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DIRECTOR'S NOTE: The Life of Galileo

August 31, 2011 by Michael Donald Edwards in The Life of Galileo

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It seems such a simple act. Point a telescope at the night sky – it was the result of that most natural of human impulses: curiosity. Then comes the thrilling, awesome and frightening moment: grasping what it is you are actually seeing. It is 400+ years since Galileo first did this – the pointing and the grasping - and 40 years since man landed on the moon. They are of course directly connected events. Small steps and great leaps.

It is almost impossible for us to imagine a world where it was an absolute given for everyone that the earth was still and flat, that the sun and all the planets and moons, revolved around the earth and that the earth was the center of the universe. Yet this was the case a mere 400 years ago.

Steadily, meticulously, through the most painstaking observation - which probably cost him his eyesight – Galileo proved that the earth is spinning on its axis as it rotates around the sun, that the sun is one of many billions of stars and that the earth is a tiny speck in one of many universes.

This insight, this observation, this proof changed everything: scientifically, spiritually, politically. Everything. All our certainties about what, why, and how the world is, were suddenly profoundly challenged, examined and doubted. Some people at the time recognized what we now call a paradigm shift. They were excited that we could now question everything and that this liberation of the act of human enquiry would lead to extraordinary achievements in science and civilization. And in so many ways they were right. Three hundred and sixty years later the descendents of Galileo’s telescope landed on the moon.

But for many this was a moment of great fear. They saw that somehow dark and chaotic forces would be unleashed by letting the world in on Galileo’s discoveries. They dreaded that pure scientific inquiry would become unmoored from morality and ethics and lead to destruction. As we now know all too well, they too in many ways were right. We have all pondered the awful achievement of a nuclear winter.

Brecht’s superb play, as adapted by David Edgar, lives and breathes at the heart of this great paradox. It vividly reminds us that this great intersection of faith and reason, of science and morality, is directly connected to the future of us all.

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