Eppur si muove
June 10, 2020 9:32 AM   Subscribe

Did Galileo Truly Say, ‘And Yet It Moves’? A Modern Detective Story: An astrophysicist traces genealogy and art history to discover the origin of the famous motto (Scientific American metered paywall): There is no doubt that he thought along those lines. His bitterness about the trial; the fact that he had been forced to abjure and recant his life’s work; the humiliating reality that his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems had been put on the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books; and his deep contempt for the inquisitors who judged him continually occupied his mind for all the years following the trial. We can also be certain that he did not (as legend has it) mutter that phrase in front of the inquisitors. Doing so would have been insanely risky. But did he say it at all? If not, when and how did the myth about this motto start circulating?
posted by not_the_water (10 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Galileo:Eppur si muove::Oppenheimer:Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

They both probably said "Wow!", or "Eek!", or …
posted by scruss at 12:51 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


We can also be certain that he did not (as legend has it) mutter that phrase in front of the inquisitors. Doing so would have been insanely risky.

I mean, that's not what "certain" means.

Also: Oppenheimer didn't claim he said those words out loud, just that he was reminded of them in the moment.
posted by The Tensor at 2:01 PM on June 10, 2020 [5 favorites]


Kenneth Bainbridge, the director of the Trinity project, however did say something, more appropriate for the situation: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:29 PM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]


"Even if Galileo never spoke those words, they have some relevance for our current troubled times, when even provable facts are under attack by science deniers. Galileo’s legendary intellectual defiance—“in spite of what you believe, these are the facts”—becomes more important than ever." Amen
posted by blue shadows at 9:14 PM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh, this is from Mario Livio, who has a new book out on Galileo. Unfortunately, it appears that the book has serious problems. As it happens, a science historian, who specializes in the history of early modern astronomy and scientists wrote a very long, detailed and damning review on his blog:
One thing that I have mentioned in passing is Livio’s attempts to draw parallels between what happened to Galileo and the current crop of science deniers. The analogies simply don’t work because no matter how hard Livio tries to claim the opposite, Galileo’s critics in astronomy, especially the Jesuits, were not science deniers but just as much scientists as Galileo, who argued for an equally valid, in fact empirically more valid, system of astronomy, the Tychonic one, as Galileo’s heliocentric system. All the way through the book Livio keeps trying to disqualify the Tychonic system as unscientific but in the first half of the seventeenth century it was just as scientific as the heliocentric hypothesis. The only person practicing science denial here is Livio. He also wants to present the book as a discussion of the general relationship between science and religion but the whole time he argues from a presentist standpoint and refuses to view the relationship in Galileo’s time in its correct historical context. Lastly he actually wants to sell the book as a new biography of Galileo presented with the insights of a working astrophysicist, his own claim at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately it is here that he fails most.
Thony Christie: How To Create Your Own Gallileo

Come for the Inquisition and Renaissance Italian politics, stay for Gallileo's disgusting behaviour in the debate about comets, his completely bonkers theory of tides and all the obscure details about the history of science.
posted by kmt at 1:53 AM on June 11, 2020 [4 favorites]


Galileo wasn't persecuted for his science, he was persecuted for being a bit Dawkins about it.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:04 AM on June 11, 2020


Thony Christie: How To Create Your Own Gallileo

First thing I thought of too, but I didn't want to post it as the very first comment. Mario Livio is not a historian but an astrophysicist who is completely out of touch with contemporary historical scholarship and so has written yet another panegyrical morality tale with baddies (the Church) and goodies (Galileo), which historians have long abandoned. Moreover, he has fully bought into the long discredited 19th century conflict thesis.

Oh, and for anyone for whom the linked review feels just like some random blog post full of typos and grammar mistakes, that is because Thony "Histsci Hulk" Christie has dysgraphia. He talks about it here. Otherwise as far as I can tell historians think of him as some sort of walking talking encyclopedia of early modern astronomy. The rest of the blog should demonstrate that extremely well.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:48 AM on June 11, 2020 [7 favorites]


From the conflict thesis wiki link:

“ Finocchiaro also describes as mythical the notion that Galileo "saw" the Earth's motion, since this direct observation was only possible in the 21st century, and the idea that Galileo was "imprisoned", since he was "actually held under house arrest."[31] He notes that the situation was complex and objections to the Copernican system included arguments that were philosophical and scientific, as well as theological.”

This reads to me like someone purposefully muddling facts....like FOX NEWS level muddling. The awareness that the clergy weren't unanimously opposed to Copernicus or Galileo (or Darwin) isn't groundbreaking. The simple, true fact is that the church used it's power to suppress an idea.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:28 AM on June 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


As the evidence for the heliocentric hypothesis piled up, how many stubborn hold-out Tychonic-system promoting Jesuits found themselves accused of heresy, placed under house arrest, and had their books banned?
posted by Reverend John at 8:44 PM on June 11, 2020


geocentrist says what
posted by OverlappingElvis at 4:13 PM on June 12, 2020


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