"A. Overview: The purpose of this book is to show Galileo at work on his science. Drake feels that biographers can overemphasize the cultural context that surround their subjects. Thus he argues that you cannot understand Galileo’s thought by the “thoughts of all his predecessors and contemporaries.�� So the approach of this book is to examine Galileo’s scientific life year by year. It is more of a yearly chronicle than a biography. It is based on documentary evidence. Opposes Koyré.
B. Why is Drake important to study: No one knew Galileo better than Drake. Galileo was his life’s work. He made himself into an excellent linguist. He dealt in the manuscripts at great length. He does find that Galileo was an experimentalist which agrees with contemporary debate (Koyre argued that his was a Platonist and not an experimentalist).
C. Galileo historiography
1. Koyré, Galileo Studies. Places Galileo in a tradition of abstract thought (Plato) rather than induction from experience. This was the first work to suggest that thesis. Galileo was placed in a tradition of Descartes and medieval philosophy.
2. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers. Portrays Galileo’s work as incorrect and without scientific basis.
3. The main differences of opinion among all the histories include
a) The sources that Galileo used in his investigations. According to Drake, Galileo had read Aristotle, Copernicus, Ptolemy, but he wanted to break with medieval philosophy.
b) The relations of Galileo’s science to philosophy and religion at that time. He wanted to remove his studies from the realm of philosophy and theology and work only in areas which could be verified by experiment.
D. Galileo’s trial
1. This is perhaps the closest thing to biography we get in this book. Galileo is presented as a suffering man. But the problem is that this section does not fit with the rest of the book (because it does not deal with his work).
2. Also, Galileo is presented like a hero here at the trial. Drake spends many pages showing how Galileo did not lie to Bellarmine in 1616 about discussing Copernican theory. (Who cares if he lied?)
E. Galileo’s science
1. Drake attempts to explain away all possible error (disagreement with modern science).
2. This is not presented for people to learn about Galileo. It is intended for specialists. His two great works, Dialogue and Discourses are not treated in summary fashion.
3. Tides: Galileo believed that the moon’s effect on the tides was nothing more than a hidden cause favored by astrologers. He wanted to explain tides in terms of the earth’s 2 motions. Drake argues that a careful understanding of Galileo’s theory will show that it accounted for his obervations.
"

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A most excellent a kind service has been performed by those who defend from envy the great deeds of excellent men and have taken it upon themselves to preserve from oblivion and ruin names deserving of immortality.

This book (more of a pamphlet, really) is proof that you do not need to write many pages to make a lasting contribution to science. For it was in this little book that Galileo set forth his observations made through his newly improved telescope. In 50-odd pages, with some accompanying diagrams and etchings, Galileo quickly asserts the roughness of the Moon’s surface, avers the existence of many more stars than can be seen with the naked eye, and—the grand climax—announces the existence of the moons of Jupiter. Suddenly the universe seemed far bigger, and stranger, than it had before.

The actual text of Siderius Nuncius does not make for exciting reading. To establish his credibility, Galileo includes a blow-by-blow account of his observations of the moons of Jupiter, charting their nightly appearance. The section on our Moon is admittedly more compelling, as Galileo describes the irregularities he observed as the sun passed over its surface. Even so, this edition is immeasurably improved by the substantial commentary provided by Albert van Helden, who gives us the necessary historical background to understand why it was so controversial, and charts the aftermath of the publication.

Though Galileo is sometimes mistakenly credited with inventing the telescope, spyglasses were widely available at the time; what Galileo did was improve his telescope far beyond the magnification commonly available. The result was that, for a significant span of time, Galileo was the only person on the planet with the technology to closely and accurately observe the heavens. The advantage was not lost on him, and he made sure that he published before he got scooped. In another shrewd move, he named the newly-discovered moons of Jupiter after the Grand Duke Cosimo II and his brothers, for which they were known as the Medician Stars (back then, the term “star�� meant any celestial object). This earned him patronage and protection.

Galileo’s findings were controversial because none of them aligned with the predictions of Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy. According to the accepted view, the heavens were pure and incorruptible, devoid of change or imperfection. Thus it was jarring to find the moon’s surface bumpy, scarred, and mountainous, just like Earth’s. Even more troublesome were the Galilean moons. In the orthodox view the Earth was the only center of orbit; and one of the strongest objections against Copernicus’s system was that it included two centers, the Sun and the Earth (for the Moon). Galileo’s finding of an additional center of orbit meant that this objection ceased to carry any weight, since in any case we must posit multiple centers. Understandably there was a lot of skepticism at first, with some scholars doubting the efficacy of Galileo’s new instrument. But as other telescopes caught up with Galileo’s, and new anomalies were added to the mix—the phases of Venus and the odd shape of Saturn—his observations achieved widespread acceptance.

