Description
Book SynopsisPublication of Galileo's Starry Messenger in 1610, detailing startling observations with the newly invented telescope, sparked immediate furor among the astronomers and philosophers of the day. The discovery of the Medicean stars (the satellites of Jupiter) was pronounced a hoax, an optical illusion, a logical and theological impossibility. Stillman Drake, one of the world's foremost Galileo scholars, recreates in Telescopes, Tides, and Tactics the fascinating aftermath of the publication of the Starry Messenger. Drawing on Galileo's scientific working papers and the letters and notebooks of his colleagues, Drake presents an imaginative Galilean dialogue using the text of the Starry Messenger as a departure point for discussions of appropriate scientific method, new discoveries, and the emergence of a new world view at this early stage of the Scientific Revolution. Drake has revised his earlier abridged translation of the Starry Messenger, and for the first time the entire work is pres
