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    Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
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    Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
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    Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

    Written by Dava Sobel

    Narrated by Fritz Weaver

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Galileo Galilei was the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. His telescopes allowed him to reveal the heavens and enforce the astounding argument that the earth moves around the sun. For this belief, he was brought before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of heresy, and forced to spend his last years under house arrest.

    Galileo's oldest child was thirteen when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then.

    GALILEO'S DAUGHTER dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during an era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was overturned. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Latitude, GALILEO'S DAUGHTER is an unforgettable story.


    From the Compact Disc edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 4, 2005
    ISBN9780739322925
    Author

    Dava Sobel

    Dava Sobel is the internationally renowned author of ‘Longitude’ and ‘Galileo’s Daughter’. She is also an award-winning former science reporter for the ‘New York Times’ and writes frequently about science for several magazines, including the ‘New Yorker’, ‘Audubon’, ‘Discover’, ‘Life’ and ‘Omni’. She is currently writing a book called ‘The Planets’ for Fourth Estate. She lives in East Hampton, New York.

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    Reviews for Galileo's Daughter

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      study of the letters between Galileo and his daughter who is in a convent. Articulates something about what life was like back then, the unbelievable limitations on everyone, and women especially.
    • 2/5
      Is eigenlijk nog maar eens een biografie van Galilei, vlot geschreven, met als nieuwigheid de pas ontdekte correspondentie met Maria Celeste, die een nieuw licht laten schijnen op de persoonlijkheid van G: als vader, niet als wetenschapper. Toch vrij beperkt aandeel in het boek. Als MC sterft is de spankracht er helemaal uit.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed parts of this book very much, but parts seemed to drag. I liked the idea that introducing the correspondence of Galileo's daughter showed the human, emotional side of the situation and helped give a more concrete physical view of the time. But the fact that we don't have any of Galileo's replies made it hard sometimes to get a clear picture of the emotional dynamics that produced the letters. And frankly, there were times when I just wanted to get on with the biography of Galileo without the constant need to draw the letters in. It seemed long winded at times.
    • 4/5
      I thought this was a fantastic story. Its a story about the lasting bonds of affection and love between a daughter and her father. Its also a riveting overview of the life and times of the great astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician, Galileo Galilei.

      As Sobel tells Mr. Galileo's story, she gracefully weaves in extant letters from Galileo's daughter, Virginia Galilei. Later in life, as a nun, Virginia Galilei adopts the name, Suor Maria Celeste - a fitting tribute to her father. Of all Galileo's children, it appears Suor Maria Celeste was held most intimately. She shared a fascination and appreciation for her fathers studies - from her extant letters, she frequently requested, proofread and copied many of Galileo's early drafts. Also, Celeste was a confidante, and comfort for Galileo during his inquisition/trial by the Church authorities for his work advancing earlier theories by Nicolaus Copernicus.

      This would be a rather ordinary,"popular", biography of Galileo, but for these letters. For readers familiar with Galileo, they will not find much new here. It is basically a simple overview. None of Gallileo's theories are discussed in detail, his advancement of the telescope is not discussed in detail, and his early life, including the mother of his children, are given very brief treatment.

      Still, I would recommend this. I was touched by Galileo's story and the communication between Gallileo and his daughter. Unfortunately, we only have one side of that communication. Galileo's letters to her, have been lost. Through these communications, it does make one wonder what Suor Maria Celeste could of accomplished if she was free of the bonds of that time period. Her intelligence and grace shines here.