Though philosophers and historians of science often emphasize the advance of theory, I find this text a compelling example of the power of pure observation. For Galileo’s breakthrough relied, not on any new theory, but on new technology, extending the reach of his senses. He had no optical theory to guide him as he tinkered with his telescope, relying instead on simple trial-and-error. And though theory plays a role in any observation, some of Galileo’s findings—such as that the Milky Way is made of many small stars clustered together—are as close to simple acts of vision as possible. Even if Copernicus’s theory was not available as an alternative paradigm, it seems likely to me that advances in the power of telescopes would have thrown the old worldview into a crisis. This goes to show that observational technology is integral to scientific progress.

It is also curious to note the moral dimension of Galileo’s discovery. Now, the Ptolemaic system is commonly lambasted as narcissistically anthropocentric, placing humans at the center of it all. Yet it is worth pointing out that, in the Ptolemaic system, the heavens are regarded as pure and perfect, and everything below the moon as corruptible and imperfect (from which we get the term “sublunary��). Indeed, Dante placed the circles of paradise on the moon and the planets. So arguably, by making Earth the equal of the other planets, the new astronomy actually raised the dignity of our humble abode. In any case, I think that it is simplistic to characterize the switch from geocentricity to heliocentricity as a tale of declining hubris. The medieval Christians were hardly swollen with pride by their cosmic importance.

As you can see, this is a fascinating little volume that amply rewards the little time spent reading it. Van Helden has done a terrific job in making this scientific classic accessible."

"Scientific Validity Is Not Truth or Reality

Within this brief summary of physics over the past two centuries Krauss has a great deal to say about truth and reality and the way the first is established by the second in science. He puts it this way: “[T]he central question becomes: To what extent do our imaginings reflect our own predilections, and to what extent might they actually mirror reality?�� This metaphor of a ‘mirror�� is one that has been casually used for centuries. It has also be roundly critiqued as misleading and problematic for the concepts of both truth and reality (See: /book/show/3...). Krauss’s book and particularly his criteria for determining the truth of recent scientific theories demonstrates the issues which he seems unaware of.

As background to my interpretation of the book, for example: the physical theory of gravity formulated by Isaac Newton allowed us to successfully land human beings on the Moon and bring them back safely. Does this mean that Newton’s theory is true? No, it is not. More recent theories in physics claim that gravity is not a force as Newton conceived it but rather a distortion in space-time caused by massive objects. Gravity as such is therefore not even a ‘thing��.

But we certainly experience something which we call gravity. Does this mean that we simply don’t have the natural sensory apparatus necessary to detect its real character. Also no, because we have been able to enhance our sensory faculties through technology. This allows us to confirm and precisely measure the distortions in space-time correlated with our experience of gravity.

With our newer relativistic theories we have been able to predict and confirm the movements of large galactic structures. Does this mean that we have been able to ‘approach reality�� more closely? No. Newtonian physics is not a ‘special case�� of relativity physics even if it gives the same suggestions for getting people to the moon. The two are contrary views of reality, with very different ontological concepts. The entire history of physics is one of successive ‘breakthroughs�� the effects of which are to rubbish everything previously thought to be taken for granted about reality. As some physicists put it therefore: Even space-time is ultimately doomed. It doesn’t exist except as a very useful fiction.

I am not primarily suggesting this has anything essential to do with our natural perceptual limits (although there is a good argument that this is the case). I am claiming that it is a consequence of ideas and concepts that are derived from reflection* on this experience, not from experience itself. These ideas and concepts are literally imagined. Krauss points to imagination as the essentially human attribute: “[I]magination almost defines what it means to be human.�� And he’s correct. But imagination requires language in order to formulate and communicate, even to communicate the concept of imagination. And there’s the rub.

Krauss goes off the rails when he claims that through science, as a disciplined form of imagination, “�� we gain new insights into our own standing in the universe.�� This we certainly do not do, unless it is to recognise that “our standing�� is entirely uncertain. That is, we know nothing more about the reality of the universe, including our place in it, than we as a species have ever known before, which is precisely nothing.

