464 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXVII, No. 952 



single remark that the importance of cul- 

 tivating individual initiative and of hand- 

 ing on to the community the best there is 

 in the achievements of science is not likely 

 to be overestimated. 



Symonds- points out that Athens and 

 Florence owed their wonderful intellec- 

 tual, artistic and literary success mainly 

 to the fact that they nourished the indi- 

 viduality of their citizens; while Sparta 

 and Venice, comparatively barren of per- 

 manent results, illustrate the lack of such 

 encouragement. 



I now invite your attention to one of the 

 earliest members of the venerable and 

 thankworthy Academy of the Lyncei, a 

 man who represents in the highest degree 

 the individuality then cultivated in Tus- 

 cany, a man whose impress upon his stu- 

 dents was so deep that shortly after his 

 death they united to form one of the most 

 productive and justly celebrated of all the 

 Italian academies,^ a man whose written 

 works fill twenty splendid quarto volumes,* 

 a man who in his efforts to put before the 

 people the best science of his times, en- 

 dured opposition, criticism, disgrace and 

 social ostracism throughout most of his 

 thinking life. I refer to Galileo. But I 

 shall speak only of what he did in physics, 

 because I believe this phase of his work is 

 too little known. 



What Galileo saw through telescopes of 

 his own make, though not of his own in- 

 vention, is so familiar that possibly a 

 majority of intelligent men think of him 

 miainly as an astronomer. The spots on 

 the sun, the mountains on the moon, the 



' ' ' Benaissanoe in Italy, ' ' Vol. I., p. 234. 



^ Aecademia del Cimento, founded in 1657 ; dis- 

 banded m 1667. 



■* Edited by the scholarly care of Professor 

 Favaro, of the University of Padua, and published 

 by the Italian government, 1890-1909. Eeferred 

 to hereafter as ' ' Nat. Ed. ' ' 



satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, 

 the "triple character" of Saturn, the solar 

 rotation period, lunar libration and earth- 

 shine are some of the celestial phenomena 

 associated with the name of Galileo. These 

 and his brilliant defense of the Coperniean 

 system are responsible for the impression 

 that his accomplishments are chiefly astro- 

 nomical. 



To another large group of men he stands 

 mainly for liberty, intellectual, social and 

 religious. These men classify him with 

 Giordano Bruno and De Dominis and Gam- 

 panella who also had some experience with 

 the cardinals of the Inquisition. For them 

 Galileo is the man who dared to differ with 

 Aristotle, the man who brushed aside the 

 mists of philosophy, the man who banished 

 church traditions from his thinking while 

 he calmly pursued his search after unity 

 in the physical universe." It is doubtless 

 his splendid stand for spiritual freedom 

 which leads Goethe" in his historical sketch 

 of optics to say: 



Even though he never seriously studied the sub- 

 ject of color, I must at least adorn my page with 

 his name. 



But there is still a third group of men 

 to whom the great Italian appeals most 

 strongly because he has given them a new 

 method of working and thinking, a new 

 viewpoint, a new apergu. To put this con- 

 tribution in its proper perspective is not 

 an easy matter ; we are too near it and too 

 familiar with it. If, however, one consid- 

 ers the time interval between Archimedes 

 and Kelvin he can not fail to notice a sharp 

 discontinuity in the progress of physics 

 occurring about the beginning of the sev- 



" For a masterly presentation of this phase of 

 Galileo's work, see Dr. Charles T. Little's article 

 in the Methodist Seview, Vol. 88, pp. 204-218, 

 1906. 



"Goethe, "Farben-lehre Historische TheU, " 

 art. Galileo. 