      Recommended


    • 2/5
      Is eigenlijk nog maar eens een biografie van Galilei, vlot geschreven, met als nieuwigheid de pas ontdekte correspondentie met Maria Celeste, die een nieuw licht laten schijnen op de persoonlijkheid van G: als vader, niet als wetenschapper. Toch vrij beperkt aandeel in het boek. Als MC sterft is de spankracht er helemaal uit.
    • 4/5
      This is my first one by Sobel but now I look forward to more. She does a wonderful job at bringing history to life. There was just so much packed into this book that I took my time with it and savoured each page. I will have to dig out my copy of Longitude now.
    • 4/5
      Like Winchester, Gleick, Preston, et al., Sobel is a master story teller and has a nack for 1) being able to find a compelling story that both illuminates a time and a person, and 2) translates for the layman the lost or arcane stories of science.
    • 3/5
      Good biography. Was on my TBR list for years!
    • 2/5
      I read this book for one of my book clubs, but I did pick it to read among a list of choices because I thought it was going to be about Galileo's interesting daughter who was intelligent and contributed to the world in some grand way just as her father did. I was wrong. The book is all about Galileo and his life, but does include some letters from his daughter on such exciting matters as sewing a tablecloth for him or collars for her brother or to ask for money for a cell of her own as she was a nun in a convent, which is where illegitimate daughters were sent with their dowries since they couldn't marry. He had two illegitimate daughters, Marie Celeste, whom he corresponded with and Arcangela and one illegitimate son Vincenzio who was made legitimate. He couldn't marry the mother because she was of a different class, but she would eventually marry after Vincenzio was born.Marie Celeste's letters were boring to the extreme with her talk of sewing and prayer and her need for money for various things. Marie Celeste's life was I suppose interesting for a nun in that she while she mostly spent it praying and sewing, she also worked in the apothecary shop and teaching Gregorian chants. Her sister did very little we are led to believe. But she did not help people like Mother Theresa did or do anything completely worthwhile with her life. There were intelligent women at that time like the Grand Duke of Milan's grandmother who argued with Galileo himself over his Compernician thoughts about a heliocentric worldview. But Marie Celeste, who read her father's work because she recopied it for him since she had lovely penmanship never once discussed his work with him. His daughter Arcangela was mentally unbalanced either because she was being forced into the life of being a nun or because she truly was crazy. And his son Vincenzio was a pain in the ass who was always letting him down.Galileo was very progressive for his time and both lauded for his scientific findings and hated for going against Aristotle who reigned supreme for some. He also had to deal with the Church and going against Church doctrine. Other scientists in other countries at the time weren't so hampered and made great strides forward. But it was his work Dialogues that really got him in trouble. It was approved by the Church to be published and was a play about a man who espouses the Copernican thought and one, a stupid one who espouses the Aristotelian point of view and Galileo who is the narrator. It came out to great praise, but then a group of people began to hate it and say it was heretical. The Pope Urban VIII who was on good terms with Galileo had been raked over the coals over the way he was handling the Thirty Years War and he didn't need another scandal so while he didn't read the book, he listened to others who had and believed them when they said it was heretical and brought Galileo to trial.Frankly, this book just wasn't that interesting. I'm not interested in religious matters or complex scientific ones. And I was feeling pretty pissed and that I had been lied to about what the book was about. I was expecting a book about his daughter and instead got a book about Galileo which I wouldn't have picked up if I'd known that was what it was about. I give it two stars out of five stars.QuotesAs he had once heard the late Vatican librarian Cesare Cardinal Varonio remark, the Bible was a book about how one goes to Heaven—not how Heaven goes.-Dava Sobel (Galileo’s Daughter p 65)
    • 4/5
      This is my first one by Sobel but now I look forward to more. She does a wonderful job at bringing history to life. There was just so much packed into this book that I took my time with it and savoured each page. I will have to dig out my copy of Longitude now.
    • 4/5
      Like Winchester, Gleick, Preston, et al., Sobel is a master story teller and has a nack for 1) being able to find a compelling story that both illuminates a time and a person, and 2) translates for the layman the lost or arcane stories of science.
    • 4/5
      An excellent biography of Galileo. The history is well researched, the letters from Galileo's daughter as much into the society that Galileo lived in.The story is well written, and the history almost comes alive. This book depicts Galileo as a full person, rather than just a great scientist. The politics of Aristocracy and Church was interesting to read. As leaders changed, so did policy of what is prohibited. One censorship board approved the publishing of "Dialogue", but than a later pope banned it, citing heresy. An excellent biography of a very interesting man.
    • 4/5
      The world was a much different place a scant handful of centuries ago. Well, maybe not the physical world. It's the same shape, and all the continents and oceans and islands are pretty much where they were back then, but people and how they see the world have changed significantly. Sobel's Galileo's Daughter demonstrates this using letters to the great astronomer from his loving daughter Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun. Since Galileo and her mother never wed, she was judged unmarriageable, so her father, in a sincere act of paternal care, arranged for her and her younger sister to be sent to a convent when Celeste (then Virginia) was 13. Neither daughter ever ventured outside its walls again. In our culture, which views individual freedom and personal choice as inherent rights, this might seem harsh treatment, but Maria Celeste doesn't consider herself imprisoned or unfortunate in any way. Her father, conversely, when he is sentenced to what amounts to house arrest by the Inquisition for holding the belief that the Earth moves around the Sun, does feel unjustly put upon, even though he is no more confined at the end of his life than his daughters have been most of theirs. How they see their situations is determined by how they see the world, which is quite different from how most people in Western society now see it. Galileo is one of the reasons why.

