No More Learning

Because the old times are gone, and this is a new age. For the last hundred years mankind has seemed to be expecting something.
Cities are narrow, and so are minds. Superstition and plague. But now we say: Since things are thus and so, they will not remain thus and so. Because, my friend, everything is in motion.
I like to think that it all started with ships. From time immemorial ships had hugged the shores, but suddenly they abandoned the shores, and sailed out upon the oceans.
And a great desire has arisen to find the causes of all things. Every day something new is being discovered. Even men a hundred years old let youngsters shout in their ears to tell them about the latest discoveries.
A great deal has been discovered, but there's much more to be discovered. Plenty of work for future generations.
When I was a young man in Siena I saw some masons, after arguing for five minutes, discard an age-old method of moving granite blocks in favor of a new and more practical arrangement of the ropes. Then and there I realized that the old times are over and that this is a new day. Some men will know all about their habitat, this heavenly body they live on. They're no longer satisfied with what it says in the ancient books.
Because where faith had ruled for a thousand years, doubt has now set in. Today everybody is saying: Yes, that's what the books tell us, but we want to see for ourselves. The most sacred truths are being looked into. Things that were never: held in doubt are being doubted now.
All this has stirred up a breeze that lifts even the gold-braided coats of princes and prelates, revealing stout or spindly legs, legs just the same as ours. The heavens, we know now, are empty. And that has given rise to joyous laughter.
I foresee that in our lifetime people will talk astronomy in the market place. Even the sons of fishwives will go to school. The people of our cities are always eager for novelty, they will be glad to hear that in our new astronomy the earth moves too. It has always been taught that the stars are pinned to a crystal vault, which prevents them from falling down. Now we've mustered the courage to let them float free, with nothing to hold them; they're in full sail, just as our ships are in full sail.
And the earth rolls merrily around the sun, and all the fishwives, merchants, princes and cardinals, and even the pope, roll with it.
Overnight, the universe has lost its center and now in the morning it has any number of centers. Now any point in the universe may be taken as a center. Because, suddenly, there's plenty of room.
Our ships sail far out into the ocean, our planets revolve far out in space, and even in chess nowadays the rooks range over many fields. What does the poet say? "Oh, early morning . . . "
ANDREA
? "Oh, early morning of beginning!
Oh, breath of wind that
Comes from new-found shores! "
And you'd better drink your milk. There'll be people coming in a minute.
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? GALILEO ANDREA GALILEO ANDREA
Did you figure out what I told you yesterday?
What? You mean Kippernick and all that turning business?
Copernicus, yes.
No. Why do you want me to figure it out? It's too hard for me, I'll only
be eleven in October.
GALILEO I want you to understand it, you in particular. To make everybody
understand, that's why I work and buy expensive books instead of
paying the milkman.
ANDREA But I can see that the sun's not in the same place in the evening and
morning. So it can't stand still. It just can't.
GALILEO You "see"! What do you see? You see nothing at all. You're just gaping.
Gaping isn't seeing. (He places the iron washstand in the center of the room) Now, that's the sun. Sit down. (Andrea sits down in the only chair. Galileo stands behind him) Where is the sun, right or left?
ANDREA Left.
GALILEO And how does it get to the right?
ANDREA When you carry it over to the right. Naturally.
? GALILEO Only then? (Hepicks up the chair with him in it and turns it halfway around) Where's the sun now?
ANDREA On the right.
? GALILEO Has it moved? ANDREA I guess it hasn't. GALILEO What moved? ANDREA Me!
GALILEO (roars) Wrong! Stupid! the chair!
ANDREA But me with it!
GALILEO Obviously, The chair is the earth. You're sitting on it,
MRS SARTI (has come in to make the bed. She has watched the scene) Mr. Galilei, what on earth are you doing with my boy?
? GALILEO I'm teaching him how to see, Mrs. Sarti.
MRS. SARTI By carrying him around the room?
ANDREA Never mind, mother. You don't understand.
MRS. SARTI Is that so? But of course you understand. A young gentleman is here, he
wants to take lessons. Very well dressed, and he has a letter of recommendation. (Hands over the letter) When you get through with my Andrea, he'll be saying that two times two make five. You've got him all mixed up. Last night he tried to prove to me that the earth moves around the sun. He says some fellow by the name of Kippernick figured it out.
ANDREA Didn't that 'Copernicus' figure it out, Mr. Galilei? You tell her.
