Galileo's Daughter

Title: Galileo’s Daughter – A Drama of Science, Faith and Love

Author: Dava Sobel

Publisher:  Fourth Estate, 2000 (First published 1999)

ISBN: 978-0-00763-575-7

Pages: 384

Galileo is considered the father of modern physics, or modern science rather, since the founder of the most basic branch of science may be thought of as the father of modern science as well. However, the endowment of the cherished title is not as a result of a path breaking invention. Rather, Galileo enjoys the pole position due to the vindication of scientific method, the system to test the veracity of a theory by trial and error which survives to this day as the ultimate test to accept or reject a hypothesis. The eminent Italian scientist personified the now famous motto of Royal Society, “Nullius In Verba” (on nobody’s words). He courageously challenged long-held opinions when he found them to be trash, based on his experiments. Religion, which overarched all walks of life during the 17^th century, was not prepared to allow a frontal assault on the fabric of their very existence, namely unquestioned faith, go scotfree. The establishment arraigned Galileo of heresy and sentenced him to house arrest. He died while still in custody. Dava Sobel is a renowned science writer, whose work Planets was reviewed earlier in this blog. In this book, Sobel dwells on the biography of the great scientist with recourse to the communications he established with his eldest daughter, Virginia, who was later rechristened Suor Maria Celeste upon becoming a nun. Sobel, true to her stature as a lively author, has lived up to her reputation in making this biography so enchanting, so lucid and so appealing. There is no dearth of biographies of Galileo, but Sobel has did all that were needed to ensure a prominent place for her work in the literature.

Virginia was born out of wedlock, since Galileo never married. Though he had two more children by the same woman, their position in society was always as illegitimate children. They couldn’t hope to be decently married off and Galileo sent both of his daughters to the San Matteo Convent to take up the veil. His real scientific career began at this time, when he refined lens making techniques and made great telescopes for astronomical work. He found four new moons of Jupiter and named them Medicean stars in honour of his patron, the archduke of Tuscany who came from the Medici family, who stood behind their loyal courtier through thick and thin. He also observed sunspots and the periodic fluctuation in Venus’ visible disk, like moon’s cycle.

The publication of details regarding sunspots rekindled the debate whether the sun or earth was moving. The long held view, first propounded by Aristotle and Ptolemy and held dear by the Catholic church was that earth stayed immobile and the other heavenly bodies circled around it. Though Copernicus in 1543 had posited that sun was at the centre, the idea never reached public domain and Copernicus, who was himself a priest, remained silent about it. Now, it fell upon Galileo to claim that the earth moved. The Catholic church might have treated the issue more leniently at some other time, but the 16^th century was really a tough one for them, after the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther. Efforts to reconcile with the breakaways made Vatican convene a series of theological councils, collectively called Council of Trent, which categorically asserted that the Bible must not interpreted by personal choice and it need to be believed as such without question. An ecclesiastical committee called together by Pope Paul V in 1616 stated that Copernicus’ sun-centred theory was heresy and admonished Galileo from adhering to it, to which he readily agreed.

Galileo was pestered with illnesses frequently during the years 1616-23, but it didn’t slow down his intellect. He continued discourse on comets, three of which mysteriously appeared in 1618. In 1623, his star was thought to be in the ascendant, when his long time friend and admirer, Cardinal Barberini ascended papacy as Pope Urban VIII. Galileo immediately started working on his new book, ‘Dialogue on Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic and Copernican’ as a comparison between the two. It was structured in the style of a dialogue between three learned men, two supporting Copernicus and one holding on to Ptolemy and the church. The 1616 edict prevented Galileo from coming out in the open in support of his true belief, so he presented it as only a hypothesis. He submitted the completed manuscript to the committee of censors in Rome in 1630, who proposed only minor corrections. The book finally appeared in print in 1632.

