Recasting Galileo's story

GALILEO'S DAUGHTER - A Drama of Science, Faith and Love: Dava Sobel; Fourth Estate, London. Distributed by Ajay Parmar & Co., Post Box No. 7208, First Floor, Arun House, 2/25, Ansari Road, New Delhi-110002. ;pound 7.99.

GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642 AD) is regarded as belonging to a small group of the greatest scientists of all time and his startling discoveries combined with his brush with the Catholic doctrine, triggered by his scientific views that clashed with beliefs held sacrosanct by the Church in his time, make him a romantic figure in science.

His use of the telescope to observe the mountains of the moon and the four Jovian satellites as well as the myriads of stars in the Milky Way not visible to the naked eye made him famous. He described these observations in his book The Starry Messenger published in 1610 A.D.

He also discovered the phases of Venus, the composite structure of Saturn (although his telescope could not resolve the rings) and the sunspots.

His support to the Copernican system of the universe (as the world was then known) was to bring him into direct conflict with the Church. In 1616 A.D. an edict had been issued in Rome against the Copernican doctrine.

In 1633 A.D. Galileo was arraigned before the Inquisition of the Holy Office where he was shown the torture chamber and forced to recant. Sobel has recounted the unfolding of the trial verbatim running into several pages.

At the trial Galileo was forced to admit that he neither maintained nor defended the opinion that the Earth moved and the Sun was stationary and was asked to affix his signature to what he testified.

It was nothing short of public humiliation and he was convicted in June 1633 A.D. of a heinous crime of holding a doctrine that was false and contrary to the sacred and Divine scripture.

The author has reproduced in the book the final lines of Galileo's handwritten confession to the Inquisition. It is often said that as Galileo rose from his knees he muttered under his breath ``Eppur sl move'', meaning ``but it still moves.''

This is the familiar side of the Galilean saga known to all students of physics and readers who are into popular books on science.

The book under review here describes all these events. But it also presents the reader with another side of the Galilean saga - that of the profound love between a father and his daughter in an exchange of letters that bring into focus the close bond that existed between them.

Sobel tells a tale that combines a discussion of Galileo's research with extracts from the letters of his daughter that provide a background to Galileo's personality.

Galileo never married but when he was 35 a Venetian girl by name Marina Gamba came to live with him and they had three children - two daughters, Virginia and Livia, and son Vincenzio.

When he moved to Florence in 1610 A.D. he left Marina behind and she remarried soon after. In 1614 A.D. both his daughters entered the convent to become Suor Maria Celeste and Suor Arcangel.

The author does not tell us much about Suor Arcangel but devotes the reportage to Suor Maria Celeste more or less exclusively. Suor Maria Celeste was to lend unstinting support to her father's belief that God had willed the Holy scriptures to guide men's spirits but preferred the unravelling of the universe as a challenge to their intelligence.

The author's treatment of the father-daughter relationship reads like a love story, a tragedy and a mystery. While the letters written by the father to the daughter were assumed to be destroyed by the abbess of the convent, the ones written by Suor Maria Celeste remain preserved among the rare manuscripts of the Florence's National Central Library.

In the author's words these unpublished letters recast Galileo's story, bringing into focus the ``personality and conflict of a mythic figure'' whose 17th century clash with the Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion.

Galileo lived during a period in history when the cloistered monks and nuns could forever remain within the convent's walled perimeter and would develop strong attachments to their self- contained communities.

The living conditions were severe and some of Suor Maria Celeste's letters to her father reflect her pecuniary problems asking for financial help from him, at times describing herself as the neediest pauper in prison.

In his book Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems - Ptolemic and Copernican, Galileo tried to make his support to the Copernican system diplomatic in the hope that his views would not invite the wrath of the Church authorities. Numerous churchmen including Piccolomini, the Archbishop of Siena, had endorsed Galileo's ``Dialogue'' and considered him as their friend.

In the summer of 1632 A.D. a young student, Evangelista Torricelli, wrote to Galileo saying that he had been converted to Copernicanism by his ``Dialogue''.

Suor Maria Celeste died of dysentry on April 12, 1634 A.D. leaving behind an unconsolable father. Four years later Galileo's book Two New Sciences appeared and was sold out. By the time Galileo could get hold of a copy for himself he had gone blind in both eyes due to a combination of cataract and glaucoma.

On January 8, 1642 A.D., he died. Nearly a century later his body was moved to Santa Croce. While doing so Galileo's grave was found to contain two coffins, the top one of an old man and the bottom one unmistakably of a much younger female.

Today Galileo's tomb in Santa Croce is a much visited monument but it bears no inscription announcing the presence of Suor Maria Celeste. ``But still she is there...'' so the author concludes this unique story.

The author has added a section at the end titled ``In Galileo's Time'' which actually gives a chronology of events starting with the publication in 1543 A.D. of ``De revolutionibus'' by Copernicus and ending with the spacecraft Galileo's successful reconnaissance of the Medicean stars (now known as the Galilean satellites of Jupiter) in 1999.

Also listed in this chronology is the public endorsement of Pope John Paul II in 1992 that accepts Galileo's philosophy, noting how ``intelligibility attested to by the marvellous discoveries of science and technology, lead us, in the last analysis, to that transcendent and primordial thought imprinted in all things.''

C. V. SUBRAMANIAM

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