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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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