Surely we are able to do things we have never done before because of the knowledge we have accumulated and shared about ‘how the world works.�� But we can only use that phrase in the strictly pragmatic sense that our knowledge has permitted us to achieve a result based on the behaviour of the universe as it responds to us, not because we know anything about what it is. And part of that knowledge of behaviour is that we have produced innumerable desirable results - like travel to the Moon - using knowledge which we have subsequently learned to be wrong about what is actually ‘there.��. In other words, our ideas and theoretical concepts may useful whether they are true or not and whether or not they conform with something called reality.

Krauss feels that “If we couldn’t imagine the world as it might be, it is possible that the world of our experience would become intolerable.�� This seems dangerously close to the religious belief that we need the concept of God to make the world bearable. In any case, the epistemological value of that sentiment is zero. It is a kind of whistling in the ontological dark. By ignoring our own incapacity to definitively match our scientific ideas and concepts, indeed any kind of language, with what is not-language, we repress the knowledge that we cannot control the universe, not even by naming it (See: /review/show... And /review/show... And /review/show... ).

Krauss makes frequent reference to religion as a sort of parallel inquiry into reality. But what he doesn’t seem to realise is that theologians have long recognised the basic principle that fundamental reality, that is what they call God, is beyond any description, that no theory of God’s existence is even remotely correct. So unless scientists wish to call their findings some sort of divine revelation which is fixed in dogmatic formulae that can’t be challenged, they are forced to accept this basic principle. Reality is beyond language. No matter what we are able to accomplish through language, we get no closer to the world it purports to represent.

In fact it seems as if the more we know, for example about quantum physics and general relativity, the less coherent our language about the world becomes. Reality is very likely something beyond our experience given our perceptual limitations and the overwhelming power of our reflective ability. But whatever reality is, it is certainly beyond our capability to express it other than that single word�� reality.��. Krauss’s suggestion that there are “hidden realities�� to be discovered through science is therefore highly misleading. There may be many more theories of the world in our future, but none of these will correspond to a reality. Like God, whatever we think reality is, He/It is not that.

Krauss is correct in one specific observation. Science, like art, discloses new ways of viewing the world. But to claim that these new ways are about reality or even an approximation of reality is unsustainable by the standards of science itself. What science creates may be useful, exciting, inspiring. But ultimately it is another form of poetry. Like the best of poetry, science is useful, exciting, or inspiring when it points to something beyond itself that cannot be described by science. Like the best of theology, science is most robust when it recognises that truth, like God, is a fictional ideal which motivates inquiry but can never be reached.

Krauss’s potted history of scientific achievements is really a story about overcoming the prejudices and false presumptions developed largely by previous science. Science, although it is empirical, is never about experience; it is about coherence of the scientific, especially the mathematical, language du jour, and through the things that may be accomplished with that language. It is through incoherence that science progresses in the drive to eliminate it. But there will always be such incoherence, just as there will always be another poem to write (or read).

This is one implication of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics, perhaps the most significant scientific finding of the 20th century. But this scientific finding, because it implies an infinity of future ‘horizons�� for inquiry, is, it seems to me, far from “i�ԳٴDZ������������.�� It is as inspiring as the knowledge that there are infinite number of poems to be penned or paintings created. Krauss implicitly recognises this himself when he writes, “ultimately the driving force behind all human inquiry is the satisfaction of the quest itself.�� This may be the fundamental human instinct correlated with our reflective capability. If so it acts as both a spur and an end point, an end point which is being defined while it is simultaneously pursued.

So Krauss’s unsupportable presumptions about reality and scientific validity lead him to curious conclusions. For example, he says “It is also simply disingenuous to claim that there is any definitive evidence that any of the ideas associated with string theory yet bear a clear connection to reality,�� ‘Who cares?�� must be the only reasonable response. Newtonian gravity never had any connection with reality. Einsteinian space-time doesn’t either. Yet both were useful and, for their time, scientifically valid. In many ways string theory is the most coherent version of physical laws we have. Yet we have known from its inception that it is wrong. And it may not be considered ‘useful�� for decades or centuries - like many other scientific and mathematical advances - until one day it is. But it’s correspondence with reality will no be the deciding factor.

Perhaps scientists and their boosters might benefit from a slightly wider reading list. Just sayin��.

*Reflection is the old fashioned term for what is now coming to be called ‘metacognition.�� Being old fashioned I tend to use the former term. But metacognition also has a useful connotation which is important: suffering. Part of this suffering is the necessity of intellectual advance through unlearning what we thought we knew. This is a painful process and we tend therefore to resist it in proportion to the potential advance. "