Scene 8
p. 63
cassock -
cassock, long garment worn by Roman Catholic and other clergy both as ordinary dress and under liturgical garments. The cassock, with button closure, has long sleeves and fits the body closely. In the Roman Catholic church the colour and trim vary with the ecclesiastical rank of the wearer: the pope wears plain white, cardinals black with scarlet trim, archbishops and bishops black with red trim, and lesser clergy plain black. In choir and church ceremonies the pope wears a white silk cassock; cardinals wear scarlet, except in penitential seasons when they wear purple; and lesser clergy wear plain black.
"wars...in Germany and Spain"
Thirty Years’ War, (1618–48), in European history, a series of wars fought by various nations for various reasons, including religious, dynastic, territorial, and commercial rivalries. Its destructive campaigns and battles occurred over most of Europe, and, when it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the map of Europe had been irrevocably changed.
Although the struggles that created it erupted some years earlier, the war is conventionally held to have begun in 1618, when the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II, in his role as king of Bohemia, attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the Protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion. Ferdinand won after a five-year struggle. In 1625 King Christian IV of Denmark saw an opportunity to gain valuable territory in Germany to balance his earlier loss of Baltic provinces to Sweden. Christian’s defeat and the Peace of Lübeck in 1629 finished Denmark as a European power, but Sweden’s Gustav II Adolf, having ended a four-year war with Poland, invaded Germany and won many German princes to his anti-Roman Catholic, anti-imperial cause.
Meanwhile the conflict widened, fueled by political ambitions of the various powers. Poland, having been drawn in as a Baltic power coveted by Sweden, pushed its own ambitions by attacking Russia and establishing a dictatorship in Moscow under Władysław, Poland’s future king. The Russo-Polish Peace of Polyanov in 1634 ended Poland’s claim to the tsarist throne but freed Poland to resume hostilities against its Baltic archenemy, Sweden, which was now deeply embroiled in Germany. Here, in the heartland of Europe, three denominations vied for dominance: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. This resulted in a Gordian tangle of alliances as princes and prelates called in foreign powers to aid them. Overall, the struggle was between the Holy Roman Empire, which was Roman Catholic and Habsburg, and a network of Protestant towns and principalities that relied on the chief anti-Catholic powers of Sweden and the United Netherlands, which had at last thrown off the yoke of Spain after a struggle lasting 80 years. A parallel struggle involved the rivalry of France with the Habsburgs of the empire and with the Habsburgs of Spain, who had been attempting to construct a cordon of anti-French alliances.
The principal battlefield for all these intermittent conflicts was the towns and principalities of Germany, which suffered severely. During the Thirty Years’ War, many of the contending armies were mercenaries, many of whom could not collect their pay. This threw them on the countryside for their supplies, and thus began the “wolf-strategy” that typified this war. The armies of both sides plundered as they marched, leaving cities, towns, villages, and farms ravaged. When the contending powers finally met in the German province of Westphalia to end the bloodshed, the balance of power in Europe had been radically changed. Spain had lost not only the Netherlands but its dominant position in western Europe. France was now the chief Western power. Sweden had control of the Baltic. The United Netherlands was recognized as an independent republic. The member states of the Holy Roman Empire were granted full sovereignty. The ancient notion of a Roman Catholic empire of Europe, headed spiritually by a pope and temporally by an emperor, was permanently abandoned, and the essential structure of modern Europe as a community of sovereign states was established.
See of St. Peter; the Vatican -
Vatican City, in full State of the Vatican City, Italian Stato della Città del Vaticano , ecclesiastical state, seat of the Roman Catholic church, and an enclave in Rome, situated on the west bank of the Tiber River. Vatican City is the world’s smallest fully independent nation-state. Its medieval and Renaissance walls form its boundaries except on the southeast at St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro). Of the six entrances, only three—the piazza, the Arco delle Campane (Arch of the Bells) in the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, and the entrance to the Vatican Museums and Galleries in the north wall—are open to the public. The most imposing building is St. Peter’s Basilica, built during the 4th century and rebuilt during the 16th century. Erected over the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle, it is the second largest religious building (after Yamoussoukro Basilica) in Christendom. The Vatican palace is the residence of the pope within the city walls. The Holy See is the name given to the government of the Roman Catholic church, which is led by the pope as the bishop of Rome. As such, the Holy See’s authority extends over Catholics throughout the world. Since 1929 it has resided in Vatican City, which was established as an independent state to enable the pope to exercise his universal authority.
