Walter William Bryant

“ Galileo, having thus acquired some economic security, threw himself with increased ardour into the investigations that he loved, and set to work systematically to test by experiment everything in Aristotle's mechanics. ”

“ We need not, therefore, wonder that three centuries ago this discovery of sun-spots caused acute controversy, especially as Scheiner's explanation of the phenomenon was that already discarded by Galileo, namely, that the spots were really small planets revolving close to the sun. Other observers about the same time made the same discovery, and one of them, Fabricius, is generally accepted as the first to publish his observations, so that in modern times he is usually credited with priority. The idea of change or imperfection in the sun was exceedingly repugnant to accepted tradition. ”

“ Galileo then knelt before the Inquisition, read aloud the prescribed form of abjuration, and signed it. This must have been the climax of the moral torture of the last ten months. We may acquit the Inquisition of having inflicted physical torture, and Galileo's actual imprisonment could only have been for the three days, June 21 to 24, and was probably not even in a dungeon. It seems as if a very little harshness of this kind at the beginning of the trial would have been enough to kill the old man, who was already ill, but he would then have escaped practically all the punishment intended. ”

“ When we come to consider his claims to fame, it is necessary to pay due regard to a sense of proportion. It is a commonplace to observe that his astronomical discoveries were bound to be made as, a direct consequence of the invention of the telescope, so that, though he is popularly known almost entirely by them, they cannot be rated very highly in comparison with his achievements in other directions. The science of dynamics may be said to have been started by him, and he came very near to more than one great discovery for which later scientists have, earned undying glory. ”

“ It is universally admitted that those phenomena which come under the daily observation of mankind, and which on that account do not possess any salient features on which the imagination can repose, are generally those which are most liable to elude the inquiries of ordinary minds. The principles which Galileo established by his sagacious researches had the effect of elevating mechanical science to the dignity of one of the most important subjects which can concern the attention of mankind. ”

“ The exigencies of the censorship prevented any of the most powerful arguments being pushed right home, as it was necessary at every critical point to emphasise the formality that the Copernican system was not to be regarded as true but only as a not impossible hypothesis. Some such display might be made by a skilled fencer against a hopelessly inferior opponent, who wears, however, a coat of adamant guaranteed to shatter the blade that touches it, so that no victory is to be allowed, every stroke being obliged to recoil. ”

“ The moral bullying to which he was subjected is very, like the physical twisting of a boy's arm, until he admits that his tormentor is a "perfect gentleman," or some such obvious falsehood. So generally has the abjuration been regarded as compulsory perjury on the part of Galileo, that more than a century after his death a story was invented that immediately after his public denial of the earth's motion he muttered "Eppur si muove," but though doubtless he thought something of the kind, it is absolutely certain that the story is false. ”

“ Copernicus had required a great deal of faith to support his system in the face of enormous practical difficulties. Galileo's telescope had disposed of some of these difficulties, by showing that the stars are much farther off than the planets and the sun, and that certainly some of the planets do revolve about the sun; Jupiter's moons also showed the possibility that the earth might not be the centre of the system, although it clearly has a moon revolving round it. ”

“ The objection to the earth's rotation, that if true a stone dropped from a tower would not fall at its foot, is met by the fact that in a moving vessel a stone dropped from the top of a mast does fall at its foot, although the Aristotelians, not having tried the experiment, maintained that it would fall towards the stern. ”

“ Galileo had broken up his establishments on leaving Padua, and brought the girls to Florence, the boy Vincenzio, then only four years old, remaining for two years longer with his mother, who, soon after he was removed from her care, married in her own station of life, with Galileo's approval and financial assistance. The convent appeared to be the only resource for the daughters, as their father's means were not enough to make them independent, and the stigma of their birth was a bar to them in other directions, besides furnishing a frequent cause of complaint to Galileo's mother. ”

“ Now Vincenzio himself, as shown in his writings on musical theory, had a rooted objection to taking things on trust, so it is not surprising that Galileo found himself continually at issue with his teachers in philosophy, and thus early struck the keynote of his stormy career. What passed for philosophy in those days had degenerated almost entirely into blind repetition of the statements and doctrines of ancient philosophers, and particularly of Aristotle. ”

“ He also maintained that the Copernican system raised no more difficulty than the Ptolemaic, when it was pinned down to verbal explanation of literal statements in the Bible. In short his view was that the Bible was intended to teach men morals, and not science, and that it could not be regarded as a court of appeal in scientific matters, many of its expressions being vague, and others misunderstood by commentators. ”

“ The great difficulty contemplated by Copernicus was that, if the earth really went round the sun, in an orbit nearly two hundred million miles in diameter, the stars ought to show a displacement corresponding to the great change in view-point through the year. ”

