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In this two-hour special, NOVA celebrates the story of the father of modern science and
his struggle to get Church authorities to accept the truth of his astonishing discoveries.
The program is based on Dava Sobel's bestselling book, Galileo's Daughter, which reveals
a new side to the famously stubborn scientist—that his closest confidante was
his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun.
The actor Simon Callow plays Galileo in dramatic reenactments of key moments
from his life: his pioneering telescopic observations of the Moon and planets,
his revolutionary experiments with falling objects, and his fateful trial
before the Inquisition for heresy.
Born in 1564, Galileo lived a generation after Nicolas Copernicus published
his controversial theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe
around which the heavens revolved. Galileo supported the idea that the Earth
turned on its axis and that it, along with the planets, revolved around the
sun. The view was considered absurd by most scholars since it contradicted
certain passages in the Bible and challenged the commonsense experience of
the Earth as a solid, unmoving object.
But Galileo found merit in the idea, especially after he aimed a newly
invented instrument called the telescope at the night sky and saw that
the Moon and planets were far from the perfect realms accepted by the
Catholic Church. His discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter and phases in
the appearance of Venus, analogous to the phases of the Moon, supported
the Copernican view.
The Church insisted that Galileo couch his speculations in hypothetical
terms only. But he stepped over the line in 1632 when he published his
Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, in which a simpleton mouths
the views of the then-reigning pope, Urban VIII. This was too much
for the Pope, and Galileo was hauled before the Inquisition, which had
tortured and burned to death malefactors for far less.
Galileo's clash with the Vatican put Sister Maria Celeste in an awkward
position, but she continued to correspond and meet with her father and
even served as his editor.
Though his life was spared, Galileo was put under house arrest, and the
Dialogue was banned. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Church.
Galileo's arguments eventually "won the war" for the Copernican theory,
making it intellectually respectable to believe that the Earth in fact
moves, says Harvard professor Owen Gingerich.
Previously an obscure branch of philosophy, science was now on the road
to becoming the preeminent method for discovering how the world works—thanks to Galileo.
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