      Sadly, only half of the long correspondence between father and daughter has been preserved. Galileo saved his daughter's letters. Celeste saved his to her as well, but they were apparently destroyed by an overzealous of fearful mother abbess after Celeste's untimely death (age 34) from dysentery. But from Celeste's letters and other accounts of the time, we can learn a lot about the life and times of Galileo. I think most of us today would see his world as harsh, oppressive, a place where everything you do, even your thoughts, are subject to judgement and punishment by established authorities. I am often struck by how subservient, how obsequious, the tone of letters are from this time. Today, sucking up to the boss is viewed as demeaning. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was apparently not only expected but necessary. It is only by viewing Galileo's accomplishments in this context that we can fully appreciate his bravery and his contribution to shaping our world today. It's a better place because of him.
    • 2/5
      The title is misleading. This is the story of Galileo's life, and tangentially it's about his daughter. Admittedly the author didn't have a lot of source material as the letters from Galileo to his daughter have all been destroyed, so he is re-piecing from only her letters to him, a one-sided conversation. It was interesting to discover that Galileo had two daughters who were both in a convent and that he kept up a conversation with one through letters his entire life and the other was largely ignored, according to this author. But the letters that were presented were mostly his daughter worrying about her father's health, worrying about his conflicts with the Church, and asking for money for the convent. The author would have been better off dropping the idea of the book after discovering the paucity of information, or turning it into an interesting long form article, but there isn't enough here for a book.
    • 5/5
      One of those special books to be treasured. Wonderful writing telling a story combining the human & the science.Read in Samoa Jan 2004
    • 3/5
      This is a biography of Galileo using quoted at length letters from his daughter as the foundation of the biography. It clarifies the struggle between the church that held a world veiw and interpreted the bible in such a way as it supported the traditional view and resisted science that showed the traditional view was not true. It spends more time on Galileo and his life and discoveries than fully focusing on this controversy though the trial and aftereffects was a major part of the last few decades of his life.

      The biographer is careful to show how Galileo did his best to practice his faith in sincerity while also seeking to spread the truth.

      The trial of Galileo was a much more civil inquisition than one finds in the writing of Edgar Allen Poe. No torture was used though the author points out that it was authorized.

