Table Of ContentGalileo’s Visions
Frontispiece Galileo’s allegory by Nicholas Wade. Galileo is represented twice. First in the engraving
(from the frontispiece of O pere di Galileo Galilei directing his listeners to observe the heavens with
the telescope. Secondly, in the large portrait (derived from the Pisa painting) with his right eye
connecting the telescope and the pointing hand.
Credit: Frontispiece of ‘Opere di Galileo Galilei’, published in Bologna in 1656 (engraving) (b/w
photo), Italian School, (17th century) / Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / The
Bridgeman Art Library.
Galileo’s Visions
Piercing the spheres of the
heavens by eye and mind
Marco Piccolino and Nicholas J. Wade
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To Anna Maria and Christine
Preface
The endeavour of a book is necessarily connected to the encounter it may facilitate between those
who read and those who write, or better, have written. This is because of the magic property of
written words, capable—as they are—of maintaining an enduring possibility of communication,
of potentially reaching persons distant in time and space. In this way written words differ from
spoken words which once pronounced immediately fade away. The magic of the written word
cannot be better praised than with the concluding sentences of the First Day of Galileo’s Dialogue
concerning the two chief world systems :
But surpassing all stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding
means to communicate his deepest thoughts to any other person, though distant by mighty intervals of
place and time! Of talking with those who are in India; of speaking to those who are not yet born and
will not be born for a thousand or ten thousand years; and with what facility, by the different arrange-
ments of twenty characters upon a page!
Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of mankind and the close of our discussions for
this day.
There are other aspects of the encounter, too, like that between the writers and their subjects,
which can occur through a multiplicity of (often unpredictable) paths. In addition, when there are
several authors the book will be influenced by the ways in which they encountered one another. In
our case the project centres on Galileo, his science and especially his reflection on the senses. We
can locate the origins of the book to a meeting we organized at the Villa di Corliano near Pisa, in
the summer of 2006. The themes of the meeting, expressed in its title, Galileo’s Walks: Art, Science
and Vision , led us to deepen the knowledge of the work of Galileo, from a point of view that has
rarely been dealt with in the current, very rich, literature on the Pisan scholar: that of the impor-
tance of his reflections on the senses in his endeavour that led to one of the greatest intellectual
revolutions in Western civilization.
Both of us are interested in visual science from an experimental point of view (although from
slightly different perspectives) but we were surprised to discover the extent to which Galileo’s
interest in the senses, and particularly in vision and its fallacies, was a recurring theme in his
writings and how it was applied as a formidable intellectual tool in his discoveries, particularly
those concerning astronomy. To our eyes, Galileo seemed to reveal himself in a novel light distinct
from the many, and sometimes conflicting, representations accumulated in the course of history
(great mathematician and astronomer, physicist and engineer, master in rhetoric and writer, hero,
victim of religious intolerance or saint, philosopher or theologian, critic of arts or artist, practised
courtesan or astrologer, plagiarist or liar).
Although conscious, as Michel de Montaigne wryly remarked, that Homer was unlikely to have
said all the things attributed to him by subsequent interpreters, we hope that readers will feel
that this unexpected image of Galileo as a physiologist (and also a philosopher) of the senses is
justified.
Galileo loved to deal with science without any ‘strictness’ and we will follow his interests in the
senses and science in the same spirit. We will make every effort to present our arguments with the
PREFACE vii
support of Galileo’s own words so that readers can come into direct contact with some of the most
beautiful passages of European literature.
An editorial consequence of our choice will be that we will keep bibliographic reference to a
minimum in the main part of the book. Only in the last chapters will we discuss in some detail the
antecedents of Galileo’s sensory science, trying to situate his endeavour within a definite historical
context, with the consequence of a more scholarly treatment of the matter.
As we hope our book will make clear to readers, the interest of Galileo in senses, and par-
ticularly in vision, was tightly connected to all his science and philosophy. In particular it was an
essential aspect of his reflection on the mechanisms by which humans acquire a knowledge of the
world around them, and thus, a necessary step in their walk towards new visions of this world and
a new situation within it.
M. Piccolino
N. J. Wade
September 2013
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to their colleagues and friends who have contributed
in various ways, with their discussions and help, to this book. Among them in particular, Michele
Camerota, Giovanni Niccoli, Andrea Frova, Libero Sosio, Daniela Basile, and Giandomenico
Giarnella. A special thanks to all the librarians and institutions that have helped us in the search
of ancient and rare texts and especially to Livia Iannucci of the University of Pisa and Alessandra
Lenzi of the Museum Galileo of Florence.
Contents
Bibliographic abbreviations x
Introduction x iii
1 Approaching Galileo’s science through a fable 1
2 Subtleties of vision and of the scientific revolution 23
3 Casting light on Galileo’s contrasts 37
4 The lunar candour and the litheosphorus 49
5 Sensory surprises 63
6 Seeing mountains on the moon 83
7 Visible and invisible luminous peaks of lunar mountains 103
8 Visual limits and the visibility of infinitesimals 119
9 Heavens sensed 147
10 Galileo’s sensory philosophy 163
11 The problem of Galileo’s predecessors 187
12 A moon circle: celestial reflections and illusions with Sarpi,
Galileo, and Castelli 211
13 Alternative visions 243
14 Galileo’s visions 277
References 295
Suggested readings 3 03
Name index 305
Subject index 309
