" Book on Galileo Gripping"

The book, “Galileo’s Daughter, a Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love” by Dava Sobel has spent very little time in the Library’s stacks since it was published in 1999. Whenever I have seen it come across the checkout desk, I promise myself that I’ll check it out and read it. Last month, I finally had the chance to read it and I was not disappointed.

From the title one naturally expects to read a biography of Galileo’s daughter, however, for the first one-third of the book, Galileo, himself, is the featured character. A son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had intended to become a priest, but when that calling did not materialize, he used his intellect to become the foremost scientist of his time. His inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world.

His telescopes allowed him and other astronomers to forward the argument that the earth moves around the sun---a dangerous assertion when, at that time, the Holy Roman Church promulgated the doctrine that the earth was the center of the universe with the sun and the stars revolving around it.

Of Galileo’s three illegitimate children, a second daughter, Virginia, became a cloistered nun at the age of 13. Because of her illegitimacy, Galileo believed she would never have an opportunity for marriage. She was to live the remainder of her life as Sister Maria Celeste in a convent near Florence.

Although his letters to her have been lost, 124 letters from Sister Maria Celeste to her father, Galileo, have survived. The first complete letter is dated May 10, 1623 and the last letter was written on December 10, 1633. These letters—fully translated and included in the text—indicate her loving support for her father during the tumultuous years when he was on trial before the Holy Inquisition on heresy charges. The letters describe the growing schism between science and Church philosophy.

For a lay person, the author does an excellent job in describing how the physical sciences slowly evolved from the philosophies into the practices of observation, experimentation, and measurement that we know today. Before Galileo, the natural philosophers—Aristotle being the most revered---contended that the universe was unchanging and mathematics was a useless tool in trying to describe nature. If Aristotle had expressed an opinion or a theory on a subject, he couldn’t be challenged.

After Galileo, scientists began to use empiricism to explain the natural world. Even Galileo was proved to be wrong on occasion. His treatise on tides claimed that it was the earth’s motion that caused the ocean tides. Later scientists were to prove that it is the gravitational pull of the moon, instead.

I would highly recommend this book to any reader who does not have a scientific background but would like a thoroughly readable and sometimes gripping story about the sciences of the late Middle Ages. Sister Maria Celeste’s account of life in a convent only adds to the interest of the book.

Recent memorial donations to the Library Foundation include those in honor of Donald Beckenhauer from Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Fleischer, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Trautwein and Connie Korte.

Visit the Library’s new website at “columbuslibrary.info” to search the catalog, check the bookmobile schedule, or read previous issues of the “Librarian’s Shelf”.