Margaritifera oyster -
Pinctada margaritifera - tropical marine bivalve found chiefly off eastern Asia and Pacific coast of North America and Central America; a major source of pearls
p. 64
Cellini clock -
a clock engraved by Benvenuto Cellini, (born Nov. 1, 1500, Florence—died Feb. 13, 1571, Florence), Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, one of the most important Mannerist artists and, because of the lively account of himself and his period in his autobiography, one of the most picturesque figures of the Renaissance.
Priapus -
Priapus, in Greek religion, a god of animal and vegetable fertility whose originally Asian cult started in the Hellespontine regions, centring especially on Lampsacus. He was represented in a caricature of the human form, grotesquely misshapen, with an enormous phallus. The ass was sacrificed in his honour, probably because the ass symbolized lecherousness and was associated with the god’s sexual potency. In Greek mythology his father was Dionysus, the wine god; his mother was either a local nymph or Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In Hellenistic times Priapus’ worship spread throughout the ancient world. Sophisticated urban society tended to regard him with ribald amusement, but in the country he was adopted as a god of gardens, his statue serving as a combined scarecrow and guardian deity. He was also the patron of seafarers and fishermen and of others in need of good luck; his presence was thought to avert the evil eye.
eighth Satire of Horace -
Horace, Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus (born December 65 bc, Venusia, Italy—died Nov. 27, 8 bc, Rome), outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus.
Book I of the Satires, 10 poems written in hexameter verse, was published in 35 bc. The Satires reflect Horace’s adhesion to Octavian’s attempts to deal with the contemporary challenges of restoring traditional morality, defending small landowners from large estates (latifundia), combating debt and usury, and encouraging novi homines (“new men”) to take their place next to the traditional republican aristocracy. The Satires often exalt the new man, who is the creator of his own fortune and does not owe it to noble lineage. Horace develops his vision with principles taken from Hellenistic philosophy: metriotes (the just mean) and autarkeia (the wise man’s self-sufficiency). The ideal of the just mean allows Horace, who is philosophically an Epicurean, to reconcile traditional morality with hedonism. Self-sufficiency is the basis for his aspiration for a quiet life, far from political passions and unrestrained ambition.
Book I; Satire VIII
Priapus on the Esquiline
I was once a fig-tree’s trunk, a lump of useless wood,
Till the carpenter, uncertain whether to carve Priapus
Or a stool, decided on the god. So I’m a god, the terror
Of thieves and birds: my right hand keeps the thieves away
Along with the red shaft rising obscenely from my groin:
While the reed stuck on my head frightens naughty birds,
And stops them settling here in Maecenas’ new Gardens.
Once slaves paid to have the corpses of their fellows,
Cast from their narrow cells, brought here in a cheap box.
This was the common cemetery for a mass of paupers,
Like that joker Pantolabus, and the wastrel Nomentanus.
Here a pillar marked a width of a thousand feet for graves,
Three hundred deep, ground ‘not to be passed to the heirs’!
Now you can live on a healthier Esquiline and stroll
On the sunny Rampart, where sadly you used to gaze
At a grim landscape covered with whitened bones.
Personally it’s not the usual thieves and wild creatures
Who haunt the place that cause me worry and distress,
As those who trouble human souls with their drugs
And incantations: I can’t escape them or prevent them
From collecting bones and noxious herbs as soon as
The wandering Moon has revealed her lovely face.
Esquiline gardens -
Seven Hills of Rome, group of hills on or about which the ancient city of Rome was built. The original city of Romulus was built upon Palatine Hill (Latin: Mons Palatinus). The other hills are the Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine.