“ Many savants, however, refused to accept Galileo's discoveries, some even declining to look through a telescope, rather than risk seeing something in whose existence they would not believe. Galileo did not at this time state openly in the "Sidereus Nuncius" the conclusion to which his discoveries had driven him, namely, that the earth moves round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. ”

“ No sooner did Galileo find any rebutting experiment than he promptly pilloried the discredited dogma, exposing it in his lectures. Once more, therefore, he drew upon himself the enmity of those professors who had objected to his sceptical attitude as a student. The best-known instance of the success of his campaign is that associated with the celebrated Leaning Tower of Pisa. According to Aristotle the velocity of falling bodies is proportional to their weight, so that a weight of a hundred pounds would fall a hundred times as fast as a weight of one pound. ”

“ The enduring fame of Galileo, who now ranks among the greatest of Italians and of philosophers, is emphasised not only by monuments and inscriptions but by a national edition of his works in twenty volumes, and by the celebration of such epochs as the tercentenary of his birth, held at Pisa in 1864, and that of his inaugural lecture at Padua, which representative scientists of the world attended at Padua in 1892. ”

“ Galileo gave the name of Simplicio, a noted commentator on Aristotle, to the personage who has to produce all the arguments against the new system, however foolish they may be. To the other characters he gave the names of two former friends of his own, Salviati of Florence, who speaks really for Galileo himself, and Sagredo of Venice, who is responsible for common-sense objections, and for the introduction of a lighter vein from time to time, but who, as is only natural, is very ready to be convinced by Salviati's arguments. ”

“ On the findings of the Commission the Pope sent word to Niccolini that Galileo's affairs would be handed over to the Inquisition, and Galileo himself was cited to appear before the Commissary-General at Rome in October. Galileo was in very poor health, and had been suffering from severe ophthalmia, and moreover, the plague was raging again, so being now of an advanced age he appealed to Cardinal F. Barberini, the Pope's nephew, to try and avoid the necessity of going to Rome, suggesting that the Inquisition should appoint delegates in Florence to investigate his case. ”

“ The sagacity and skill which Galileo displays in resolving the phenomena of motion into their constituent elements, and hence deriving the original principles involved in them, will ever assure to him a distinguished place among those who have extended the domains of science. ”

“ It is perhaps impossible, in the present advanced state of mechanical philosophy, to form a just estimate of the difficulties which then interposed towards a precise and luminous view of the fundamental principles of motion. ”

“ The path of one born before his time is indeed liable to be a thorny one, but those who follow reap the benefit, finding many of the thorns trampled away by the pioneer, and the road made plain, though often difficult to follow or to widen. To that extent Galileo's sufferings must have hastened the triumph of Copernicanism. ”

“ Vincenzio Galilei was a skilful and accomplished musician, with a good knowledge of classics and mathematics, but want of means and the expense of a growing family had sent him into commercial life, and induced him to choose for his eldest son's future career the business of a cloth-dealer, as something of fairly good standing and also lucrative.
This son Galileo was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564, the year that saw the birth of Shakespeare, and his education began in a day-school there with some assistance from his father at times when business did not take him away from Pisa. ”

“ His feeling of security did not last long, for in February, 1616, the Qualifiers of the Holy Office reported on two statements from Galileo's work on sun-spots. These embodied the Copernican doctrine that the sun is the fixed centre of the world; which they declared to be false and absurd philosophically, and formally heretical, the companion doctrine that the earth rotates and also revolves round the sun meeting with practically the same condemnation. ”

“ But an Aristotelian professor suggested to the Grand Duke's mother, on a certain occasion when Galileo's pupil Castelli had been extolling his master's astronomical discoveries, that these discoveries were doubtless genuine, but that Galileo's inference that the earth rotated on its axis and revolved about the sun could not be true, as it was contrary to Scripture, which plainly states that God "made the round world so fast that it cannot be moved". ”

“ The weight of evidence is unmistakably in favour of Galileo, but the question of priority is really of very small consequence if different people make absolutely independent discoveries. It is surprising at the present time to note the careful computation of difference of longitude to settle rival claims to the discovery of a new comet which has been picked up on the same night by different comet seekers. The discovery of Neptune more than seventy years ago is a classical instance of the amount of attention this priority question continues to excite. ”

“ Galileo naturally was much depressed, not at the prohibition of his book, but at the personal proceedings which had impelled him to do such violence to his conscience. The sentence and abjuration were published as widely as possible, especially in Padua and Florence, and all the Papal officials who had favoured Galileo during the course of the proceedings were punished, including Castelli, Riccardi, and the Florentine Censor. ”