MRS. SARTI Do you really tell him such nonsense? He blabs it out in school and
the priests come running to me because of all the sinful stuff he says. You
should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Galilei.
GALILEO (eating his breakfast) Mrs. Sarti, as a result of our investigations, and after
heated arguments, Andrea and I have made discoveries which we can no longer keep secret from the world. A new age has dawned, a great age, and it's a joy to be alive.
MRS. SARTI I see. I hope we'll be able to pay the milkman in the new age, Mr. Galilei. (Pointing at the letter) Just do me a favor and don't turn this one away. I'm thinking of the milk bill. (Out)
GALILEO (laughing) Just give me time to finish my milk! --(To Andrea) Well, you
5
? seem to have understood something yesterday after all.
ANDREA I only told her to get a rise out of her. But it's not true. You only turned the
chair with me in it around sideways, but not like this. (He moves his arm in a circle to the front] Because I'd have fallen off the chair, and that's a fact. Why didn't you turn the chair over? Because that would prove I'd fall off the earth if it moved that way. There.
GALILEO But I proved to you . . .
ANDREA But last night I figured out that if the earth turned that way I'd hang down
head first at night, and that's a fact.
GALILEO (takes an apple from the table) Look here. This is the earth. ANDREA Don't always use that kind of example, Mr. Galilei. That way you can
prove anything.
GALILEO (putting the apple hack) Very well.
ANDREA You can do anything with examples if you're clever. But I can't carry my
mother around in a chair like that. So you see, it was a bad example. And what would happen if the apple were the earth? Nothing would happen.
GALILEO (laughs) I thought you weren't interested.
ANDREA All right, take the apple. What would keep me from hanging head down
at night?
GALILEO Well, here's the earth, and you're standing here. (He sticks a splinter
from a log into the apple) And now the earth turns. ANDREA And now I'm hanging head down.
GALILEO What do you mean? Look closely! Where's the head? (shows on the apple) ANDREA There. Below.
? GALILEO Sure? (Turns the apple back) Isn't the head still in the same place? Aren't the feet still below it? When I turn it, do you stand like this? (He takes the splinter out and turns it upside down)
ANDREA No. Then, why don't I notice the turning?
GALILEO Because you're turning too. You and the air above you and everything else
on the globe.
ANDREA But why does it look as if the sun were moving?
GALILEO (again turns the apple with the splinter) Look, you see the earth
underneath, it stays that way, it's always underneath and as far as you're concerned it doesn't move. Now look up.
The lamp is over your head. But now that I've turned it, what's over your head, in other words, above?
ANDREA (making the same turn) The stove. GALILEO And where's the lamp? ANDREA Below.
GALILEO Aha!
ANDREA That's great. That'll get a rise out of her.
(Ludovico Marsili, a rich young man, enters)
LUDOVICO Good morning, sir. My name is Ludovico Marsili.
GALILEO (examining his letter of recommendation) You've been in Holland? LUDOVICO Where I heard a great deal about you, Mr. Galilei. GALILEO Your
family owns property in the Campagna? LUDOVICO My mother wanted me to look around and see what's going on in the world. That kind of thing.
GALILEO And in Holland they told you that in Italy, for instance, I was going on?
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? LUDOVICO GALILEO LUDOVICO GALILEO LUDOVICO Horses. GALILEO I see.
LUDOVICO GALILEO LUDIVICO GALILEO
I have no head for science, Mr. Galilei.
I see. In that case it'll be fifteen scudi a month.
Very well, Mr. Galilei.
I'll have to take you first thing in the morning. You'll be the loser, Andrea.
And since mother also wanted me to take a look at the sciences . . . Private lessons: Ten scudi a month.
Very well, sir.
What are your interests?
Naturally I'll have to drop you. You understand, you don't pay. ANDREA All right, I'm going. Can I take the apple?
GALILEO Yes.
(Andrea leaves)
LUDOVICO You'll have to be patient with me. Mostly because in science everything's the opposite of common sense. Take that crazy tube they're selling in Amsterdam. I've examined it carefully. A green leather casing and two lenses, one like this (he indicates a concave lens) and one like this (indicates a convex lens). As far as I know, one magnifies and the other reduces.
Any sensible person would expect them to cancel each other out. But they don't. When you look through the thing everything's five times as big. That's science for you.
What do you see five times as big? Steeples, pigeons, anything far away.
