In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy; but the scientific dust has long
since settled, and today we can see even his famous clash with the Inquisition in something like its
proper perspective. But, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problem
child for historians of science.
The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. He was, above all , a man who experimented
who despised the prejudices and book learning of the Aristotelians, who put his questions to
nature instead of to the ancients, and who drew his conclusion fearlessly. He had been the first to
turn a telescope to the sky, and he had seen three evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and
Ptolemy together. He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a dropped various weights
form the top, who rolled balls down inclined planes, and then generalized the result of his many
experiments into the famous law of free fall.
But a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense of the period, and particularly by
a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in the scientific revolution has profoundly
modified this view of Galileo. Today, although the old Galileo lives on in may popular writings,
among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. At the same time our
sympathy for Galileo's opponents had grown somewhat.His telescopic observations are justly immortal;
they arouse great interest at the time, they gad important theoretical consequences, and they
provided a striking demonstration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. But can
we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if we remember that tot use a
telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimate familiarity with one's
instrument? Was the philosopher who refused to look through Galileo's telescope in the eighteen-
forties were scratched left by the grinder? We can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of
Jupiter were produced by Galileo's spyglass if we recall that in his day, as for centuries before,
curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth; and if a
single curved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them?