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The Life of Galileo Galilei: Humanism, Invention, Discovery and Revolution
- 2. THE LIFE OF GALILEO GALILEI HUMANISM INVENTION DISCOVERY REVOLUTION
- 3. EARLY LIFE Vallambrosa Convent School. C. 1750 City of Pisa, Italy
- 4. GALILEO: THE HUMANIST ORLANDO FURIOSO (1565) PRINTED BY FRANCESCHI DANTE’S CHART OF HELL BY BOTTICELLI C. 1480-1495
- 6. FROM PADUA TO FLORENCE GALILEO AND THE DOGE OF VENICE GRAND DUKE COSIMO II OF TUSCANY
- 9. GALILEO IN THE STREAM OF TIME Courtesy of the Khan Academy
Editor's Notes
- Okay before I jump into the Galileo lecture, I wanted to ask if any of you have seen this pic before? It’s the first picture of the earth from BEHIND the moon. It was released on Aug 5, 2015. It was taken by a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite which captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. This image shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth. The satellite is orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. It’s like we all reached out into space and took a selfie with our planet’s best friend, the moon. Also, these images show that the earth is round. In support of the earth being round, I argue that if your personal best friend selfies are real, than so is this moon and earth selfie! LOL I shared this picture with you so you could kind of get a sense of the reaction to seeing something in the universe for the first time. When Galileo discovered Jupiters moons, it was radically new information. It was much more revolutionary or new, than this image could ever seem to us.
- What I want to do briefly today is talk a bit about Galileo’s life. In CH and even European history classes and astronomy, I remember spending more time learning about Galileo’s accomplishments than what his life was like. Obviously he made amazing contributions to science, astronomy, physics. We also learned about his battle with the Church over Copernicus’ heliocentric model, and maybe we picked up that he had a difficult personality, that he was super stubborn. But that is about it. So, I thought I would share some of the details about Galileo that I have learned in the last year or so, because it helped me get a sense of what motivated him do the things that we remember him for. Mainly we remember him for inventions and discoveries. But there was a lot more to Galileo the man, than that. Sometimes we forget that amazing discoveries in science happen in the context of their times. In other words, we don’t often stop to ask about the cultural and social conditions of famous scientists lives. Galileo was definitely a man of his times, and he was an interesting guy!
- He was born to a poor, but noble father, in Pisa, Italy in 1564. This was about a week after the famous Italian artist, Michelangelo died, approximately in the late middle part of the Renaissance. Shakespeare was born in 1564 also, incidentally. Galileo’s father was named Vincenzo Galilei. He was a musician, a lutanist and he studied and published his research on music theory. However, lutanists did not make a lot of money, even though Vincenzo had some very powerful patrons and was respected for his intellectual work on music theory. Vincenzo taught Galileo everything he knew about octaves and ratios in music. He learned from his father the importance of practice and theory, or what we might call “answering theoretical questions by performing experiments.” In fact, Galileo’s father Vincenzo was known for challenging the old ideas about music, and tried to modernize music. He stressed sensory experience and necessary demonstration to support his arguments against Pythagorean harmonies. The ideals and values Galileo learned from his father never left him. He always combined practice and theory, sensory experience and demonstration in his “scientific” work. We hail him now as one of the early experimenters, especially in his studies about motion, falling bodies.
