伽利略的复生

　　In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy;but the scientific dust has long since settled, and today we can see even hisfamous clash with the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective.But, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problemchild for historians of science.

　　The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. He was,above all, a man who experimented: who despised the prejudices and booklearning of the Aristotelians, who put his questions to nature instead of tothe ancients, and who drew his conclusions fearlessly. He had been the first toturn a telescope to the sky, and he had seen there evidence enough to overthrowAristotle and Ptolemy together. He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower ofPisa and dropped various weights from the top, who rolled balls down inclinedplanes, and then generalized the results of his many experiments into thefamous law of free fall.

　　But a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense ofthe period, and particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophicalundercurrents in the scientific revolution, has profoundly modified this viewof Galileo. Today, although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings,among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged.At the same time our sympathy for Galileos opponents has grown somewhat. His telescopicobservations are justly immortal; they aroused great interest at the time, theyhad important theoretical consequences, and they provided a strikingdemonstration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. Butcan we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if weremember that to use a telescope at the limit of its powers calls for longexperience and intimate familiarity with ones instrument? Was the philosopherwho refused to look through Galileos telescope more culpable than those whoalleged that the spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosses great telescope inthe eighteen-forties were scratches left by the grinder? We can perhaps forgivethose who said the moons of Jupiter were produced by Galileos spyglass if werecall that in his day, as for centuries before, curved glass was the popularcontrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth; and if a singlecurved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them?