Galileo's Telescope: A European Story - Hardcover

Massimo Bucciantini; Michele Camerota; Franco Giudice; Catherine Bolton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674736915 ISBN 13: 9780674736917

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2015

Synopsis

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."

About this title

Review:

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, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Using letters, paintings and other contemporary documents, Massimo Bucciantini, Michele Camerota and Franco Giudice show, in meticulous detail, that the dissemination of Galileo s discoveries was by no means linear and straightforward ... Galileo s Telescope is written in accessible language and generously illustrated ... Documents are examined painstakingly in order to date events and to uncover opinions in the various locations. -- Times Higher Education

Ever since the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei first turned his telescope to the heavens [...] advances in technology and great strides in knowledge have gone hand in hand. Galileo s Telescope is a new account of this turning point in the history of western civilisation, and its authors give equal weight to the telescope s scientific, cultural and political impacts. Translated into lucid English [...] the book is full of entertaining insights and asides, but nevertheless retains a slightly academic tone, which is a pleasing contrast to the matey irreverence of much popular science and history writing today. [...] Galileo s Telescope immerses us in the world of the early 17th century, with all of its religious, political and philosophical divisions. [...] at the heart of this account is the shock and excitement of scientific discovery. [...] Modern anxieties tend to focus on what science enables us to do, but Galileo s Telescope remind us that the truly subversive potential of science lies in what it enables us to imagine. --Spectator

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0674736915
• ISBN 13: 9780674736917
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352