Book:Galileo Galilei/Il Saggiatore/Historical Note

Historical Note on Il Saggiatore

Despite having been forbidden to advocate the heliocentric view of the Solar System, Galileo perceived that the new Pope, Pope Urban VIII was more liberal-minded than his predecessor.

Consequently, he dedicated Il Saggiatore to Urban, with the famous statement:

The Great Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.

Sources

• 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $8$: The System of the World: Galileo