Galileo

Galileo (1564-1642) is one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of science. A hero of modern science and key to its birth, he was also a deeply divided man: a scholar committed to the establishment of scientific truth yet forced to concede the importance of faith, and a brilliant analyst of the elegantly mathematical workings of nature yet bungling and insensitive with his own family. Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer, and author, David Wootton places him at the centre of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years; the beginnings of his scientific career constructing a 'new physics'; his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Wootton reveals much that is new - from Galileo's premature Copernicanism to a previously unrecognized illegitimate daughter - and, controversially, rejects the long-established orthodoxy which holds that Galileo was a good Catholic. Absolutely central to Galileo's significance - and to science more broadly - is the telescope, the potential of which Galileo was the first to grasp. Wootton makes clear that it totally revolutionized and galvanized scientific endeavour to discover new and previously unimagined facts. Drawing extensively on Galileo's voluminous letters, many of which were self-censored and sly, this is an original, arresting, and highly readable biography of a difficult, remarkable Renaissance genius.

ISBN 0300125364   Pages 354 ISBN13 9780300125368 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 726 Publisher Yale University Press   Published in New Haven Imprint Yale University Press   Height (mm) 234 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 156 Publication date 17 Sep 2010   Spine width (mm) 31 DEWEY 520.92   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

		List of Illustrations
		Acknowledgements
		Introduction: Conjectural history		1
Part one		The mind's eye
1		His father's son		9
2		Florence		14
3		Galileo's lamp		18
4		Eureka!		22
5		Seeing is believing		25
6		A friend in need		30
7		Juvenilia		33
8		The Leaning Tower		36
9		Inertia		43
10		Nudism		46
Part two		The watcher of the skies
11		Copernicanism		51
12		Money		67
13		Fields of fire		70
14		The experimental method		76
15		The telescope		87
16		Mother		93
17		The Starry Messenger		96
18		Florence and buoyancy		106
19		Jesuits and the new astronomy		114
20		Sunspots		125
21		The Catholic scientist		132
Part three		The eagle and the arrow
22		Copernicus condemned		137
23		Comets		157
24		The death of Gianfrancesco Sagredo		171
		More...

" . . . a thought-provoking picture of him [Galileo]. . . . To read this account of how his ideas clashed witht he accepted ones is to appreciate that he is one of the world's great secular heroes."--Rob Hardy, "The Commercial Dispatch"--Rob Hardy "The Commercial Dispatch "

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