      While Galileo was a faithful Catholic reading about how his daughters lived in a convent and the privitations they lived in and reading about how permission had to be obtained to publish his books I am not terribly impressed with the freedom allowed by the church in his time. This lack was a reason for great friction with the protestent movement which is mentioned in passing several times.
    • 4/5
      I learned things about Galileo, and about his time, that I could not have imagined. In the end, the many images and documents were just too hard to handle on the Kindle, and I found a used copy in a local bookstore.This is a book you should get as paper.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating exploration of not only Galileo's struggles to publish and make known his agreement - with theoretical and mathematical evidence - that Copernicus was correct in his belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around, and how the Church was determined that Copernicus was wrong as it countered what was spelled out in the Scriptures. Anyone who stayed awake during history and science classes while in school will know a fair bit about Galileo, his writings and his battles with the Catholic church, but I will admit to having no knowledge of his family life before reading Sobel's book. Being able to read the text of his daughter Suor Maria Celeste's letters and the context Sobel provides them in really helped to bring not only Galileo, but also the time period into clear resolution for me. The paternal love and respect Galileo had for his daughter and her intellect, and her unwavering devotion to her father, shines here. Some memoirs come across as rather dry reading for me, because I am usually not interested in the minutia of famous or historical figures. Being able to read about Galileo through his daughter's letters to him was anything but boring, even when she talks about the minutia of her cloistered life. That was very interesting! Overall, a different approach to a memoir that I felt really works well and presents the details of Galileo's thoughts, beliefs and struggles in a manner that would have been a welcome replacement to any school textbook I had to slog through, back in the days.
    • 4/5
      Excellent narrator (loved this guy ever since the first book I heard him narrate... Piers Anthony's Incarnation series). Just hearing the letters that have been saved over the centuries is enough to make this book a Highly Recommend... this wonderful, smart, witty daughter of Galileo (I won't try to write her name... I couldn't tell how to spell it from listening) writes so poetically and with so many layers of meaning that they seem modern. The information on Galileo was interesting too, such as speculation on flip-flopping back and forth to cater to the "authorities", but it's really the letters that shine in this book.
    • 5/5
      Last month I read Sobel’s biography of Copernicus, who caused an uproar when he concluded that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but rather revolved around the Sun. Copernicus died shortly after his revolutionary (no pun intended) book was published, and it was Galileo, of course, who bore the brunt of the Catholic Church’s ire when he endorsed Copernicus’ viewpoint. His unpopular opinion led to his being tried and convicted by the Inquisition. Despite this Galileo never lost his faith in God or his belief in both a divine Creator and physics. This book provides the nuts and bolts of Galileo’s story but it’s enhanced by placing it in the context of his relationship with his eldest daughter, who was a cloistered nun from the age of 13. Despite that, their relationship was close and devoted, and the transcripts of her letters to him through the years reveal that she also had a remarkable mind and a lively curiosity about the world her father was discovering. Recommended.
    • 2/5
      Galileo's story was fascinating. I kind of felt like the letters from his daughter were kind of arbitrarily thrown in. They detracted from the presentation of Galileo's life. If Sobel wanted an excuse to show off the translated letters, I wish she would have focused more on Sour Maria Celeste's convent existence instead of focusing on her father and occasionally throwing in a letter.
    • 2/5
      From the reviews provided, there is much division about the worth of reading this book. After four attempts to read, I have finally decided to give up. It is about a person and a time in which I have maintained interest and often read about but I just could not sustain and finish this book.
    • 3/5
