Horky having declared to Kepler, "I will never concede his four new
planets to that Italian from Padua though I die for it," followed up
this declaration by publishing a book against Galileo, which is the one
alluded to by Maestlin, as having destroyed the little credit which,
according to his view, Kepler's publication had left him. This book
professes to contain the examination of four principal questions
touching the alleged planets; 1st, Whether they exist? 2nd, What they
are? 3rd, What they are like? 4th, Why they are? The first question is
soon disposed of, by Horky's declaring positively that he has examined
the heavens with Galileo's own glass, and that no such thing as a
satellite about Jupiter exists. To the second, he declares solemnly,
that he does not more surely know that he has a soul in his body, than
that reflected rays are the sole cause of Galileo's erroneous
observations. In regard to the third question, he says, that these
planets are like the smallest fly compared to an elephant; and, finally,
concludes on the fourth, that the only use of them is to gratify
Galileo's "thirst of gold," and to afford himself a subject of
discussion.[51]
Galileo did not condescend to notice this impertinent folly; it was
answered by Roffini, a pupil of Magini, and by a young Scotchman of the
name of Wedderburn, then a student at Padua, and afterwards a physician
at the Court of Vienna. In the latter reply we find it mentioned, that
Galileo was also using his telescope for the examination of insects,
&c.[52] Horky sent his performance triumphantly to Kepler, and, as he
returned home before receiving an answer, he presented himself before
his patron in the same misapprehension under which he had written, but
the philosopher received him with a burst of indignation which rapidly
undeceived him. The conclusion of the story is characteristic enough to
be given in Kepler's own account of the matter to Galileo, in which,
after venting his wrath against this "scum of a fellow," whose
"obscurity had given him audacity," he says, that Horky begged so hard
to be forgiven, that "I have taken him again into favour upon this
preliminary condition, to which he has agreed:—that I am to shew him
Jupiter's satellites, AND HE IS TO SEE THEM, and own that they are
there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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