The political advisor and art patron Maecenas (70 BC-8 BC) sited his famous gardens, the first gardens in the Hellenistic-Persian garden style in Rome, on the Esquiline Hill, atop the Servian Wall and its adjoining necropolis, near the gardens of Lamia. It contained terraces, libraries and other aspects of Roman culture. At the Oppius, Nero (37-68) confiscated property to build his extravagant, mile-long Golden House, and later still Trajan (53-117) constructed his bath complex, both of whose remains are visible today.
p. 65
"reasons why the ocean moves, ebbing and flowing"; Discourse on the tides (Discorso sul flusso e il reflusso del mare) -
In the age of Galileo, this question had many answers, from animistic concepts about the "breath" of the earth, to the pre-Newtonian intuition that the moon should have something to do with the sea's motions. But Galileo saw this problem in a different way, connecting it to the whole structure of the Copernican universe. In 1597 the Pisan scientist wrote a letter to Kepler, saying that he had found in the Copernican doctrine a way to explain many natural phenomena, perhaps (as Kepler supposed, referring to Galileo's letter) even a puzzling one, like that of the tides. What, exactly, the Galilean solution to the problem of the tides was, became clear only in 1616, when Galileo was in Rome, trying to convince the Church not to ban the Copernican theory. After this attempt failed, with the consequence that the Copernican position could no longer be held or defended, Galileo wrote his "Discorso sul flusso e il reflusso del mare", in the form of a private letter to Cardinal Orsini. In this letter Galileo examines in how many ways the water contained in a vase can move. A first way derives from the slope of the vase, like that of the bed of a river. Secondly, an external cause (such as a strong wind) can produce waves in the water. But there is also a third cause for the water to move: the motion of the vase itself. Indeed, if the vase has an irregular motion (i.e. with accelerations and decelerations), the water also acquires a motion. Galileo makes a comparison between the water and the seas and between the vase and the earth, so that the changes in the motions of the sea can be effects of an irregularity in the earth motion. Galileo's theory is based on the following reasoning: the Copernican earth is affected by two main circular motions, i. e. the annual revolution around the sun and the diurnal rotation. Due to a additive effect of these motions, there is an alteration in the surface speed of the earth, every 12 hours. With this mechanism, Galileo thought he had found the irregularity in the movement of the vase (the earth), able to move the water (the seas). Although this irregularity is not perceived by us on solid ground, Galileo was sure it was shown by the oceans, by the ebb and flow of the tides. Galileo intended to solve two problems at the same time: the tides are not a mystery any more if we consider them an effect of the earth's motions, and the earth's motions themselves (i.e. the Copernican system) are not absurd any more if we consider the tides a tangible proof of these motions.
Such a theory remained in Galileo's mind until 1623, when Maffeo Barberini, who was considered a friend and a patron of artists and scientists, became Pope (Urban VIII). Galileo tried to propose again the Copernican question, and obtained the permit to write a dialogue, in which to discuss the arguments for the two main world systems (Ptolemaic and Copernican), without presenting a final verdict. Galileo worked for almost 10 years at the Dialogue: it is divided in four Days in which Salviati (a Copernican) and Simplicio (an Aristotelian) confront each other; a third character (Sagredo) listens to them, often intervening in favor of Salviati. In the Fourth Day of this masterpiece appears the theory of the tides again, the proof that the earth's motions are not a fiction, that the fluctuations of the sea are effects of mechanical causes and not of a magical attraction between the moon and the water. The earth is a planet: all that happens on it is caused by its own motions, not by the astral influences. This proof, however, presented the final verdict that the Pope did not want the Dialogue to contain: Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and again lost his battle.
Many critical questions are involved in this Galileo theory of the tides: first of all the fact that, rejecting any kind of attractive force as the real cause of the tides, this theory was, in Newtonian terms, an error. Nevertheless this judgment has for a long time impeded a historical evaluation of Galileo's theory. Only in some recent essays the question is examined with more care and is judged in the context of the physical and astronomical debate of the seventeenth century. To accuse Galileo of an excess of scientific realism, or even of presumption (as some authors have done), is to lose the possibility of historical reconstruction in which what counts is not the achievement of the future, but the efforts to reach them. Galileo was trying to build a scientific method in a world based more on books than on the nature, more on astrology than on astronomy, more on closing one's eyes than on observing through the telescope. That his theory of the tides did not survive the critical judgment of his successors is not germane to historical inquiry.
Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica and the Galileo Project
cassock -
cassock, long garment worn by Roman Catholic and other clergy both as ordinary dress and under liturgical garments. The cassock, with button closure, has long sleeves and fits the body closely. In the Roman Catholic church the colour and trim vary with the ecclesiastical rank of the wearer: the pope wears plain white, cardinals black with scarlet trim, archbishops and bishops black with red trim, and lesser clergy plain black. In choir and church ceremonies the pope wears a white silk cassock; cardinals wear scarlet, except in penitential seasons when they wear purple; and lesser clergy wear plain black.
"wars...in Germany and Spain"
Thirty Years’ War, (1618–48), in European history, a series of wars fought by various nations for various reasons, including religious, dynastic, territorial, and commercial rivalries. Its destructive campaigns and battles occurred over most of Europe, and, when it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the map of Europe had been irrevocably changed.
Although the struggles that created it erupted some years earlier, the war is conventionally held to have begun in 1618, when the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II, in his role as king of Bohemia, attempted to impose Roman Catholic absolutism on his domains, and the Protestant nobles of both Bohemia and Austria rose up in rebellion. Ferdinand won after a five-year struggle. In 1625 King Christian IV of Denmark saw an opportunity to gain valuable territory in Germany to balance his earlier loss of Baltic provinces to Sweden. Christian’s defeat and the Peace of Lübeck in 1629 finished Denmark as a European power, but Sweden’s Gustav II Adolf, having ended a four-year war with Poland, invaded Germany and won many German princes to his anti-Roman Catholic, anti-imperial cause.
Meanwhile the conflict widened, fueled by political ambitions of the various powers. Poland, having been drawn in as a Baltic power coveted by Sweden, pushed its own ambitions by attacking Russia and establishing a dictatorship in Moscow under Władysław, Poland’s future king. The Russo-Polish Peace of Polyanov in 1634 ended Poland’s claim to the tsarist throne but freed Poland to resume hostilities against its Baltic archenemy, Sweden, which was now deeply embroiled in Germany. Here, in the heartland of Europe, three denominations vied for dominance: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. This resulted in a Gordian tangle of alliances as princes and prelates called in foreign powers to aid them. Overall, the struggle was between the Holy Roman Empire, which was Roman Catholic and Habsburg, and a network of Protestant towns and principalities that relied on the chief anti-Catholic powers of Sweden and the United Netherlands, which had at last thrown off the yoke of Spain after a struggle lasting 80 years. A parallel struggle involved the rivalry of France with the Habsburgs of the empire and with the Habsburgs of Spain, who had been attempting to construct a cordon of anti-French alliances.
The principal battlefield for all these intermittent conflicts was the towns and principalities of Germany, which suffered severely. During the Thirty Years’ War, many of the contending armies were mercenaries, many of whom could not collect their pay. This threw them on the countryside for their supplies, and thus began the “wolf-strategy” that typified this war. The armies of both sides plundered as they marched, leaving cities, towns, villages, and farms ravaged. When the contending powers finally met in the German province of Westphalia to end the bloodshed, the balance of power in Europe had been radically changed. Spain had lost not only the Netherlands but its dominant position in western Europe. France was now the chief Western power. Sweden had control of the Baltic. The United Netherlands was recognized as an independent republic. The member states of the Holy Roman Empire were granted full sovereignty. The ancient notion of a Roman Catholic empire of Europe, headed spiritually by a pope and temporally by an emperor, was permanently abandoned, and the essential structure of modern Europe as a community of sovereign states was established.
See of St. Peter; the Vatican -
Vatican City, in full State of the Vatican City, Italian Stato della Città del Vaticano , ecclesiastical state, seat of the Roman Catholic church, and an enclave in Rome, situated on the west bank of the Tiber River. Vatican City is the world’s smallest fully independent nation-state. Its medieval and Renaissance walls form its boundaries except on the southeast at St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro). Of the six entrances, only three—the piazza, the Arco delle Campane (Arch of the Bells) in the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, and the entrance to the Vatican Museums and Galleries in the north wall—are open to the public. The most imposing building is St. Peter’s Basilica, built during the 4th century and rebuilt during the 16th century. Erected over the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle, it is the second largest religious building (after Yamoussoukro Basilica) in Christendom. The Vatican palace is the residence of the pope within the city walls. The Holy See is the name given to the government of the Roman Catholic church, which is led by the pope as the bishop of Rome. As such, the Holy See’s authority extends over Catholics throughout the world. Since 1929 it has resided in Vatican City, which was established as an independent state to enable the pope to exercise his universal authority.
