A Galilean Sojourn in Florence

Submitted 8/16/04

By Wayne S. Messer, Berea College

From May 27 - 31, 2004, with the assistance of a generous grant from the Appalachian College Association (http://www.acaweb.org/), I participated in a NSF Chautauqua Short Course (http://www.engr.pitt.edu/~chautauq/), on Galileo (NSF Short Course #94, “Galileo’s Genius Viewed in Scientific, Artistic, Political and Religious Context”).

What follows is a random report on some of what I learned during the course from the instructors, the other participants, and the sites we visited.

Galileo’s life in Florence

There is no better place to encounter Galileo than Florence. Here, the context of the Renaissance is still extant in the art and architecture of the city, and there are many sites directly relevant to Galileo’s life and work. Although born in Pisa in 1564, Galileo’s family moved back to Florence in 1572. (Galileo’s birth year, 1564, also saw the death of Michelangelo, and the birth of Shakespeare.) Galileo attended grammar school there between the ages of 10 and 13, and always considered it home. Though he spent time away in a monastery school, then at the University of Pisa, first as a student, then as a teacher, and finally as faculty at the University of Padua for 18 years, in 1610 Galileo returned to Florence for good. He would live there, except for his travels to Rome and his brief incarceration in Siena, until the end of his life in 1642.

· Less than a mile south of Florence, in Arcetri, is the house where Galileo spent the last years of his life, including those when he was under house arrest. Some nice photos of this house can be found at http://www.cerritos.edu/ladkins/Arcetri/arcetri.htm.

· Just minutes away from his house, is the site of the San Matteo convent where his daughters lived, now a monastery (see the photo at the above link).

· On Via San Antonino, on the front of the house which once belonged to Vincenzio Viviani, is a bust of Galileo and stone scrolls eulogizing him on either side. Viviani came to live with and assist Galileo in the last years of his life, wrote his first biography, and worked tirelessly to have Galileo’s small tomb given greater prominence in the church of Santa Croce. This was denied for many years and throughout the reign of several Popes, until finally granted in 1737. The house is now the site of an art center, whose web pages contain a good photo of the front façade of the house (http://www.saci-florence.org/generalinfo/facilities.htm -- scroll down and click on the small image to see the enlarged version)

· Inside the church of Santa Croce (http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/orion/eng/hst/gothic/croce.html) is the tomb of Galileo (http://www.cifnet.com/~prags/hm/29.html), where his body was moved in 1737. The church also houses the tombs of Dante and Michelangelo.

· In the Museum of the History of Science (http://galileo.imss.firenze.it/), there are two of Galileo’s hand-built telescopes, his right middle finger, and numerous instruments and demonstration pertaining to his discoveries.

Some of Galileo’s Works

1610 Starry Messenger

1613 Letters on Sunspots

1615 On the Tides

1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican

1638 Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

The NSF Short Course and Our Itinerary

The course instructors and organizers were Jeffrey Fontana, Max Grober, and Donald Salisbury, professors of Art History, History, and Physics, respectively, at Austin College. In addition to morning lecture periods, our itinerary consisted of the following:

Thursday, 5/27: Climb the Duomo

Walking Tour of Florence

Uffizi Museum

Friday, 5/28: House of Vincenzo Viviani

History of Science Museum

Meeting with Tom Settle (renowned authority on Galileo)

Church of Santa Croce

Saturday, 5/29: Palazzo Pitti

Church of Santa Maria Novella

Sunday, 5/30: Palazzo Vecchio

Palazzo Medici

Monday, 5/31: Tour of Observatory in Arcetri

Tour of Galileo's House in Arcetri

San Matteo Convent

There were twenty-four participants, representing a wide variety of academic areas, including mathematics, English, philosophy, physics, law, economics, psychology, engineering, and art.

The “required” readings for the course included:

· Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, by Dava Sobel (1999), Penguin Books.

· Works by Galileo:

o On the World Systems, translated and abridged by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (1997), University of California Press.

o Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, in Maurice Finocchiaro (1989) (ed.) The Galileo Affair, Berkeley, or Stillman Drake (1957) (ed.) Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Anchor.

· Italy: Illusion and Mathematics, in Martin Kemp (1992) The Science of Art, Yale University Press.

· Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought, by Erwin Panofsky, in Isis, vol. 47, no. 1 (1956).

· Galileo, Florentine ‘Disegno’, and The Strange Spottedness of the Moon, by Samuel Y. Edgarton, Jr., in Art Journal, vol. 44 (1984).

· Hunting the White Elephant: When and How did Galileo Discover the Law of Free Fall, by Renn, Damerow, and Rieger, in Jurgen Renn (2001), (ed.) Galileo in Context, Cambridge University Press.

Additional recommended readings included:

· The Waning of the Renaissance, by William J. Bouwsma.

· The Copernican Revolution, by Thomas Kuhn.

· Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648, by Geoffrey Parker.

· History of Italian Renaissance Art, by Frederick Hartt.

· Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, by Mario Biagioli.

· Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible, by Richard J. Blackwell.

· Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy, by Jean Dietz Moss.

· Rhetoric and Dialectic in the Time of Galileo, by Jean Dietz Moss and William Wallace.

· Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo, by Eileen Reeves, in Jurgen Renn’s (ed.) Galileo in Context.

· Galileo in Rome, by William Shea and Mariano Artigas.

I also found the following book interesting and helpful:

· The Crime of Galileo, by Giorgio de Santillana (1955). Published by The University of Chicago Press.

Additional Websites

· The Galileo Project (http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/)

· NOVA Website for “Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/)