- Galileo moved with his family to Florence around the age of 12. He went to a convent school for his early education. Even though he was academically qualified to go to University at age 14, he had to wait until age was 16. He studied at the University of Pisa starting in 1581, stayed for four years, but did not earn a degree. Since lutanists did not make a lot of money, his father wanted him to go into medicine, which Galileo studied for a time. But, Galileo discovered he was really good at math. He adored the ancient mathematician Archimedes and was good at figuring out mechanical principles. During the gap years between University and starting to teach, he ran in literary critic circles, probably belonged to a famous literary club. He defended the writer Tasso who wrote Orlando Furioso. His literary criticism was on point. He preferred Petrarch’s sonnet style, and was deeply involved in the raging debate over Dante’s depiction of hell. This was a geometrical debate based on famous literature that was the basis of his first lecture as a professor. It was a very academically rigourous debate and Galileo was tasked with making a case for one side of the argument when he started teaching at Pisa. I learned that Galileo was a literalist. He preferred realism and hated ambiguity. He admired a realistic treatment of marvelous things, but also inventiveness when it produced great and beautiful things. His poetry revealed a ribald sense of humor, not vulgar, but sharp and witty. His study of medicine helped him understand his own outlook, which was melancholic at times. Later in life, he tended towards megalomania, that is, if he believed something to be true, he imposed that belief on others. Since Galileo was a man of his times, he had to teach in the Catholic tradition. He learned Aristotelian physics, Euclidean mathematics/geometry,and Sacrobosco’s Sphere which taught the traditional, geocentric world system. He was tutored and mentored by the experts, including Clavius, a Jesuit at the Collegio Romano. These are the very subjects that he taught at Pisa, and eventually at the University in Padua. There was nothing revolutionary about them and he taught them for a long time. The Copernican system was on his mind, but he had not yet found a good reason to fully support it.
- In 1592 Galileo applied and received the Chair of mathematics at the University in Padua, a city not far from Venice. Venice was intellectually liberal, and even tho Galileo taught the traditional mathematics to his students, he pursued anti-Aristotelian concepts in his own research. IN Padua, he tutored students in traditional math, wrote and sold textbooks. In 1597 he invented a geometric compass for his students, which he sold to them along with the textbook about how it worked. Professors weren’t paid much, so he also had a boarding house for students and tutored the ones who stayed with him. So, his first big invention, the compass, was done out of necessity and to make more money as a teacher. Later, in In 1606, because the instrument was so successful , Galileo published 60 copies of the textbook and sold them privately along with the instruments. Dedicated to Prince Cosimo de’ Medici (1590 – 1621), future Grand Duke of Tuscany (from 1609 to 1621). It was a tradition to dedicate academic works to Princes, because you wanted a better job or financial support for you research. Supporting the arts and sciences gave Princes prestige, so it was a mutually beneficial system to be part of. Princes also benefitted from mechanical knowledge for war machines and artillery, something Galileo’s compass definitely helped to improve. It was during this time that Galileo met his mistress, Marina Gamba. She is thought to have been a high class venetian courtesan. She bore him three illegitimate children, as they never married. They had two daughters and a son. He taught mathematics at Padua for 18 years. Galileo had to support his own family, but also many of his siblings, and took on his fathers debts over his sisters dowries. So he was always looking for ways to make more money. He invented a new rowing system for the Venetian shipbuilders, and a well pumping system for a venetian family. In 1609 he heard about the new device called a spyglass. He never saw one, but used the descriptions to make his own. This one is a version that he eventually gave to Prince Cosimo. We all need to be aware that Galileo did not actually invent the telescope. At this time far seeing devices were in production in different parts of Europe, and a few industrious glass makers were hoping to patent the device. A man named Hans Lippershay from Denmark made the first patent application at almost the same time. What Galileo is correctly credited for and famous for is improving the occhiale device, turning it on the heavens, and making the discoveries I will talk about shortly.
- Galileo’s trip to demonstrate and donate the perspiculum to the Venetian Doge in August 1609 was quite beneficial for him. The Doge was so impressed with his 9 x’s magnification device that he gave Galileo LIFE tenureship as a professor at the University in Padua, and a huge annual salary. Galileo was legally obligated to the Venetian state because of this, and some think he was reckless when he later dedicated his discovery to a Duke of Tuscany, instead of Venice. In December 1609 Galileo used a 20 x’s magnification device to study the planet Jupiter. What he saw astounded him. He also looked at the moon and the Sun and saw things that completely surprised him. He documented his observations over several weeks and prepared a publication that he hoped would lead to a better position at the court of the Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II. See, what Galileo really wanted to do was leave his teaching duties in Padua, and retire to a life of research and prestige, and definitely an increased income, even better than tenureship at the University. He hoped to become an official court mathematician and philosopher. So, he made a calculated risk and dedicated the new discovery to the Medici prince, even named the stars after them. He had a connection with the Duke of Tuscany because he had tutored the young Prince in mathematics over several summers, as a way to make more money. The family knew him well and liked him very much, but their prestige was at stake if Galileo was wrong. So, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. With the famous mathematician Johannes Kepler’s endorsement, Galileo was granted the new and extremely lucrative and prestigious position at the Medici court in 1610. He settled his family affairs in Padua, left his young son with his mistress, and put his daughters in a convent. He could not afford to pay a dowry for them, because of their illegitimate status. He could not marry a courtesan, either. Later, he said the 18 years he spent in the Venetian Republic were the best years of his life. In the middle of his life, everything changed. He was 45 years old and had made some of the most important discoveries of all time.
