In 1632, Galileo Galilei published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The book compared Ptolemaic and Copernican cosmology through a lively Italian dialogue. Its literary form made complex astronomy accessible while provoking ecclesiastical alarm.

Galileo showed that scientific argument could be dramatic, witty and vernacular. His cosmology unsettled inherited poetic images of the ordered heavens, encouraging writers to confront a universe newly opened by observation and mathematics.