      So, given the title you'd think this would be about Galileo's daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, who he called "a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to me." Perhaps you might have thought that through her eyes--this account is partly based upon and includes several of her letters--you might gain insight into the mind of the man Einstein called "the father of modern physics--indeed of modern science altogether." Given she's described of "exquisite mind" perhaps you thought she might have contributed to his experiments or thinking. If you're expecting any of that, you're going to be disappointed. Really, this is a quick-reading biography of Galileo, and there are several chapters that deal with his life before his daughter enters into the story. And given she was a cloistered nun from her teenage years, hers was not a life of wide scope or interest aside from her being the daughter of a famous father. Her letters, though they show a loving daughter who had no doubts about her father's faith, don't reveal a remarkable intelligence--though that would be hard given the letters in the book are filled with little more than such mundane details as grocery and laundry lists and asking Galileo to fix a broken clock. What seemed to have animated the book is Sobel's desire to argue there there is no reason to see science and faith as opposed, and to present Galileo as a devout and obedient son of the Catholic Church, particularly as demonstrated through his loving relationship with a supportive, devout daughter dedicated to the religious life. The Catholic Church both revered shouldn't be slurred with condemning Galileo according to Sobel:"Technically, however, the anti-Copernican Edict of 1616 was issued by the Congregation of the Index, not by the Church. Similarly, in 1633, Galileo was tried and sentenced by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, not by the Church.” Moreover, Sobel related, the Catholic pontiffs who condoned both rulings didn't "invoke papal infallibility." Alrighty then, that must have consoled Galileo: who was forced to renounce the Copernican theory, found his books banned, was put under house arrest for the rest of his life--after dealing with the Inquisition and the threat of being put under torture or even burned at the stake--as the Astronomer Bruno had been in 1600 by the Inquisition just decades before. The sad thing to me is as Sobel presented it Galileo had done everything he could to follow Church teaching and rulings. He submitted his book on Copernican theory to the Church's censor--told them to change whatever they wanted to, got a license to print it and the Church's imprimatur. But the Pope was convinced that Galileo was mocking him personally in the book, had him prosecuted, and the book appeared in the next Index of Proscribed Books where it would stay for 200 years. But we shouldn't blame the Catholic Church. Nope, it was all just a "tragic mutual misunderstanding." That all reads to me not so much as apologia as satire, yet Sobel does convince me that Galileo truly didn't want a breach with the Church and was a man of faith and science. But for me that just makes more poignant, and more disgraceful, the bullying of an elderly old man by the machinery of the Church.If the book had a strength though, it was how lucidly it explained the science and Galileo's discoveries--just why he can right be called a father of modern science. And after reading some very dense histories lately, it was something of a relief to read something easier that you could cut through like a heated knife through butter. But I didn't think I got more than a rather superficial gloss on Galileo's life and times.
    • 3/5
      I have had “Galileo’s Daughter” on my shelf for over a year. I have attempted to read it a number of times but I never could get into it. I selected this title based on the publisher’s blurb and was so mislead. The title leads me to believe it is a biography of a daughter who loved her father very much, a person who could help explain Galileo’s problems with the church. I also expected some insight into the life of Galileo, and I did get that to a certain extent, but overall it was a disappointment and I did not finish this book.
    • 3/5
      I read this on the recommendation of my friend Fred, and because I'm fascinated by the ructions that went on as the heliocentric view of the solar system gathered momentum (I'd recommend John Banville's Doctor Copernicus and Kepler, and Koestler's Sleepwalkers). I was generally disappointed. The book took me four months to finish, albeit with a break. The slant you get on Galileo is much less about his skills as a savvy dramatist and self-publicist -- see Paul Feyerabend's take -- and much more humble and pious, shown particularly through his relationship with his elder daughter (his two other children remain in the background, in Galileo's thoughts and feelings as well as in this account, if Sobel is right). The book takes a long time to get going: it feels like the first half is scene-setting. What I found most interesting was the account of Galileo's meticulous attempts to avoid precisely the fate that eventually befell him. He got everything signed off in triplicate by the church, having schmoozed everyone up to and including the pope, before he published. But apparently the pope needed a scapegoat, or something to make him look strong and distract attention from other political problems, so Galileo was persecuted and imprisoned (mainly as a guest of indulgent and sympathetic dukes and bishops) despite his best efforts. What annoyed me was that this volte face by the papacy is dealt with very quickly and superficially -- while we get pages and pages of what's growing in the convent garden, or what's happened in Galileo's wine cellar. The central, defining dramatic turn of events on which Galileo's personal story hangs is left underexplained.
