This is an excerpt from a letter written by Galileo Galilei in 1615 to the Grand Duchess Christina defending his approach to science.
Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many
things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as
some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions
commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of
professors - as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset
nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths
stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution
[lessening) or destruction. Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth,
they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for
themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end they hurled
various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain arguments, and they made
the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they
had failed to understand properly, and which were ill suited to their purposes. ...
Source: Galileo Galilei, "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)" from NYS Global History and
Geography Regents Exam, January 2011.
Explain Galileo's point of view concerning the reactions to his discoveries in
1615 using TEXTUAL EVIDENCE from the DOCUMENT above.