- You should all be relatively familiar with Galileo’s discoveries. With his special far-seeing device he believed he found stars circling the planet Jupiter. This was completely monumental because the Ptolemaic planetary system did not allow for the deviation. Jupiter had a path, every planet was known, the planets and stars did not deviate from their paths. But, Galileo trusted his sensory experiences and reasoning abilities over ancient and dogmatic beliefs. He looked at the moon and saw serious imperfections, craters, mountains, shadows and light. This was not supposed to be possible, according to Aristotle all of the planets were perfectly circular, uniform, and blemish free. But he observed otherwise. He drew it for everyone to observe. He looked at the Sun, and noticed that it had dark spots on it that came and went, but he didn’t know why. He confirmed the phases of Venus, again, something that should not have been possible, according to ancient wisdom. He observed the Milky Way in more detail than anyone else ever had with the naked eye. He told everyone there were far more starts and than they believed were even possible. The planet Saturn appeared to have two smaller planets on either side of it. (we know this was the rings, but his lens was not powerful enough to make this clear at the time). So, everything that Galileo saw made him believe that Copernicus had been right! There was so much sensory and reasonable evidence for it, he thought it was safe to put it out there. So, he did, in his book Siderius Nuncius, The Starry Messenger. He more formally took the Copernican, helio centric position in 1613, which started his long and arduous, ultimately defeated struggle with the Catholic Church.
- Remember when I said at the beginning that Galileo has been called a megalomaniac, someone who, because they believe they have the truth, push their beliefs on others? Well, there was no real proof about heliocentrism that Galileo could give anyone. We didn’t confirm the heliocentric system for ourselves, until we had satellites in space, to take pictures of what we could not see from Earth. Yes he had some sensory experiences, but much more of Galileo’s arguments were theoretical. Galileo was up against some extremely long-held beliefs based on Aristotelian physics and Holy Scripture, regarding the nature of the Universe. Yet, from 1613 to 1616 Galileo stubbornly battled for his views to be accepted by the Catholic Church. His protests and explanations were in the form of letters that were published, or privately circulated. Letter to the Duchess Christina and Letters on Sunspots were written at this time. However, because the Church ultimately came down in favor of the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic system, Galileo’s support system dropped down to a handful of men, a few academic friends, Duke Cosimo, Kepler, a Protestant who could afford to have different beliefs. In 1616, the argument was settled. Galileo was banned from holding Copernican beliefs, or teaching them or writing about them. He stirred the pot again with a derogatory, polemical book about the nature of scientific investigation in which he criticized scholastic, Aristotelian methods. This was The Assayer, in 1624. One of his old friends, Maffeo Barberini had just become the new pope, and he was safe for a while, as long as he didn’t preach Copernicanism. But, when Galileo took advantage of, or disregarded the new Pope’s instruction to claim heliocentrism was JUST A THEORY, Galileo’s life changed for the worse. This happened in 1632 with the publication of Dialogue on Two World Systems. He basically said in this work that heliocentrism was TRUE, and made the Pope look stupid for believing otherwise. We know the rest of the story. He was tried, convinced to recant his views, and ultimately sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. He never stopped working on inventions, though. He also published a work on mechanics, his first love, in 1634. He designed a new invention, the pendulum clock, but was not able to create it due to his failing eyesight and poor health. He lived a long time as a disgraced man. Right before he went blind, he discovered that the moon wobbled on its axis. So, I hope that this brief talk has helped you understand Galileo a little bit more. He was a real Renaissance Man, a man of his times. He was a humanist, an inventor, a discoverer, and most of all he was a revolutionary scientist. We may even have revolutionary scientists in our midst today! You are all products of your time, and I hope you spend some time in your college career learning about where you come from culturally and socially. CH 202 is part of that path.