Margaritifera oyster -
Pinctada margaritifera - tropical marine bivalve found chiefly off eastern Asia and Pacific coast of North America and Central America; a major source of pearls
p. 64
Cellini clock -
a clock engraved by Benvenuto Cellini, (born Nov. 1, 1500, Florence—died Feb. 13, 1571, Florence), Florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, one of the most important Mannerist artists and, because of the lively account of himself and his period in his autobiography, one of the most picturesque figures of the Renaissance.
Priapus -
Priapus, in Greek religion, a god of animal and vegetable fertility whose originally Asian cult started in the Hellespontine regions, centring especially on Lampsacus. He was represented in a caricature of the human form, grotesquely misshapen, with an enormous phallus. The ass was sacrificed in his honour, probably because the ass symbolized lecherousness and was associated with the god’s sexual potency. In Greek mythology his father was Dionysus, the wine god; his mother was either a local nymph or Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In Hellenistic times Priapus’ worship spread throughout the ancient world. Sophisticated urban society tended to regard him with ribald amusement, but in the country he was adopted as a god of gardens, his statue serving as a combined scarecrow and guardian deity. He was also the patron of seafarers and fishermen and of others in need of good luck; his presence was thought to avert the evil eye.
eighth Satire of Horace -
Horace, Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus (born December 65 bc, Venusia, Italy—died Nov. 27, 8 bc, Rome), outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus.
Book I of the Satires, 10 poems written in hexameter verse, was published in 35 bc. The Satires reflect Horace’s adhesion to Octavian’s attempts to deal with the contemporary challenges of restoring traditional morality, defending small landowners from large estates (latifundia), combating debt and usury, and encouraging novi homines (“new men”) to take their place next to the traditional republican aristocracy. The Satires often exalt the new man, who is the creator of his own fortune and does not owe it to noble lineage. Horace develops his vision with principles taken from Hellenistic philosophy: metriotes (the just mean) and autarkeia (the wise man’s self-sufficiency). The ideal of the just mean allows Horace, who is philosophically an Epicurean, to reconcile traditional morality with hedonism. Self-sufficiency is the basis for his aspiration for a quiet life, far from political passions and unrestrained ambition.
Book I; Satire VIII
Priapus on the Esquiline
I was once a fig-tree’s trunk, a lump of useless wood,
Till the carpenter, uncertain whether to carve Priapus
Or a stool, decided on the god. So I’m a god, the terror
Of thieves and birds: my right hand keeps the thieves away
Along with the red shaft rising obscenely from my groin:
While the reed stuck on my head frightens naughty birds,
And stops them settling here in Maecenas’ new Gardens.
Once slaves paid to have the corpses of their fellows,
Cast from their narrow cells, brought here in a cheap box.
This was the common cemetery for a mass of paupers,
Like that joker Pantolabus, and the wastrel Nomentanus.
Here a pillar marked a width of a thousand feet for graves,
Three hundred deep, ground ‘not to be passed to the heirs’!
Now you can live on a healthier Esquiline and stroll
On the sunny Rampart, where sadly you used to gaze
At a grim landscape covered with whitened bones.
Personally it’s not the usual thieves and wild creatures
Who haunt the place that cause me worry and distress,
As those who trouble human souls with their drugs
And incantations: I can’t escape them or prevent them
From collecting bones and noxious herbs as soon as
The wandering Moon has revealed her lovely face.
Esquiline gardens -
Seven Hills of Rome, group of hills on or about which the ancient city of Rome was built. The original city of Romulus was built upon Palatine Hill (Latin: Mons Palatinus). The other hills are the Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine.
