by Stuart Clark
Galileo did not move until he felt a hand take him by the elbow; the ambassador was surprisingly strong. As Niccolini guided him through the villa, Galileo noticed someone familiar in the hallway and stopped dead.
Galileo stared at the familiar face but could not think of anything to say.
‘No mail today, sir. I’ll be sure to forward it, when it arrives,’ said Tito.
Everything seemed so meaningless. It was such a long way to the carriage and then such a long way up into the box. The ambassador lifted him inside.
Throwing out the rubbish, thought Galileo.
A short while later, the wooden vehicle rattled across the gravel and out of the embassy gates. Tito watched from the steps with the ambassador at his side, both reluctant to turn away. Before the carriage disappeared completely from view, it shimmered in the heat haze.
‘So this is how it ends,’ said Tito.
Niccolini leaned close. ‘No one knows this – not the Inquisition, not the Jesuits, not even Galileo – but Archbishop Piccolomini is a Copernican.’
Tito looked round, convinced he had misheard.
Niccolini smiled at his evident confusion.
‘You mean …’ began Tito.
‘I mean it isn’t over,’ said Niccolini.
Epilogue
Johannes Kepler’s textbook Epitome astronomia Copernicanae, Epitome of Copernican astronomy, became staggeringly influential. The title was a mark of his humble nature as he did not advocate Copernicus but rather his own system of the planets. Even today we talk of the Copernican model, not the Keplerian one. Yet all Kepler took from Copernicus was that the Sun was stationary and the Earth moved. Although astronomers could not prove the Earth moved until 1725, the simplicity of Kepler’s elliptical orbits captured the imagination of natural philosophers across Europe and convinced them that the universe was understandable to humans. However, Kepler did not live to see this, dying in 1630 at the age of fifty-eight.
Galileo Galilei was all but broken by his trial. He was protected and nurtured by his supporters, who made sure that his house arrest was conducted in sympathisers’ homes. They coaxed from him another book, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, Discourses and demonstrations on two new sciences, about motion and material strength. It was more influential than his astronomical works and is now acknowledged as the first work of modern physics, presenting scientific arguments in precise mathematical detail rather than rhetorical flourishes. The work was smuggled out of Italy and published in Holland.
Kepler’s Epitome and Galileo’s Discorsi became the foundation stones for the scientific revolution. They provided Isaac Newton with the raw material to develop his groundbreaking theory of universal gravitation, published in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, in 1687.
Galileo died, aged seventy-seven, in 1642, the same year that Isaac Newton was born.
The Sensorium of God, the second book of The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth trilogy, tells Newton’s story and that of his allies and adversaries. It will be published by Polygon in autumn 2011. The Day Without Yesterday – the story of Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble – will be published in spring 2012.
Acknowledgements
This is a story based on truth. As such, bringing it to life would have been impossible without the existing manuscripts of the astronomers involved and rendered far more difficult without the extraordinary efforts of the numerous historians and writers who have previously published non-fiction accounts of these various stories and people.
There are some wonderful biographical examinations of these characters in print, and if I have piqued your curiosity about the characters in this book at all, then I encourage you to progress to these other books, and decide for yourself whether you agree with my interpretation of events and personalities.
Two books particularly spring to mind because they not only paint the people so well but also the times in which they lived: Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter and James A. Conner’s Kepler’s Witch. Other sources of mine include Kepler by Max Caspar, On Tycho’s Island by John Robert Christianson, The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler, Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible by Richard J. Blackwell, The First Copernican by Dennis Danielson, The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague by Peter Marshall, Copernicus and His Successors by Edward Rosen, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe by Stephen C. McCluskey, Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century and A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler by J.L.E. Dreyer, Science and Civic Life in the Italian Renaissance by Eugenio Garin and The Galileo Affair, edited by Maurice A. Finocchiaro.
Then, of course, there are the books by the great men themselves: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei, Mysterium Cosmigraphicum, Astronomia Nova, Harmonices Mundi, Somnium and Epitome Astronomia Copernicanae by Johannes Kepler.
I have made a few, hopefully acceptable, changes to the chronology in order to fashion this story into fiction but in spirit I believe I have remained true to the people, the science and the events. There is only one main character in this book who is entirely fictitious. That character is Pippe.
Then there are my heartfelt thanks to the people who have believed in this project and been involved in bringing it to fruition: Peter Tallack, Duran Kim, Neville Moir, Caroline Oakley, Hamish Macaskill, Maria White, Alison Rae, Jan Rutherford, Brenda Conway, Alison Boyle, Nic Cheetham, Ruth Seeley and Kim McArthur.
And of course, Nicola Clark, my wife and invaluable assistant.
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2011 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in 2011 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd
Copyright © Stuart Clark 2011
The moral right of Stuart Clark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ebook ISBN: 978–0–85790–014–2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