GALILEO
LUDOVICO
GALILEO
LUDOVICO
GALILEO You say the tube has two lenses? (He makes a sketch on a sheet of paper) Like
this? (Ludovico nods) How old is this invention?
LUDOVICO I believe it wasn't much more than a few days old when I left
Holland, at least it hadn't been on the market any longer than that. GALILEO (almost friendly) Why do you insist on physics? Why not horse
breeding? (Enter Mrs. Sarti, unnoticed by Galileo)
LUDOVICO Mother thinks a little science won't hurt me. Everybody's eating
and drinking science nowadays, you know.
GALILEO Why not try a dead language or theology? They're easier. (Sees Mrs.
Sarti) AH right, come Tuesday morning. (Ludovico leaves)
GALILEO Don't look at me like that. I've accepted him.
MRS. SARTI Because you saw me in the nick of time. The procurator of the
university is here.
GALILEO This place is as busy as a pigeon house. Bring him in. It might mean
five hundred scudi. Then I wouldn't have to take pupils. (Mrs. Sarti shows the procurator in. Galileo has completed dressing while scribbling figures on a slip of paper)
GALILEO Good morning, lend me half a scudo. (Gives the coin the procurator has fished out of his purse to Mrs. Sarti) Sarti, would you send Andrea to the spectacle maker for some lenses? Here are the measurements. (Mrs. Sarti goes out with the slip of paper)
THE PROCURATOR I've come in regard to your request for a raise of salary. You have asked for a thousand scudi. Unfortunately I cannot recommend such an increase to the university. You are aware, I am sure, that courses in mathematics don't attract students to the university. Mathematics doesn't
Have you seen these magnified steeples? Certainly, sir.
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? pay. Not that the republic doesn't value it highly. It may not be as impor tant as philosophy or as useful as theology; still, it gives endless pleasure to the connoisseur.
GALILEO (immersed in his papers) My dear man, I can't get along on five hundred scudi.
THE PROCURATOR But, Mr. Galilei, all you do is give a two-hour lecture twice a week. Surely your extraordinary reputation must attract any number of students who can afford private lessons. Haven't you got private pupils?
? GALILEO Sir, I have too many! I'm teaching all the time. When am I to learn? Good God, man, I'm not as clever as the gentlemen of the philosophical faculty. I'm stupid. I don't understand a thing. I've got to plug the holes in my knowledge. And where am I to find time for that? When am I to study and experiment? My knowledge, sir, is thirsty for more knowledge. In all the biggest problems we still have nothing but hypotheses to go by. What we need is proofs. How can I get anywhere if, to keep my household going, I have to drum it into the head of every idiot who can pay that parallel lines meet in infinity?
? ? THE PROCURATOR The republic may not pay as much as certain princes, but don't forget, it guarantees freedom of inquiry. We in Padua even admit Protestants as students. And we grant them doctor's degrees. Did we hand Mr. Cremonini over to the Inquisition when we had proof--proof, Mr. Galilei! --that he had made sacrilegious statements? No, we even granted him an increase in salary. As far away as Holland Venice is known as the republic where the Inquisition has nothing to say. That ought to be worth something to an astronomer like you, working in a field where the doctrines of the church have not been held in due respect of late.
GALILEO You handed Giordano Bruno over to Rome. Because he professed the teachings of Copernicus.
THE PROCURATOR Not because he professed the teachings of Mr. Copernicus which, incidentally, are wrong, but because he was not a citizen of Venice and was not employed here. You can leave him out of it, even if they did burn him. And by the by, for all our liberties I shouldn't advise you to make too free with a name that has been expressly anathematized
? by the church, not even here, no, not even here.
GALILEO Your protection of freedom of thought is rather good business, isn't it?
You get good teachers for low pay by pointing out that other towns are run by the Inquisition, which burns people. In return for protection from the Inquisition, your professors work for next to nothing.
? THE PROCURATOR You're being unfair. What good would it do you to have all the time you want for research if any witless monk of the Inquisition could simply suppress your ideas? No rose without thorns, Mr. Galilei, no prince without monks!
? GALILEO And what's the use of free investigation without free time to investigate? What happens to the results? Why don't you submit my work on the laws of falling bodies (He points at a sheaf of manuscript) to the gentlemen of the signoria and ask them if it's not worth a few scudi more.
THE PROCURATOR It's worth infinitely more, Mr. Galilei. GALILEO Not infinitely more, sir, but five hundred scudi more.