Unfortunately, the publication found Urban VIII ill-disposed in general. The Thirty-Years War between German catholics and protestants had engulfed other countries and turned into a European conflagration. The pope was portrayed as a weak one, unable to defend the faith. He grew restless and sleepless over the allegations that he ordered all the birds in his garden killed so as not to be disturbed by their nocturnal calls. Jesuit fathers, who hated Galileo from the start, insinuated against him and his book, making the pope grow into a rage. Pope’s enmity with Galileo’s patron, the Archduke of Tuscany on land issues also precipitated matters. He ordered Galileo to submit in person and explain matters. The inquisition began in April 1633 and met in four sessions in which the 70-year old scientist had to answer gruelling questions about his intentions and true beliefs on the matter. Alert to the imminent punishment, which included torture, Galileo recanted his ideas. On the question of whether he believed Copernican theory, his replay was, “A long time ago, that is, before the decision of the Holy Congregation of the Index, and before I was issued that injunction, I was undecided and regarded the two opinions, those of Ptolemy and Copernicus, as disputable, because either the one or the other could be true in Nature. But after thed said decision, assured by the prudence of the authorities, all my uncertainty stopped, and I held, as I still hold, as most true and indisputable, Ptolemy’s opinion, namely the stability of the Earth and the motion of the Sun” (p.284). Note how cleverly he submitted to authority! Two months later, 7 out of the 10 cardinals in the committee judged that he has committed the offense of heresy and sentenced to imprisonment. He was also forced to kneel before them, and abjure the crime. Stories that Galileo muttered eppur si muove (but it still moves) is probably apocryphal. After a few days in the dungeon in the Holy Office, he was transferred to the Embassy of Tuscany in Rome, then to the archbishop of Siena. The book was properly banned. In 1757, Vatican removed objections to the Copernican theory, but the book remained prohibited. It was finally lifted in 1822 in which year the church could no longer propound its faulty astronomical beliefs.

Galileo was later sent back to his home town of Arcetri near Florence under permanent house arrest. Maria Celeste, his daughter who had looked after his household matters from within the convent, rejoiced at the home coming at last, though her joy was to be short-lived. She was very weak, due to deprivations in the convent and succumbed to an infection from which she never recovered. She died on Apr 2, 1634, four months after her father returned home. She was 33. Galileo laboured on, under immense grief, and completed work on a new manuscript, ‘Two New Sciences’, dealing with mechanics and motion. This was published in 1638 from protestant Holland where the Pope’s writ did not run. By the time he received a copy of his own printed work, Galileo was blind in one eye with cataract. By the next winter, he lost his eyesight completely, while still languishing under house arrest.

The book presents several letters written by the daughter to her father, which are filled with filial piety and attachment. Reading it all together, we wonder whether Galileo was really stone-hearted to send such a loving daughter to the confines of a convent. The book also describes a touching moment when 95 years after Galileo’s death the Church relented a bit and allowed a tomb to be built for him. When his sarcophagus was lifted from the pit, the retrievers were surprised to find a similar one immediately below it. It too contained a skeleton, and they couldn’t identify Galileo’s. Experts were called in, all of them concurred that one skeleton belonged to a woman who had died in her youth, around the same period of the other, aged man’s death. It then dawned on them that they are seeing the remains of the beloved daughter who seemed attached to her father, even in death. Consequently, her remains were also reverently moved to the new tomb.

The book is an excellent one with no blemish to be marked against. It portrays the miserable plight of nuns in contrast to unstained plenty of the higher echelons of clergy. The nuns had to live in self-imposed poverty, couldn’t go out of the four walls of the convent, had their sleep deprived at certain hours for night-time prayers and no recourse to proper medical care in case they fell ill. However, we have to acknowledge with wonder at the things they could handle from inside their convent. Several illustrative diagrams and portraits add interest to the content and are quite engaging. The balance between the emotional and the objective is kept on a razor-sharp knife edge and is kept likewise throughout the narrative.

Plague was a scourge of the ancient world. Many a times it was subjected to the ravages of bubonic plague. The disease, spreading through air, was so contagious and deadly that quarantine was the only effective remedy. Whole families often vanished in a matter of a few days. The lament of poet Francesco Petrarca given in the book when the Black Death robbed him of his beloved wife is worth ruminating on. He exclaimed, “Oh, happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable” (p.209).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star