SOURCE: "Galileo and Copernicus" in Galileo Galilei: Toward a Resolution of 350 Years of Debate—1633-1983, Duquesne University Press, 1987, pp. 3-43.

In the following article, Vinaty discusses the relevance of Copernicus's research to the development of Galilean cosmology.

In the course of the second day of the "Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal World Systems, the Ptolemaic and Copernican," Gianfrancesco Sagredo, Venetian patrician and one of the three persons taking part in the dialogue, recounts:

Certain events had but recently befallen me, when I began to hear this new opinion [Copernican] talked about. Being still very young and having just finished my course of philosophy, which I subsequently neglected in order to devote myself to other occupations, there chanced to come into these parts someone from over the mountains, from Rostock—and I believe his name was Christian Wursteisen—a follower of the Copernican opinion, who gave two or three...