 Photograph of a painting, which one of its former owners had attributed toBartolomé Esteban Murillo, depicting Galileo gazing at the wall of a prison cell on which the words "E pur si muove" appear (not fully legible in this image) | |
| Original form | e pur si muove oreppur si muove |
|---|---|
| Coined by | Attributed to Galileo Galilei |
E pur si muove orEppur si muove[epˈpursiˈmwɔːve] ('And yet it moves' or'Although it does move') is anItalian phrase commonly attributed to the Italian physicist and astronomerGalileo Galilei (1564–1642). TheCatholic Church persecuted Galileo for promoting theCopernican model of theSolar System in which the Earth moves around the Sun, which contradicted Catholic orthodoxy that the Earthremained fixed in the center of the universe.
According topopular legend, Galileo muttered this in 1633 after theRoman Inquisition forced him to recant his claims, though this is likelyapocryphal.
According toStephen Hawking, some historians believe this episode might have happened upon Galileo's transfer from house arrest under the watch ofArchbishop Ascanio Piccolomini to "another home, in the hills above Florence".[1] This other home was also his own, theVilla Il Gioiello, inArcetri.[2]
The earliest biography of Galileo, written by his discipleVincenzo Viviani in 1655–1656, does not mention this phrase, and records of his trial do not cite it. Some authors say it would have been imprudent for Galileo to have said such a thing before theInquisition.[3][4][5]
The event was first reported in English print in 1757 byGiuseppe Baretti in his bookThe Italian Library:[6]: 357
The moment he was set at liberty, he looked up to the sky and down to the ground, and, stamping with his foot, in a contemplative mood, said,Eppur si muove, that is,still it moves, meaning the Earth.[7]: 52
The book became widely published inQuerelles Littéraires in 1761.[8]
In 1911, the wordsE pur si muove were found on a painting which had just been acquired by an art collector, Jules van Belle, ofRoeselare, Belgium.[9] This painting is dated 1643 or 1645 (the last digit is partially obscured), within a year or two of Galileo's death. The signature is unclear but van Belle attributed it to the seventeenth century Spanish painterBartolomé Esteban Murillo. The painting would seem to show that some variant of theEppur si muove anecdote was in circulation immediately after his death, when many who had known him were still alive to attest to it, and that it had been circulating for over a century before it was published.[6] However, this painting, whose whereabouts is currently unknown, was discovered to be nearly identical to one painted in 1837 byEugene van Maldeghem, and, basing their opinions on the style, many art experts doubt that the van Belle painting was painted by Murillo, or even that it was painted before the nineteenth century.[10]
United States Supreme Court JusticeAntonin Scalia gave an "E pur si muove" award to district court judges whose opinions were overturned by appellate courts but later vindicated by the Supreme Court.[11]
This is the celebrated Galileo, who was in the Inquisition for six years, and put to the torture, for saying, thatthe Earth moved.
