Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy

by Mario Biagioli

In six short years, Galileo Galilei went from being a somewhat obscure mathematics professor running a student boarding house in Padua to a star in the court of Florence to the recipient of dangerous attention from the Inquisition for his support of Copernicanism. In that brief period, Galileo made a series of astronomical discoveries that reshaped the debate over the physical nature of the heavens: he deeply modified the practices and status of astronomy with the introduction of the telescope and pictorial evidence, proposed a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between theology and astronomy, and transformed himself from university mathematician into court philosopher.

Galileo's Instruments of Credit proposes radical new interpretations of several key episodes of Galileo's career, including his early telescopic discoveries of 1610, the dispute over sunspots, and the conflict with the Holy Office over the relationship between Copernicanism and Scripture. Galileo's tactics during this time shifted as rapidly as his circumstances, argues Mario Biagioli, and the pace of these changes forced him to respond swiftly to the opportunities and risks posed by unforeseen inventions, further discoveries, and the interventions of his opponents.

Focusing on the aspects of Galileo's scientific life that extend beyond the framework of court culture and patronage, Biagioli offers a revisionist account of the different systems of exchanges, communication, and credibility at work in various phases of Galileo's career. Galileo's Instruments of Credit will find grateful readers among scholars of science studies, historical epistemology, visual studies, Galilean science, and late Renaissance astronomy.

Genres: History Of Science, History

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[kobushi]

Did Galileo really “invent” the telescope? This is an important issue for me for one simple reason: it says so in my son’s school textbook and based on what I read already in David Wootton’s top-notch biography of him late last year (https://kobushi.substack.com/p/galile...), the answer is somewhat debatable. Like two like-minded mathematicians rushing to get *their* version of calculus out first to claim credit, what Galileo did and what he really did may not be as obvious as it seems. Thus, as the old saying goes: one can never read too many books about Galileo Galilei though one such as Galileo's Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy given its intense focus on a few specific events in his life and providing ‘against the grain’ reasoning for them may put it in a class by itself. This is no full-fledged biography, but that’s something that should be taken in strides.

The biggest reason this is no biography and perhaps a proper one should be read first (again, refer to Wootton’s) is the crux of this book: “Galileo’s preoccupation with credit and control over his work[.]” (page 3, eBook) For a more modern and technological take, it’s a very safe assumption that Galileo would be the kind of person who scoffs at open source software and if anything, would take something open source, make some clever yet secretive changes, and try to sell it. Yes, while nowhere near as financially successful, Galileo Galilei may have been the Larry Ellison of the Scientific Revolution. This comparison I do not mean to imply that Galileo was a supervillain possessing a different yacht for each day of the week, but one also has to realize—and this book goes at length to show—that during his era, you pretty much succeeded or failed by having (or not) a good patron along with using that security cushion to make a name for oneself.

Distance from that patron also was a huge factor—something that may seem obvious but is another fork Mario Biagioli utilizes in this monograph. A footnote (one of many as this book even in them is worth its weight in gold) states the distance-patron relationship in as clean English as one can get: “As Collins put it, ‘Distance lends enchantment: the more distant in social space or time is the locus of creation of knowledge the more certain it is.’” (page 24) Thus, being in the right place at the right time for Galileo was not necessarily a stone’s drop away from the Medicis. In fact, the more distant the better and without throwing in a spoiler, a good part of the first chapter is precisely on how this was utilized when “The Starry Messenger” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereu...) was being written. Dedications don’t come cheap and when they’re done, they need to be done right!

And if there’s one major takeaway I got from this book—and I got many as this was a type of case study monograph I never knew existed and now want to read more of!--it’s that the aforementioned “The Starry Messenger” could be considered the world’s first popular science book. First or not may be up for debate, but it’s place as a pretty darn good and accessible book is also mentioned by our as well: “The Nuncius’ (The Starry Messenger) crucial novelty as a narrative was that it translated these practices from a series of numerical observations into a form that could be appealing to the philosophically curious, not only to professional astronomers.” (page 110)

In more modern parlance, the rapper Jay Z once rhymed “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” The same thanks to this study beautifully laid out (with sources to boot!) definitely proves that while Jay Z may have coined this exact phrase, it very much can apply to the way Galileo ran his life. Sadly, we know that he had an Icarus moment reaching too high into the sky, putting dangerous words into the mouth of Simplicio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogu...) and avoiding punishment, torture, and perhaps death due to being that business, man. We can learn, we can appreciate, we can squint and see the satellites changing position, and can learn a thing or to two about how to build a personal brand and manage success thanks to this book about one historical figure from four centuries ago.

As a code of sorts, just under a year ago, something strange happened in the world of academic publishing: another book came out that appears to have an an almost identical theme as this one. The new book is entitled Galileo's Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century (https://upittpress.org/books/97808229...) and is written by Anna-Luna Post. ‘Appears’ though is the key word as while it does seem that they both focus on the fame and credit side of scientific discovery in the 17th century by zeroing in on Galileo’s rise, our book here keeps the spotlight on the man himself where it appears Post’s book is about those who supported him such as the Medicis. Sometime in the future I may get around to reading her book in order to see how it differs and whether or not one balances the other or if it treads on territory too familiar, flattening out the metaphorical lumpy and bumpy moon one man saw through his special “not giving it out to anyone but my sponsors!” telescope one evening in 1610.