The Sleepwalkers (176 page)

The
booklet
aroused
immediate
and
passionate
controversy.
It
is
curious
to
note
that
Copernicus'
Book
of
Revolutions
had
created
little
stir
for
half
a
century,
and
Kepler's
Laws
even
less
at
their
time,
while
the
Star
Messenger
,
which
had
only
an
indirect
bearing
on
the
issue,
caused
such
an
outburst
of
emotions.
The
main
reason
was,
no
doubt,
its
immense
readability.
To
digest
Kepler's
magnum
opus
required,
as
one
of
his
colleagues
remarked,
"nearly
a
lifetime";
but
the
Star
Messenger
could
be
read
in
an
hour,
and
its
effect
was
like
a
punch
in
the
solar
plexus
on
those
grown
up
in
the
traditional
view
of
the
bounded
universe.
And
that
vision,
though
a
bit
shaky,
still
retained
an
immense,
reassuring
coherence.
Even
Kepler
was
frightened
by
the
wild
perspective
opened
up
by
Galileo's
spyglass:
"The
infinite
is
unthinkable,"
he
repeatedly
exclaimed
in
anguish.

The
shock-waves
of
Galileo's
message
spread
immediately,
as
far
as
England.
It
was
published
in
March
1610;
Donne's
Ignatius
was
published
barely
ten
months
later,
¹⁹
but
Galileo
(and
Kepler)
are
repeatedly
mentioned
in
it:

I
will
write
[quoth
Lucifer]
to
the
Bishop
of
Rome:
He
shall
call
Galileo
the
Florentine
to
him
...

But
soon, the satirical approach yielded to the metaphysical, to a full
realization of the new cosmic perspective:

Man
has
weav'd
out
a
net,
and
this
net
throwne
Upon
the
Heavens,
and
now
they
are
his
owne
...

Milton
was
still
an
infant
in
1610;
he
grew
up
with
the
new
wonders.
His
awareness
of
the
"vast
unbounded
Deep"
which
the
telescope
disclosed,
reflects
the
end
of
the
medieval
walled
universe:

Before
[his]
eyes
in
sudden
view
appear
The
secrets
of
the
hoary
Deep
–
a
dark
Illimitable
ocean,
without
bound,
Without
dimension
...
²⁰

6.
The Battle of the Satellites

Such
was
the
objective
impact
on
the
world
at
large
of
Galileo's
discoveries
with
his
"optick
tube".
But
to
understand
the
reactions
of
the
small,
academic
world
in
his
own
country,
we
must
also
take
into
account
the
subjective
effect
of
Galileo's
personality.
Canon
Koppernigk
had
been
a
kind
of
invisible
man
throughout
his
life;
nobody
who
met
the
disarming
Kepler,
in
the
flesh
or
by
correspondence,
could
seriously
dislike
him.
But
Galileo
had
a
rare
gift
of
provoking
enmity;
not
the
affection
alternating
with
rage
which
Tycho
aroused,
but
the
cold,
unrelenting
hostility
which
genius
plus
arrogance
minus
humility
creates
among
mediocrities.

Without
this
personal
background,
the
controversy
which
followed
the
publication
of
the
Sidereus
Nuncius
would
remain
incomprehensible.
For
the
subject
of
the
quarrel
was
not
the
significance
of
the
Jupiter
satellites,
but
their
existence
–
which
some
of
Italy's
most
illustrious
scholars
flatly
denied.
Galileo's
main
academic
rival
was
Magini
in
Bologna.
In
the
month
following
the
publication
of
the
Star
Messenger
,
on
the
evenings
of
24
and
25
April,
1610,
a
memorable
party
was
held
in
a
house
in
Bologna,
where
Galileo
was
invited
to
demonstrate
the
Jupiter
moons
in
his
spy-glass.
Not
one
among
the
numerous
and
illustrious
guests
declared
himself
convinced
of
their
existence.
Father
Clavius,
the
leading
mathematician
in
Rome,
equally
failed
to
see
them;
Cremonini,
teacher
of
philosophy
at
Padua,
refused
even
to
look
into
the
telescope;
so
did
his
colleague
Libri.
The
latter,
incidentally,
died
soon
afterwards,
providing
Galileo
with
an
opportunity
to
make
more
enemies
with
the
much
quoted
sarcasm:
"Libri
did
not
choose
to
see
my
celestial
trifles
while
he
was
on
earth;
perhaps
he
will
do
so
now
he
has
gone
to
Heaven."

These
men
may
have
been
partially
blinded
by
passion
and
prejudice,
but
they
were
not
quite
as
stupid
as
it
may
seem.
Galileo's
telescope
was
the
best
available,
but
it
was
still
a
clumsy
instrument
without
fixed
mountings,
and
with
a
visual
field
so
small
that,
as
somebody
has
said,
"the
marvel
is
not
so
much
that
he
found
Jupiter's
moons,
but
that
he
was
able
to
find
Jupiter
itself."
The
tube
needed
skill
and
experience
in
handling,
which
none
of
the
others
possessed.
Sometimes,
a
fixed
star
appeared
in
duplicate.
Moreover,
Galileo
himself
was
unable
to
explain
why
and
how
the
thing
worked;
and
the
Sidereus
Nuncius
was
conspicuously
silent
on
this
essential
point.
Thus
it
was
not
entirely
unreasonable
to
suspect
that
the
blurred
dots
which
appeared
to
the
strained
and
watering
eye
pressed
to
the
spectacle-sized
lens,
might
be
optical
illusions
in
the
atmosphere,
or
somehow
produced
by
the
mysterious
gadget
itself.
This,
in
fact,
was
asserted
in
a
sensational
pamphlet,
Refutation
of
the
Star
Messenger
,
^20a
published
by
Magini's
assistant,
a
young
fool
called
Martin
Horky.
The
whole
controversy
about
optical
illusions,
haloes,
reflections
from
luminous
clouds,
and
about
the
unreliability
of
testimonies,
inevitably
reminds
one
of
a
similar
controversy
three
hundred
years
later:
the
flying
saucers.
Here,
too,
emotion
and
prejudice
combined
with
technical
difficulties
against
clear-cut
conclusions.
And
here,
too,
it
was
not
unreasonable
for
self-respecting
scholars
to
refuse
to
look
at
the
photographic
"evidence"
for
fear
of
making
fools
of
themselves.
Similar
considerations
may
be
applied
to
the
refusal
of
otherwise
open-minded
scholars
to
get
involved
in
the
ambiguous
phenomena
of
occult
seances.
The
Jupiter
moons
were
no
less
threatening
to
the
outlook
on
the
world
of
sober
scholars
in
1610,
than,
say,
extra-sensory
perception
was
in
1950.