    • 4/5
      While the book was very interesting, I couldn't help but feel the title was somewhat misleading. I thought this was going to be about his daughter, or at the very least it would have some insight into Galileo's personal thoughts or feelings about his daughter, but being that there was no surviving letters of his it relied more on a one sided account and his daughters reactions and responses to him. The book itself was essentially a biography of Galileo but told from a more familial position, I liked the idea of being able to see a different side than most stories tell, it gave you a chance to see that even while he was being questioned for heresy, or had matters of state or other importance to attend, he always took time to send his daughter whatever she or her convent needed. At one point he wrote the sisters a play while in the middle of his own works on motion. Over all I really liked the book but as I said previously, I wish it was more about the daughter.I give this 3 1/2 stars, and I look forward to reading other books by Dava Sobel
    • 4/5
      This is basically a biography of Galileo interspersed with letters from his devoted eldest daughter, a cloistered nun. The life story was of course quite fascinating, from his earliest publications to the trial by the Inquisition late in his life. His daughter’s letters, however, were less illuminating, consisting mostly of household minutiae and requests for money. Her repeated professions of love seemed to border on the passive aggressive, but I suppose that may have just been the translation. It’s too bad her father’s replies were lost; I would have liked to know what sorts of things he said to her. Still, this was a good overview of the life of a great man, and Sobel remains one of my favorite science writers.
    • 4/5
      What Dava Sobel does best is connect world-shattering science with the individuals who brought that discipline or discovery to light. Beyond that, she provides the context of the world in which they lived. In writing about Copernicus and John ‘Longitude’ Harrison, she wrote of worlds on the cusp of modernity, one world much closer to the dark Middle Ages, another in the throes of a technological evolution. In “Galileo’s Daughter”, Sobel introduces us to the scientist as a man, as a father, and as a much more human figure than history tends to portray.Galileo’s daughter is Suor Maria Celeste. Living in a convent since she was an early teen, her letters to her father bring an amazingly fresh ‘day-in-the-life’ perspective to this amazingly significant time in history. Galileo saved numerous letters from his daughter and Sobel translated them for this book. Suor Maria Celeste’s belongings were not saved when she died (sadly preceding her father by several years) as was the tradition in 17th Century convents. And so we get an interesting one-sided view of Galileo Galilei through the eyes of his daughter. She’s proud of her father and clearly loves him. She seems to hold her father in the palm of her hand…that magical ability that all daughters have over their fathers since time in memoriam. She’s indirect, but it’s clear that she knows how to push his buttons. She doesn’t take advantage, at least not in any modern sense. But she knows what to say when she needs money (for her convent), or a favor. She loves her father deeply.“Galileo’s Daughter” is written through several lenses. We witness the biography of Galileo’s life. We witness the history of the Late Renaissance and the Counter Reformation. And we witness a certain amount of daily life as we peer over Galileo’s shoulder and read the sweet and exceedingly genuine letters from a loving daughter to her surprisingly doting father.Galileo wrote on many scientific topics, but his most famous work is his treatise on “Two Chief Systems of the World”. He supports the worldview that Copernicus identified a generation earlier – that the heavens do not in fact revolve around Earth. Sobel does a nice job of integrating Galileo’s deft handling of the topic that ultimately landed him in front of the Roman Inquisition. Galileo was an extremely well-know and highly regarded figure in his own lifetime. His trial, and public abjuration of errors and admittance to certain heresies, became a defining moment in a scientific revolution, and would cause a rift between men of science and men of religion that would be felt well into the 20th century. John Paul II referred to the 350-year Galileo affair: “has been interpreted as the reflection of a fundamental opposition between science and faith.”Galileo preferred to validate theory through experimentation, not a common approach of the time. He dropped balls of different sizes off of the Leaning Tower in Pisa to compare the speed of the falling spheres, but Sobel writes that, “Many philosophers of the sixteenth