The political advisor and art patron Maecenas (70 BC-8 BC) sited his famous gardens, the first gardens in the Hellenistic-Persian garden style in Rome, on the Esquiline Hill, atop the Servian Wall and its adjoining necropolis, near the gardens of Lamia. It contained terraces, libraries and other aspects of Roman culture. At the Oppius, Nero (37-68) confiscated property to build his extravagant, mile-long Golden House, and later still Trajan (53-117) constructed his bath complex, both of whose remains are visible today.
p. 65
"reasons why the ocean moves, ebbing and flowing"; Discourse on the tides (Discorso sul flusso e il reflusso del mare) -
In the age of Galileo, this question had many answers, from animistic concepts about the "breath" of the earth, to the pre-Newtonian intuition that the moon should have something to do with the sea's motions. But Galileo saw this problem in a different way, connecting it to the whole structure of the Copernican universe. In 1597 the Pisan scientist wrote a letter to Kepler, saying that he had found in the Copernican doctrine a way to explain many natural phenomena, perhaps (as Kepler supposed, referring to Galileo's letter) even a puzzling one, like that of the tides. What, exactly, the Galilean solution to the problem of the tides was, became clear only in 1616, when Galileo was in Rome, trying to convince the Church not to ban the Copernican theory. After this attempt failed, with the consequence that the Copernican position could no longer be held or defended, Galileo wrote his "Discorso sul flusso e il reflusso del mare", in the form of a private letter to Cardinal Orsini. In this letter Galileo examines in how many ways the water contained in a vase can move. A first way derives from the slope of the vase, like that of the bed of a river. Secondly, an external cause (such as a strong wind) can produce waves in the water. But there is also a third cause for the water to move: the motion of the vase itself. Indeed, if the vase has an irregular motion (i.e. with accelerations and decelerations), the water also acquires a motion. Galileo makes a comparison between the water and the seas and between the vase and the earth, so that the changes in the motions of the sea can be effects of an irregularity in the earth motion. Galileo's theory is based on the following reasoning: the Copernican earth is affected by two main circular motions, i. e. the annual revolution around the sun and the diurnal rotation. Due to a additive effect of these motions, there is an alteration in the surface speed of the earth, every 12 hours. With this mechanism, Galileo thought he had found the irregularity in the movement of the vase (the earth), able to move the water (the seas). Although this irregularity is not perceived by us on solid ground, Galileo was sure it was shown by the oceans, by the ebb and flow of the tides. Galileo intended to solve two problems at the same time: the tides are not a mystery any more if we consider them an effect of the earth's motions, and the earth's motions themselves (i.e. the Copernican system) are not absurd any more if we consider the tides a tangible proof of these motions.
Such a theory remained in Galileo's mind until 1623, when Maffeo Barberini, who was considered a friend and a patron of artists and scientists, became Pope (Urban VIII). Galileo tried to propose again the Copernican question, and obtained the permit to write a dialogue, in which to discuss the arguments for the two main world systems (Ptolemaic and Copernican), without presenting a final verdict. Galileo worked for almost 10 years at the Dialogue: it is divided in four Days in which Salviati (a Copernican) and Simplicio (an Aristotelian) confront each other; a third character (Sagredo) listens to them, often intervening in favor of Salviati. In the Fourth Day of this masterpiece appears the theory of the tides again, the proof that the earth's motions are not a fiction, that the fluctuations of the sea are effects of mechanical causes and not of a magical attraction between the moon and the water. The earth is a planet: all that happens on it is caused by its own motions, not by the astral influences. This proof, however, presented the final verdict that the Pope did not want the Dialogue to contain: Galileo was brought before the Inquisition and again lost his battle.
Many critical questions are involved in this Galileo theory of the tides: first of all the fact that, rejecting any kind of attractive force as the real cause of the tides, this theory was, in Newtonian terms, an error. Nevertheless this judgment has for a long time impeded a historical evaluation of Galileo's theory. Only in some recent essays the question is examined with more care and is judged in the context of the physical and astronomical debate of the seventeenth century. To accuse Galileo of an excess of scientific realism, or even of presumption (as some authors have done), is to lose the possibility of historical reconstruction in which what counts is not the achievement of the future, but the efforts to reach them. Galileo was trying to build a scientific method in a world based more on books than on the nature, more on astrology than on astronomy, more on closing one's eyes than on observing through the telescope. That his theory of the tides did not survive the critical judgment of his successors is not germane to historical inquiry.
Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica and the Galileo Project