[al:新概念英语（四）] [ar:MP3 同步字幕版（美音）] [ti:Galileo Reborn] [by:更多学习内容，请到yingyu.chazidian.com搜索“新概念”] [00:00.96]Lesson 32 [00:02.85]Galileo reborn [00:10.06]What has modified our traditional view of Galileo in recent times? [00:17.77]In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy, but the scientific dust has long since settled, [00:26.84]and today we can see even his famous clash with the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective. [00:34.42]But, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problem child for historians of science. [00:44.11]The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. [00:48.63]He was, above all, a man who experimented: [00:52.78]who despised the prejudice and book learning of the Aristotelians, [00:57.49]who put his questions to nature instead of to the ancients, and who drew his conclusions fearlessly. [01:05.65]He had been the first to turn a telescope to the sky, [01:09.37]and he had seen there evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and Ptolemy together. [01:15.98]He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped various weights from the top, [01:22.40]who rolled balls down inclined planes, and then generalized the results of his many experiments into the famous law of free fall. [01:33.86]But a closer study of the evidence, [01:36.04]supported by a deeper sense of the period, and particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in the scientific revolution, [01:45.78]has profoundly modified this view of Galileo. [01:49.86]Today, although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings, among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. [02:01.49]At the same time our sympathy for Galileo's opponents has grown somewhat. [02:06.42]His telescopic observations are justly immortal; [02:10.41]they aroused great interest at the time, [02:13.17]they had important theoretical consequences, [02:16.37]and they provided a striking demonstration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. [02:24.60]But can we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, [02:30.04]if we remember that to use a telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimate familiarity with one's instrument? [02:40.50]Was the philosopher who refused to look through Galileo's telescope more culpable than those who alleged [02:47.50]that the spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's great telescope in the 1840s were scratches left by the grinder? [02:57.31]We can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of Jupiter were produced by Galileo's spyglass if we recall that in his day, [03:06.67]as for centuries before, curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth; [03:16.81]and if a single curved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them?