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? THE PROCURATOR Only what brings in scudi is worth scudi. If. you want money, you'll have to come up with something different. If you have knowledge to sell, you can ask only as much as it earns the purchaser.
For instance, the philosophy Mr. Colombe is selling in Florence brings the prince at least ten thousand scudi a year. Granted, your laws of falling bodies raised some dust. They're applauding you in Paris and Prague. But the gentlemen who applaud don't pay the university of Padua what you cost it. Your misfortune, Mr. Galilei,is your field.
? GALILEO I get it: free trade, free research. Free trade in research, is that it?
? THE PROCURATOR But Mr. Galilei! How can you say such a thing? Permit me to observe that I don't fully appreciate your witticism. The flourishing trade of the republic is hardly to be sneered at. Much less can I, as long- time procurator of the university, countenance the, I must say, frivolous tone in which you speak of research. (While Galileo sends longing glances toward his worktable) Think of the world around us! The whip-of slavery under which science is groaning at certain universities--where old leather-bound tomes have been cut into whips. Where no one cares how the pebble falls, but only what Aristotle writes about it. The eyes have only one purpose: reading. What use are the new laws of gravity when the law of suavity is all that matters? And then think of the immense joy with which our republic accepts your ideas. Here you can do research! Here you can work! Nobody spies I on you, nobody oppresses you. Our merchants, who know the importance of better linen in their competition with Florence, listen with interest to your cry for "Better physics! And don't forget how much physics owes to the campaign for better looms! Our most eminent citizens--men for whom time is money--take an interest in your work, they come to see you and watch demonstrations of your discoveries. Don't despise trade, Mr. Galilei! None of us here would ever allow your work to be interfered with or permit outsiders to create difficulties for you. You've got to admit, Mr. Galilei, that this is the ideal place for your work!
GALILEO (in despair) Yes.
PROCURATOR Then the financial aspect: All you have to do is come up with
another invention as clever as that splendid proportional compass of yours which a person ignorant of mathematics can use to (He counts on his fingers) trace a line, compute compound interest, reproduce a land survey in enlarged or reduced scale, and determine the weight of cannon I balls.
GALILEO Flimflam.
THE PROCURATOR An invention that delighted and amazed our leading citizens
and brought in money--you call that flimflam. I'm told that even General Stefano Gritti can do square roots with it.
? CGALILEO Quite a gadget--all the same, Priuli, you've given me an idea. Priuli, I may have something along those lines for you. (He picks up the sheet with bis sketch)
? PROCURATOR Really? That would be the solution. (Gets up) Mr. Galilei, we know you are a great man. A great but ,f,'. dissatisfied man, if I may say so.
? GALILEO Yes, I am dissatisfied and that's what you should be paying me for if you had any sense. Because I'm dissatisfied with myself. But you do everything to make me dissatisfied with you, I admit it amuses me to do my bit for my Venetian friends, working in your great arsenal with its shipyards and armories. But you leave me no time to follow up the
9
? speculations which result from this work. You muzzle the ox that does your threshing. I'm forty-six years old and I've accomplished nothing that satisfies me.
THE PROCURATOR In that case I won't disturb you any longer. GALILEO Thank you.
(The procurator leaves, Galileo remains alone for a few moments and begins to
work. The Andrea comes running in)
GALILEO (at work) Why didn't you eat the apple?
ANDREA I need it to show her that the earth turns.
GALILEO I must tell you something, Andrea. Don't mention our ideas to
other people.
ANDREA GALILEO ANDREA GALILEO
Why not?
Our rulers have forbidden it.
But it's the truth.
Even so, they forbid it. And there's another reason. We still have no
proofs for what we know to be right. Eve the doctrine of the great
Copernicus is not yet proven. It only a hypothesis. Give me the lenses. ANDREA Half a scudo wasn't enough. I had to leave him my jacket. As a
pledge.
GALILEO How will you get through the winter without jacket?
(Pause. Galileo arranges the lenses on the sheet with the sketch)
ANDREA What's a hypothesis?
GALILEO It's when we consider something probable but have no facts. In the
face of the heavenly bodies we're like worms with dim eyes that see very little. The ancient doctrines that have been accepted for a thousand years are rickety. There's less solid timber in those immense edifices than in the props needed to keep them from collapsing. Too many laws that explain too little, whereas new hypothesis has few laws that explain a great deal.
ANDREA But you've proved it all to me. I want to be a physicist too, Mr.