The Sleepwalkers (173 page)

The
year
after
the
Bruce
episode,
in
October
1604,
a
bright
new
star
appeared
in
the
constellation
Serpentarius.
It
caused
even
more
excitement
than
Tycho's
famous
nova
of
1572,
because
its
appearance
happened
to
coincide
with
a
so-called
great
conjunction
of
Jupiter,
Saturn
and
Mars
in
the
"fiery
triangle"
–
a
gala
performance
that
occurs
only
once
in
every
eight
hundred
years.
Kepler
book
De
Stella
Nova
(1606)
was
primarily
concerned
with
its
astrological
significance;
but
he
showed
that
the
nova
,
like
the
previous
one,
must
be
located
in
the
"immutable"
region
of
the
fixed
stars,
and
thus
drove
another
nail
into
the
coffin
of
the
Aristotelian
universe.
The
star
of
1604
is
still
called
"Kepler's
nova
".
^*

____________________

^*

John
Donne
referred
to
Kepler
nova
when
he
wrote
(
To
The
Countesse
of
Huntingdon
):

Who vagrant transitory
Comets sees,
Wonders, because they are rare: but a new
starre
Whose motion with the firmament agrees,
Is miracle,
for there no new things are.

Galileo,
too,
observed
the
new
star,
but
published
nothing
about
it.
He
gave
three
lectures
on
the
subject,
of
which
only
fragments
are
preserved;
he,
too,
seems
to
have
denied
the
contention
of
the
Aristotelians
that
it
was
a
meteor
or
some
other
sublunary
phenomenon,
but
could
not
have
gone
much
further,
since
his
lectures
in
defence
of
Ptolemy
were
still
circulated
two
years
later.
¹²

Between
1600
and
1610,
Kepler
published
his
Optics
(1604),
the
New
Astronomy
(1609)
and
a
number
of
minor
works.
In
the
same
period,
Galileo
worked
on
his
fundamental
researches
into
free
fall,
the
motion
of
projectiles,
and
the
laws
of
the
pendulum,
but
published
nothing
except
a
brochure
containing
instructions
for
the
use
of
the
so-called
military
or
proportional
compass.
This
was
an
invention
made
in
Germany
some
fifty
years
earlier,
¹³
which
Galileo
had
improved,
as
he
improved
a
number
of
other
gadgets
that
had
been
known
for
a
long
time.
Out
of
this
minor
publication
¹⁴
developed
the
first
of
the
futile
and
pernicious
feuds
which
Galileo
was
to
wage
all
his
life.

It
began
when
a
mathematician
named
Balthasar
Capra
in
Padua
published,
a
year
after
Galileo,
another
brochure
of
instructions
for
the
use
of
the
proportional
compass.
¹⁵
Galileo's
Instructions
were
in
Italian,
Capra's
in
Latin;
both
referred
to
the
same
subject,
which
interested
only
military
engineers
and
technicians.
It
is
very
likely
that
Capra
had
borrowed
from
Galileo
Instructions
without
naming
him;
on
the
other
hand,
Capra
showed
that
some
of
Galileo's
explanations
were
mathematically
erroneous,
but
again
without
naming
him.
Galileo's
fury
knew
no
bounds.
He
published
a
pamphlet
Against
the
Calumnies
and
Impostures
of
Balthasar
Capra,
etc.
(Venice
1607),
in
which
that
unfortunate
man
and
his
teacher
¹⁶
were
described
as
"that
malevolent
enemy
of
honour
and
of
the
whole
of
mankind",
"a
venomspitting
basilisque",
"an
educator
who
bred
the
young
fruit
on
his
poisoned
soul
with
stinking
ordure",
"a
greedy
vulture,
swooping
at
the
unborn
young
to
tear
its
tender
limbs
to
pieces",
and
so
on.
He
also
obtained
from
the
Venetian
Court
the
confiscation,
on
the
grounds
of
plagiarism,
of
Capra's
Instructions
.
Not
even
Tycho
and
Ursus
had
sunk
to
such
fish-wife
language;
yet
they
had
fought
for
the
authorship
of
a
system
of
the
universe,
not
of
a
gadget
for
military
engineers.

In
his
later
polemical
writings,
Galileo's
style
progressed
from
coarse
invective
to
satire,
which
was
sometimes
cheap,
often
subtle,
always
effective.
He
changed
from
the
cudgel
to
the
rapier,
and
achieved
a
rare
mastery
of
it;
while
in
the
purely
expository
passages
his
lucidity
earned
him
a
prominent
place
in
the
development
of
Italian
didactic
prose.
But
behind
the
polished
façade,
the
same
passions
were
at
work
which
had
exploded
in
the
affair
of
the
proportional
compass:
vanity,
jealousy
and
self-righteousness
combined
into
a
demoniac
force,
which
drove
him
to
the
brink
of
self-destruction.
He
was
utterly
devoid
of
any
mystical,
contemplative
leanings,
in
which
the
bitter
passions
could
from
time
to
time
be
resolved;
he
was
unable
to
transcend
himself
and
find
refuge,
as
Kepler
did
in
his
darkest
hours,
in
the
cosmic
mystery.
He
did
not
stand
astride
the
watershed;
Galileo
is
wholly
and
frighteningly
modern.