Monday, March 04, 2002
This morning I ran across a few news stories I thought might be of interest to Slashdot readers: one about the bankruptcy of MarchFirst, a story about a Japanese super-fast super-computer and one about the problems of translating "The Lord of the Rings" movie into English (which I figure might have interested the many Anime fans who read articles on the site).
All got rejected. :-( I know it's nothing personal really, but you'd think that at least one out of three would get in...
Book Review: Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel
I found this biography of Galileo an enjoyable delving into the all-to-human side of science. The book looks at the life of astronomer, mathematician and philosopher Galileo Galilei, detailing his discoveries and putting them in the context of his times. Though the book's title would seem to imply that it is wholly reliant on the letters he received from his elder daughter (whom he placed along with her younger sister in a local convent when they were teens) it includes extracts from other correspondents, extracts from his own published materials and relevant church records.
I found that the literary conceit of recounting the events of Galileo's life in part through the surviving letters of his eldest daughter, who was a nun, is a bit weak. While it certainly illuminates the daily concerns that Galileo faced -- ensuring that his daughters had enough money, sending gifts to them, dealing with family finances and matters dealing with his estate -- I found the usual religious exhortations from her a bit much (though I guess one would have to expect that from a nun ;-) I found that Galileo's other correspondences much more enlightening on the whole, and Sour Maria Celeste's (the name the eldest daughter took upon entering the monastery) letters often went over like a lead balloon in comparison. An argument can be made that they further enhance the fact that Galileo was a man and father (rather than just a 2 dimension icon for science), but I think the book would have been just as good by omitting most of her letters. Given this, I can't say I'm particularly interested in getting the follow-up book, which contains all of her letters (and none of Galileo's since they were apparently destroyed soon after her death).
This biography manages to cut through much of the iconic dross that has accumulated around the Galileo myth over the years. The book looks at the political reasons that brought Galileo's thoughts about planetary motion to the attention (and consequent ire) of Pope Urban VIII, who was being attacked for not sufficiently upholding Christian interests at the time. It is also interesting that Galileo was condemned on something akin to legalistic grounds, as he had been told verbally that his views could be spoken and taught when couched in a theoretical sense, and a document Galileo evidently never saw clearly states that he was prohibited from teaching the Copernican viewpoint in any manner. in the end, the verdict was that Galileo had "defended a condemned doctrine".
The portrayal of the inquisition of Galileo was not as monolithic, or as completely one-sided as I had previously been led to believe. Many in the Church believed that Galileo had been dealt with too harshly, and many leading theologians and statesmen confided this sentiment to him, sometimes publicly (such as the time when the French ambassador campaigned fro his pardon, "marching into Rome in 1633 in lavish display, at the head of a cavalcade of silver-shod horses attended by liverymen in gold embroidered coats", and for whose effort Galileo dedicated his last book to him) though more often in private, no doubt fearing Pope Urban VIII's wrath.
Another thing that comes across in this biography is what a masterful writer Galileo was -- the lively literary devices he uses shows that science and art were not so separate as they seem now. (It's interesting that Milton came to visit Galileo, a visit he mentions in his Areopagitica).
Though I am sure many people would have skimmed past it, I appreciated Sobel's summing up of the key events of Galileo's lifetime, and the course of such issues as the banning of his "Dialogues" for two centuries after his death. The book concludes with a 1999 entry mentioning the namesake spacecraft Galileo reaching Jupiter, which "continues to enlighten astronomers everywhere". Nice touch.
Annie Beginning to Babble
More progress on the Annie front: Annie is babbling up a storm these days. She’s say “ba ba” a lot, and making lots of general monosyllabic sounds. Cool stuff! ;-)
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