Galileo [antikvár]

Introduction THE SCIENCE FICTION OF BERTOLT BRECHT Words—on a planet that is no longer in the center! —Im Dickicht der Städte Brecht was all wrong about the seventeenth century in general and about Galileo Galilei in particular. His main assumption is that the new cosmology gave man only a peripheral importance, where the old cosmology had given him a central one. Actually, this argument is not found in the works or conversation of GaUleo, or of his friends, or of his enemies, or of anyone in his time. Discussing the point in his Great Chain of Being, the historian Arthur O. Lovejoy observes that the center was not held to be the place of honor anyway: prestige was out beyond the periphery, where God lived. So much for the universe. As for the new scientific attitude, for Brecht it apparently is summed up in the pebble which his Galileo likes to drop from one hand to the other to remind himself that pebbles do not fly but fall. In short, the scientist notices, in a down-to-earth way, what actually goes on; he accepts the evidence of his senses. In this he is contrasted with the theologian, who uses imagination and reasoning. Which is all very well except that the little parable of the pebble does not characterize the stage to which physical science was brought by Galileo. It does cover his initial use of the telescope. That was a matter of looking through lenses and believing your own eyes.