and tube filled with air and water, and terminating in a vessel of water. In this instrument the results of varying atmospheric pressure were not distinguishable from the expansive and contractive effects of heat and cold, and it became an efficient measure of temperature only when Rinieri, in 1646, introduced the improvement of hermetically sealing the liquid in glass. The substitution, in 1670, of mercury for water completed the modern thermometer.
Galileo seems, at an early period of his life, to have adopted the Copernican theory of the solar system, and was deterred from avowing his opinions—as is proved by his letter to Kepler of August 4, 1597—by the fear of ridicule rather than of persecution. The appearance, in September 1604, of a new star in the constellation Serpentarius afforded him indeed an opportunity, of which he eagerly availed himself, for making an onslaught upon the Aristotelian axiom of the incorruptibility of the heavens; but he continued to conform his public teachings in the main to Ptolemaic principles, until the discovery of a novel and potent implement of research in the shape of the telescope (q.v.) placed at his command startling and hitherto unsuspected evidence as to the constitution and mutual relations of the heavenly bodies. Galileo was not the original inventor of the telescope.[1] That honour must be assigned to Johannes Lippershey, an obscure optician of Middleburg, who, on the 2nd of October 1608, petitioned the states-general of the Low Countries for exclusive rights in the manufacture of an instrument for increasing the apparent size of remote objects. A rumour of the new invention, which reached Venice in June 1609, sufficed to set Galileo on the track; and after one night’s profound meditation on the principles of refraction, he succeeded in producing a telescope of threefold magnifying power. Upon this first attempt he rapidly improved, until he attained to a power of thirty-two, and his instruments, of which he manufactured hundreds with his own hands, were soon in request in every part of Europe. Two lenses only—a plano-convex and a plano-concave—were needed for the composition of each, and this simple principle is that still employed in the construction of opera-glasses. Galileo’s direction of his new instrument to the heavens formed an era in the history of astronomy. Discoveries followed upon it with astounding rapidity and in bewildering variety. The Sidereus Nuncius, published at Venice early in 1610, contained the first-fruits of the new mode of investigation, which were sufficient to excite learned amazement on both sides of the Alps. The mountainous configuration of the moon’s surface was there first described, and the so-called “phosphorescence” of the dark portion of our satellite attributed to its true cause—namely, illumination by sunlight reflected from the earth.[2] All the time-worn fables and conjectures regarding the composition of the Milky Way were at once dissipated by the simple statement that to the eye, reinforced by the telescope, it appeared as a congeries of lesser stars, while the great nebulae were equally declared to be resolvable into similar elements. But the discovery which was at once perceived to be most important in itself, and most revolutionary in its effects, was that of Jupiter’s satellites, first seen by Galileo on the 7th of January 1610, and by him named Sidera Medicea, in honour of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo II., who had been his pupil, and was about to become his employer. An illustration is, with the general run of mankind, more powerful to convince than an argument; and the cogency of the visible plea for the Copernican theory offered by the miniature system, then first disclosed to view, was recognizable in the triumph of its advocates as well as in the increased acrimony of its opponents.
In September 1610 Galileo finally abandoned Padua for Florence. His researches with the telescope had been rewarded by the Venetian senate with the appointment for life to his professorship, at an unprecedentedly high salary. His discovery of the “Medicean Stars” was acknowledged by his nomination (July 12, 1610) as philosopher and mathematician extraordinary to the grand-duke of Tuscany. The emoluments of this office, which involved no duties save that of continuing his scientific labours, were fixed at 1000 scudi; and it was the desire of increased leisure, rather than the promptings of local patriotism, which induced him to accept an offer the original suggestion of which had indeed come from himself. Before the close of 1610 the memorable cycle of discoveries begun in the previous year was completed by the observation of the ansated or, as it appeared to Galileo, triple form of Saturn (the ring-formation was first recognized by Christiaan Huygens in 1655), of the phases of Venus, and of the spots upon the sun. As regards sun-spots, however, Johann Fabricius of Osteel in Friesland can claim priority of publication, if not of actual detection. In the spring of 1611 Galileo visited Rome, and exhibited in the gardens of the Quirinal Palace the telescopic wonders of the heavens to the most eminent personages at the pontifical court. Encouraged by the flattering reception accorded to him, he ventured, in his Letters on the Solar Spots, printed at Rome in 1613, to take up a more decided position towards that doctrine on the establishment of which, as he avowed in a letter to Belisario Vinta, secretary to the grand-duke, “all his life and being henceforward depended.” Even in the time of Copernicus some well-meaning persons, especially those of the reformed persuasion, had suspected a discrepancy between the new view of the solar system and certain passages of Scripture—a suspicion strengthened by the anti-Christian inferences drawn from it by Giordano Bruno; but the question was never formally debated until Galileo’s brilliant disclosures, enhanced by his formidable dialectic and enthusiastic zeal, irresistibly challenged for it the attention of the authorities. Although he had no desire to raise the theological issue, it must be admitted that, the discussion once set on foot, he threw himself into it with characteristic impetuosity, and thus helped to precipitate a decision which it was his interest to avert. In December 1613 a Benedictine monk named Benedetto Castelli, at that time professor of mathematics at the university of Pisa, wrote to inform Galileo of a recent discussion at the grand-ducal table, in which he had been called upon to defend the Copernican doctrine against theological objections. This task Castelli, who was a steady friend and disciple of the Tuscan astronomer, seems to have discharged with moderation and success. Galileo’s answer, written, as he said himself, currente calamo, was an exposition of a formal theory as to the relations of physical science to Holy Writ, still further developed in an elaborate apology addressed by him in the following year (1614) to Christina of Lorraine, dowager grand-duchess of Tuscany. Not satisfied with explaining adverse texts, he met his opponents with unwise audacity on their own ground, and endeavoured to produce scriptural confirmation of a system which seemed to the ignorant many an incredible paradox, and to the scientific few a beautiful but daring innovation. The rising agitation on the subject, fomented for their own purposes by the rabid Aristotelians of the schools, was heightened rather than allayed by these manifestoes, and on the fourth Sunday of the following Advent found a voice in the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella. Padre Caccini’s denunciation of the new astronomy was indeed disavowed and strongly condemned by his superiors; nevertheless, on the 5th of February 1615, another Dominican monk named Lorini laid Galileo’s letter to Castelli before the Inquisition.
Cardinal Robert Bellarmin was at that time by far the most influential member of the Sacred College. He was a man of vast learning and upright piety, but, although personally friendly to Galileo, there is no doubt that he saw in his scientific teachings a danger to religion. The year 1615 seems to have been a period of suspense. Galileo received, as the result of a conference between Cardinals Bellarmin and Del Monte, a semi-official warning to avoid theology, and limit himself to physical reasoning. “Write freely,” he was told by Monsignor Dini, “but keep outside the
- ↑ The word telescope, from τῆλε, far, σκοπεῖν, to view, was invented by Demiscianus, an eminent Greek scholar, at the request of Prince Cesi, president of the Lyncean Academy. It was used by Galileo as early as 1612, but was not introduced into England until much later. In 1655 the word telescope was inserted and explained in Bagwell’s Mysteries of Astronomy, trunk or cylinder being the terms until then ordinarily employed.
- ↑ Leonardo da Vinci, more than a hundred years earlier, had come to the same conclusion.
