We all know the story about how Galileo was shunned from the scientific community, had his books burned and was jailed for discovering that the earth rotated the sun, but how much if it is true?

Thanks for the ping /u/itsalrightwithme

Galileo didn't have his books burned, but he did have them banned. He also wasn't jailed, but he was put under house arrest which I suppose is basically a comfy jail. As /u/Itsalrightwithme said I've talked about why Galileo got into trouble here.

Essentially: Yes it is true that Galileo got in trouble with the Church because he wrote that the Earth orbited the Sun rather than the other way around, and he was prosecuted for heresy because of this. The Church found this view threatening for some complicated reasons that you can read in the post above.

But he definitely was not shunned by the scientific community for his ideas. Just about every scientist, including Churchmen such as the Friar Marin Mersenne, felt that the Church was wrong to prosecute him. The Church's ban on his books was not particularly effective either. You have to understand that the Church really didn't have the resources to enforce a ban like this, even in Italy. Plenty of people read the book without permission. In fact the ban wasn't total either: you could apply to receive a license to read banned books, and while certain books (such as the writings of Luther) were effectively impossible to receive a license for, many people did receive them for Galileo's books. Even when he was under house arrest and prohibited from publishing more books Galileo was able to smuggle his last book, Discourse on the Two New Sciences, to Amsterdam to be published. Galileo was not punished for this, so the Church couldn't have been all that serious about the ban.

And everybody who was anybody did in fact read Galileo's books. They became the new scientific standard for the next generation, or at the very least until the 1650s when they were accompanied by the work of Rene Descartes. Anybody who wanted to do serious work in physics in the 17th century would have used Galileo's books as their starting point, including Isaac Newton. Galileo was the dominant intellectual figure in physics in the 17th century, similar to how dominant the ideas of Einstein were in 20th century physics (although perhaps not quite as dominant as Einstein).