…Three Hundred Years
Ago.
In recognition of today’s Google
Doodle -
Spectacularly wrong: yesterday's model of the universe.
Around the comer from the Uffizi,
and somewhat in its shadow, stands a smaller, even older house of treasure-
Florence'sMuseum of the History of Science (renamed Museo Galileo in 2010). This
magnificent collection, refurbished in recent years, has at its thematic heart
Galileo's telescope: the gilded wood-and-leather instrument, simple and revolutionary,
that shattered the Age of Faith and changed the way the world thought.
Like Michelangelo, that other
hero of the Renaissance, Galileo was sponsored by the Medici and censored by
the pope. After his death, two Medici grand dukes, both former pupils, founded
an academy to carry on the master's legacy of experimental science. Though it
lasted just ten years, until 1667, the academy oversaw the design and
manufacture of many innovative instruments, which became the property of the
Medici; their collection was the nucleus of the present museum.
Representing what could be called
Renaissance high tech, the state of the art circa 1650, many items here are
treasures in themselves, precocious children of the Renaissance marriage
between science and art. Here are optical and navigational instruments of all
sorts-the telescopes, astrolabes, and compasses that made possible the charting
of the heavens, the voyages of discovery, the mapping of "unmappable"
continents and seas. Here are devices combining practicality and whimsy: a
variety of "nocturnals," for telling time at night; a compass to be
attached to a saddle bow, for navigation on horseback; flawless crystal
thermometers in the shape of miniature frogs, which attach to the upper arm
with silky gold threads.
The layman recognizes, in a
formal way, what these instruments are but experiences still another response:
a sense of the weirdness, the eccentricity, the marvelously idiosyncratic
nature of these artifacts. Touring the museum's fifteen rooms, the visitor may
feel he is wandering down the stranger, though necessary, byways of scientific
investigation.
The calculating machine (Ciclografo) of Tito Livio Burattini
from 1658 (© Museo Galileo, Firenze)
The craftsmanship is consummate. Every
celestial globe, every sundial, every brass sextant, quadrant, and compass, is
covered with tiny etchings-heraldic emblems, plumed helmets, decorative flowers.
Early microscopes sit on carved-ivory bases. Precision mathematical instruments
repose in fitted cases lined with red velvet. A brass odometer is bedecked with
a filigreed border. The creators were obviously skilled cabinetmakers, and as
much attention was paid to aesthetic appeal as to the engineering of the instruments
themselves. One item, with miniature ebony horses prancing around a wooden
"floor," suggests a Victorian toy circus, jointly crafted by Escher
and Calder.
We also see history's grander
mistakes. A sixteenth-century armiliary sphere, bearing a royal seal, depicts
Ptolemy's view, the "theologically correct" concept of an Earth-centered
universe. At eleven feet in height, nearly large enough to fill the room, it is
gorgeous, gilded, and spectacularly wrong. One gaze at its weighty, opulent authority
suggests how much it cost Galileo to say, "I disagree." It reminds us
that skepticism and doubt are scientific virtues.
The museum is housed in one of Florence's
oldest buildings, the Castellani (1180); and in the renovated cellar we see, in
medieval, vaulted rooms, an alchemist's laboratory and, slightly to the left, a
laser display.
Galileo Galilei’s finger :*)
And, do you remember this lone
hero? 