century, unaccustomed to experimental proof, much preferred the wisdom of Aristotle to the antics of Galileo…”The Dutch had invented a spyglass that Galileo reworked into something more powerful that would ultimately become a telescope. Working with the military at the time, Galileo saw it’s potential and pitched the device to the Doge and entire Venetian Senate. This resulted in a lifetime contract at the University of Padua with a salary to more than account for a life of comfort and ease. With his new telescope, he became obsessed with the night sky. Among the many graphics in Sobel’s book, are beautifully detailed hand-drawn images of the Moon that Galileo created in 1609. The next year he came across the discovery that would ultimately set him on a path that would challenge one of the most powerful institutions in the World – the Catholic Church. In January of 1610, Galileo wrote that he saw, “four planets never seen from the beginning of the world right up to our day, “ in orbit around the planet Jupiter. He’d identified previously unknown heavenly bodies. This would lead to his expansion of and (sort of subtle) advocacy of Copernicus’ sun-centric theory. What Copernicus derived theoretically, Galileo substantiated through study and experimentation. What was known at the time as ‘philosophy’, Galileo turned into modern day ‘science’.He was a man who was exceedingly self-actualized. The last 30 pages of the book evoke a stinging pain as one realizes that an elderly Galileo was acutely aware that he was nearing the end of his days. He was frail, mostly bed-ridden, and sadly, the eyes that had once seen further (and more deeply) than any other person on Earth, had clouded over with age. He wrote a friend, “Bereft of my powers by my great age and even more by my unfortunate blindness and the failure of my memory and other senses, I spend my fruitless days which are so long because of my continuous inactivity and yet so brief compared with all the months and years which have passed; and I am left with no other comfort than the memory of the sweetnesses of former friendships, of which so few are left…”Suor Maria Celeste “approved of his (Galileo’s) endeavors because she knew the depth of his faith. She accepted Galileo’s conviction that God had dictated the Holy Scriptures to guide men’s spirits but proffered the unraveling of the universe as a challenge to their intelligence.”Following his trial and while under house arrest, he wrote, “I have two sources of perpetual comfort…first, that in my writings there cannot be found the faintest shadow of irreverence towards the Holy church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only I and God in Heaven thoroughly know. And He knows that (none)…have spoken with more piety or with greater zeal for the Church than I.”There’s no mistaking any of Galileo’s actions as accidental or disingenuine. I believe, after reading this book that Galileo was at peace accepting a world where science and religion can co-exist, without existing severe doubt.I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
    • 4/5
      This is a biography of Galileo written by means of his daughter's letters. Very interesting read, very enlightening about life and people: i.e. Galileo's forbidden work was smuggled to the Netherlands by a high ranking clergyman (!) - and a "Mr. Elzevir" published it. Elsevier is still a major publisher today.
    • 5/5
      I would have liked a little more information and background in the beginning of the book, instead of wondering until the end about some unexplained details, but I have always had this problem with books and movies. For example, how did Galileo's daughter come to be so literate and so well educated if she was put in a convent at age 13? Why were his bastard daughters ineligible for marriage and sentenced to a life of poverty and hard work when his bastard son enjoyed a life of privilege? Here and now I would like to propose a new genre: Historical Retrieval. Working with a researcher who writes book-length papers, I know there is not a label that describes the sifting through old documents to bring to life an acurate and factual picture of one life, a few generations, or in this case, two lives with their numerous supporters and adversaries.I loved the detail, loved the well-organized time line, and the very personal letters, although Galileo's oldest daughter fawns over him, while (dare I suggest it?) his other daughter might be resentful of her lot in life thanks to her father. I thought it was a pretty good book until the very end when I knew it was a truly great book. As pertinent to our current time and place as it was in the 1600s, we can only hope the lesson will not be lost on us, that history will judge the outcome of the battle between scientific inquiry and the retention of ignorance (often by force) from a few bullies at the expense of good people. The many who came to Galileo's aid to publish his works, even after his being cut off from most human contact, his blindness, and eventual death, indicate there is a desire among mankind to search for the truth, no matter what the obstacles.