s bestselling book that sheds light on some poorly known personal life of Galileo Galilei, a man who took a daring fight with the church for his cosmological research, observations, and conclusions. It is widely available in the public limelight that Galileo faced a heresy trial in his opposition with the Roman Catholic’s view about the cosmos. The revelation in this documentary is that Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun who was also Galileo’s illegitimate daughter, was his closest confidante. It reveals that Galileo had two other illegitimate children and Celeste, “born of fornication” in 1600, was the first born. Galileo’s daughter had renounced her “worldly possessions” and found it befitting to change her name months after her father had collided with the church. By embracing one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most ancient rituals, she took the name “Sister Maria Celeste” by tradition. This documentary is about the story of Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, and his journey to convince Church authorities to accept his discoveries as truth.
The movie begins with the narrator introducing the heretic fears that governed people’s perceptions at the time of the “battle” although Galileo would become one of the most celebrated scientists in such a turbulent era in Europe. The conflict of cosmological views between the Church and science begin to be introduced in the documentary. Astronomy as a science was considered an investigation of God’s work. Astronomy, or the study of the heavens was important to the Church because the sky served as the clock and the calendar and the calendar was used by the Church to give spiritual importance to Aristotle’s earth-centered astronomy. According to the narrator, Galileo was born into a world with the Sun moving around the Earth and this belief was held by the ancient philosopher Aristotle. At the time, it was widely held that the earth sat static at the center as the home of man and the Sun, including other heavenly bodies, only circled unceasingly around it. Opposing such a view would seem unorthodox and definitely result in severe punishment such as Father Giordano Bruno’s, who was burned alive for presenting heretical views.
Galileo’s deep interest in questioning the Church’s views of the cosmos begin after he drops medicine to study mathematics. His love for mathematics was immense that he left a tribute to the power of math in illuminating the world. He described mathematics as the language of God and the truth lies in knowing the language and the alphabet in which the language is composed. The journey to Galileo’s telescope started off with combining the weakest convex lenses with the strongest concave lenses to attain an appreciable magnifying power. Unfortunately, these lenses could not make powerful telescopes and Galileo had to grind the lenses and make a new device. With his improved device, he increased the telescopic power tenfold. The de...