Galileo's Telescope: A European Story

by Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota, Franco Giudice, Catherine Bolton (Translator)

Overview

Between 1608 and 1610 the canopy of the night sky changed forever, ripped open by an object created almost by accident: a cylinder with lenses at both ends. Galileo’s Telescope tells the story of how an ingenious optical device evolved from a toy-like curiosity into a precision scientific instrument, all in a few years. In transcending the limits of human vision, the telescope transformed humanity’s view of itself and knowledge of the cosmos.

Galileo plays a leading—but by no means solo—part in this riveting tale. He shares the stage with mathematicians, astronomers, and theologians from Paolo Sarpi to Johannes Kepler and Cardinal Bellarmine, sovereigns such as Rudolph II and James I, as well as craftsmen, courtiers, poets, and painters. Starting in the Netherlands, where a spectacle-maker created a spyglass with the modest magnifying power of three, the telescope spread like technological wildfire to Venice, Rome, Prague, Paris, London, and ultimately India and China. Galileo’s celestial discoveries—hundreds of stars previously invisible to the naked eye, lunar mountains, and moons orbiting Jupiter—were announced to the world in his revolutionary treatise Sidereus Nuncius.

Combining science, politics, religion, and the arts, Galileo’s Telescope rewrites the early history of a world-shattering innovation whose visual power ultimately came to embody meanings far beyond the science of the stars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674736917
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/23/2015
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Massimo Bucciantini is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Siena.

Michele Camerota is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cagliari.

Franco Giudice is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Bergamo.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations, Plates, and Maps ix

Prologue 1

1 From the Low Countries 13

2 The Venetian Archipelago 33

3 Breaking News: Glass and Envelopes 53

4 In a Flash 79

5 Peregrinations 89

6 The Battle of Prague 103

7 Across the English Channel: Poets, Philosophers, and Astronomers 129

8 Conquering France 155

9 Milan: At the Court of "King" Federico 169

10 The Dark Skies of Florence 181

11 The Roman Mission 203

12 In Mortion: Portugal, India, China 227

Epilogue 237

Notes 249

References 305

Credits 327

Acknowledgments 331

Index 333

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
Putting Galileo's celestial discoveries in the context of the world from 1609 to 1612 is an interesting concept, but the execution of this investigation never quite matches it. The authors, professors of the history of science at various Italian universities, follow the development of the telescope from the Netherlands to the city-states of Italy, Prague, England, and eventually China. Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and Nikolaus Copernicus are mentioned often, and Kepler's support of Galileo aided early excitement over the latter's discoveries of Jupiter's moons and craters on Luna. While these breakthroughs were approvingly discussed by the intelligentsia of the period, dissent arose—not on religious grounds, but over belief that the observations were due to "tricks of the lenses and not real phenomena." This attempt to paint the world surrounding Galileo's achievements is laced with interesting information. However, it is badly organized and replete with convoluted sentences, murky political background, and interruptive technical digressions on the minutiae of lens making. Avid students of the period may enjoy this book, but it's not for general readers. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Using letters, paintings and other contemporary documents, Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerata and Franco Giudice show, in meticulous detail, that the dissemination of Galileo’s discoveries was by no means linear and straightforward.

Times Higher Education - Robyn Arianrhod

Galileo’s Telescope opens the door to a whole society going through deep transformation…The book will be satisfying to anyone wanting a wider cultural perspective on this most unsettling time.

Brian Welter

Galileo’s Telescope is a new account of this turning point in the history of western civilization, and its authors—three Italian history of science professors—give equal weight to the telescope’s scientific, cultural and political impacts. Translated into lucid English by Catherine Bolton, the book is full of entertaining insights and asides… Modern anxieties tend to focus on what science enables us to do, but Galileo’s Telescope reminds us that the truly subversive potential of science lies in what it enables us to imagine.

The Spectator - Marek Kukula

Makes available to the general reader one of the most fascinating stories in the history of science.

Wall Street Journal - Mark Archer

[A] hugely enjoyable book, by far the most lively and challenging book on Galileo to appear in decades…Everyone who’s ever looked up at the night sky and wondered should read it and re-make the acquaintance of the man who showed us all what we were really looking at.

Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue

Over six decades I have read many biographies of Galileo and his discoveries, but never have I encountered a more exciting presentation. Reading about the prompt pushback against Galileo in Florence itself was an eye-opener, to mention a special climax to this brilliantly researched and illustrated account.

Owen Gingerich

In broad outline, the story of Galileo and the first use of a telescope in astronomy is well known. Bucciantini, Camerota, and Giudice take a new look at this seminal event by focusing on how the news spread across Europe and how it was received. Their well-written narrative examines the central issues using papers, paintings, letters, and other contemporary documents… After four centuries [Galileo’s] reputation has been thoroughly vindicated.

Choice - D. E. Hogg

Project[s] a sense of how new ways of seeing, far from merely providing new tools, were—and are—complicated extensions of the way we understand our experience.

Nature - Philip Ball

A rich and complex story of how the Galilean telescope emerged from the Dutch spyglass. In Galileo’s Telescope, Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota, and Franco Giudice—three distinguished historians of science who have written extensively on Galileo—retell this famous story in light of considerable new evidence and their own firm grasp of the twists and turns of [its] history. Fundamentally, they remind us that we need to stop looking only at Galileo… Surveying the entire European landscape in the years immediately before and after Galileo’s announcement, this book offers a comprehensive vision of how an entire world, rather than a single if singular individual, gave birth to the telescope.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Paula Findlen

03/15/2015
Only a few scientific discoveries have changed our basic understanding of the world. The spyglass, a device invented by an unknown scientist and improved upon by many is one such creation. Galileo (1564–1642) was credited with turning the spyglass into the telescope after he refined its lens, magnified its power, and turned it to the heavens. History of science professors Bucciantini (Univ. of Siena), Michele Camerota (Univ. of Cagliari), and Franco Giudice (Univ. of Bergamo) track the iterative design, scientific collaboration, and controversy that followed the early days of the instrument. While agreement with the heliocentric view of the universe and Galileo's discoveries became increasingly dangerous, many scientists embraced the evidence that they could now see. This book includes detailed notes, a comprehensive bibliography, and maps and time lines that show how fast and far the news of the telescope and Galileo's observations spread. Most impressive is the tale of how the authors uncovered the inventor's first representation of Jupiter's satellites on an envelope while researching in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, Italy. VERDICT Highly recommended for libraries with deep collections of European history and the history of science.—Beth Dalton, Littleton, CO

Library Journal

2014-12-27
Italian professors of the history of science Bucciantini (Univ. of Siena), Camerota (Univ. of Cagliari) and Giudice (Univ. of Bergamo) explore the geographical dispersion of the telescope and the radical change its "new sky" produced.The first mention of a telescope was in 1608, when a spectacle maker presented a tube with a convex lens at one end and a concave lens at the other. So great was the interest that before a patent could be granted, spyglasses were re-created all across Europe. The best, of course, was Galileo's, and he elaborated on his ideas in his short book, Sidereus nuncius, which radically changed the world of science and religion, introducing a new order of the heavens. Galileo noted his discovery of the lunar mountains, the true cause of the Milky Way and the four satellites of Jupiter. More importantly, he stated that Venus orbited the sun, confirming Copernicus' theory. This innovative look at some of the most important few years in scientific history is consistently illuminating, as the authors show the connections among the enlightened, scientifically minded courts of Europe. Their research is vast and their findings, remarkable; they discovered new letters and little notes Galileo made on the backs of envelopes, often part of shopping lists. The communication among Brussels, Prague, London, Venice and Madrid that took place in the first year shows the importance of the findings generated by the simple instrument. By 1611, the Collegio Romano had approved Galileo's work, except for heliocentricity; they still claimed that while other planets revolved around the sun, Earth was central and immobile. Contemporary works on Sidereus nuncius cited by the authors prove its broad effect. This erudite work will take some effort to follow and understand, but it's well-worth the effort for a glimpse into the world-shattering effect of the birth of the telescope.

Kirkus Reviews