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CULTURE
AND COSMOS
Volume 7 Number 1
Chapter
3. Galileo as an Astrologer
Nick
Kollerstrom
Abstract. Galileo cast horoscopes as
part of his job as a mathematicus. He sometimes wrote out
character-interpretations of these nativities, for example, for his close friend
Sagredo in Venice. In 1604 he was summoned and tried by the Inquisition for
being too fatalistic in his astrological forecasts for his clients. His public
lectures on the New Star of 1604 argued that it had germinated out of a
conjunction between Mars and Jupiter. When in 1610 he dedicated the moons of
Jupiter to Cosimo II de Medici he used the latter's horoscope to argue for it.
He wrote a letter to Dini explaining how the new moons of Jupiter might affect
its 'influence.' His Dialogues of 1630 criticised astrologers who were only wise
in retrospect, but his writings contain no scepticism as such towards astrology.
Science historians have greatly ignored this side of Galileo's life.
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