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Galileo's Daughter
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Galileo's Daughter (1999) (edit title/settings)

A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love

by Dava Sobel (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Galileo Galilei's telescopes allowed him to discover a new reality in the heavens. But for publicly declaring his astounding argument — that the earth revolves around the sun — he was accused of heresy and put under house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Living a far different... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless; they call a diamond very beautiful because it is like pure water, and then would not exchange one for ten barrels of water.”
  • “Thus, to imagine an infinite universe was merely to grant almighty God His proper due.”
  • “"The Pontiff's war worries so disrupted his sleep that he ordered all the birds in his gardens killed , lest they offend him with nocturnal calls".”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • As he had once heard the late Vatican librarian Cesare Cardinal Baronio remark, the Bible was a book about how one goes to Heaven—not how Heaven goes.
    Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers
  • Stunned by the Protestant Reformation fomented in Germany around 1517, the Roman Church struck a defensive posture throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries called the Counter-Reformation.
    Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers
  • 'Philosophy is written in this grand book the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze,' Galileo believed. 'But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.'
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • Galileo further flouted academic tradition by writing Bodies in Water in Italian, instead of the Latin lingua franca that enabled the European community of scholars to communicate among themselves.
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • Rejecting Martin Luther's insistence on the right to a personal reading of the Bible, the council declared in 1546 that 'no one, relying on his own judgment and distorting the Sacred Scriptures according to his own conceptions, shall dare to interpret them.'
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • 'Whatever the course of our lives,' Galileo wrote, 'we should receive them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine.'
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • without adducing any argument in support of it, act very absurdly. I, on the contrary, wish to be allowed freely to question and freely to answer you without any sort of adulation, as well becomes those who are in search of truth.'
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • The Dialogue duly appeared on the next published Index of Prohibited Books, in 1664, where it would remain for nearly two hundred years.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • The only fault Cardinal Bellarmino found with Galileo was the man's insistence on treating the Copernican model as a real-life scenario instead of a hypothesis. After all, there was no proof. The cardinal further opined that Galileo should stick to astronomy in public and not try to tell anyone how to interpret the Bible.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
Show all 13 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

The day after his sister Virginia's funeral, the already world-renowned scientist Galileo Galilei received this, the first of 124 surviving letters from the once-voluminous correspondence he carried on with his elder daughter.

Table of Contents edit see section history

PART ONE. TO FLORENCE
<I> She who was so precious to you
<II> This grand book the universe
<III> Bright stars speak of your virtues
<IV> To have the truth seen and recognized
<V> In the very face of the sun
<VI> Observant executrix of God's commands
<VII> The malice of my persecutors
<VIII> Conjecture here among shadows

PART TWO. ON BELLOSGUARDO
<IX> How our father is favored
<X> To busy myself in your service
<XI> What we required above all else
<XII> Because of our zeal
<XIII> Through my memory of their eloquence
<XIV> A small and trifling body
<XV> On the right path, by the grace of God
<XVI> The tempest of our many torments

PART THREE. IN ROME
<XVII> While seeking to immortalize your fame
<XVIII> Since the Lord chastises us with these whips
<XIX> The hope of having you always near
<XX> That I should be begged to publish such a work

PART FOUR. IN CARE OF THE TUSCAN EMBASSY, VILLA MEDICI, ROME
<XXI> How anxiously I live, awaiting word from you
<XXII> In the chambers of the Holy Office of the Inquisition
<XXIII> Vainglorious ambition, pure ignorance, and inadvertence
<XXIV> Faith vested in the miraculous Madonna of Impruneta
<XXV> Judgment passed on your book and your person

PART FIVE. IN SIENA
<XXVI> Not knowing how to refuse him the keys
<XXVII> Terrible destruction on the feast of Saint Lorenzo
<XXVIII> Recitation of the penitential psalm
<XXIX> The book of life, or, A prophet accepted in his own land

PART SIX. FROM ARCETRI
<XXX> My soul and its longing
<XXXI> Until I have this from your lips
<XXXII> As I struggle to understand
<XXXIII> The memory of the sweetness

In Galileo's Time
Florentine Weights, Measures, Currency
Bibliography
Notes
Appreciation
Art Credits
Index

Glossary edit see section history

  • escuthcheon: a flat, protective covering (on a door, or wall, etc) to prevent soiling by dirty fingers

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Dava Sobel (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Country: Great Britain
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: 1857027124
Page Count: 429

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: QB36.G2 S65 1999
  • Dewey: 520.92

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

There is a slightly cynical critique to the Catholic Church of the time. May raise a lot of questions about the history of the Vatican. Lexile Score: 1530

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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  • The Planets

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