The Act of Creation
The Leaders of the Revolution
After the long dark interlude which came to an end with the Pythagorean Renaissance in Italy around A.D. 1500, four men stand highlighted on the stage of history: Copernicus, Tycho, Galileo, Kepler. They were the pioneers of the scientific Revolution, the men on whose shoulders Newton stood: what do we know about their personal motives -- which ultimately changed the face of this planet?
We know least about Copernicus (1473-1543); as a person, he seems to have been a pale, insignificant figure, a timid Canon in the God-forsaken Prussian province of Varmia; his main ambition, as far as one can tell, was to be left alone and not to incur derision or disfavour. As a student in Italy, he had become acquainted with the Pythagorean idea of a sun -centred universe, and for the next thirty or forty years he elaborated his system in secret. Only in the last year before his death, at the age of seventy, did he agree, under pressure of his friends and superiors, to publish it; the first printed copy of his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres reached him on the day of his death. It is one of the dreariest and most unreadable books that made history, and remained practically unnoticed for the next fifty years, until Kepler took the idea up (the Church turned against it only eighty years after Copernicus's death).
Copernicus was neither an original nor even a progressive thinker; he was, as Kepler later remarked, 'interpreting Ptolemy rather than nature'. He clung fanatically to the Aristotelian dogma that all planets must move in perfect circles at uniform speeds; the first impulse of his long labours originated in his discontent with the fact that in the Ptolemaic system they moved in perfect circles but not at uniform speed. It was the grievance of a perfectionist -- in keeping with his crabbed, secretive, stingy character (which every Freudian would gleefully identify as the perfect 'anal' type). Once he had taken the Ptolemaic clockwork to pieces, he began to search for a useful hint how to put it together again; he found it in Asistarchus's heliocentric idea which at that time was much in the air.* It was not so much a new departure as a last attempt to patch up an outdated machinery by reversing the arrangement of its wheels. As a modern historian has said, the fact that the earth moves is 'almost an incidental matter in the system of Copernicus which, viewed geometrically, is just the old Ptolemaic pattern of the skies, with one or two wheels interchanged and one or two of them taken out.' [4]
For 'four times nine years', as he later confessed, Copernicus had worked in secret on his book, hugging it to his aching heart -- it was the timid Canon's only refuge from a life of frustrations. It was his version of the harmony of the spheres.
Tycho de Brahe (1546-1601) was an irascible, boastful Danish nobleman, trucculent and quixotic, born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- to which a silver nose was added later, for his own had been sliced off in a duel with another noble Danish youth, who had the temerity to claim that he was the better mathematician of the two. Devotion to science could hardly assume more heroic proportions. But with Tycho everything was on a heroic scale: his figure (he kept, perhaps for the sake of contrast, a dwarf as a court jester); his eating and drinking, which led to his premature death from a burst bladder -- because, with quixotic courtesy, he refused to leave the dinner table to pass water (even his pet animal, a temperamental elk, died of drinking too much beer); his quarrels with the kings he entertained, with the fellow astronomers whom he slandered, and with retainers whom he put in chains. On an even more gigantic scale were his observatories and the instruments -- the likes of which the world had never seen -- built on his island in the Sund.
At fourteen Tycho had witnessed a partial eclipse of the sun, and 'it struck him as something divine that men could know the motions of the stars so accurately that they were able a long time beforehand to predict their places and relative positions'. [5] From then onward his course was set, and he became the 'Phoenix of Astronomy' -- against the resistance of his family who thought such plumage unworthy of a nobleman. The decisive revelation for him was the predictability of astronomical events -- in contrast to the unpredictability of a child's life among the headstrong Brahes (Tycho had been kidnapped from his cot and brought up by his Uncle Joerge, a squire and admiral). His passion for astronomy began much earlier than Copernicus's and Kepler's, and took a direction almost opposite to theirs: it was not a passion for theory-making but for exact observation. Unlike those two, he was neither frustrated nor unhappy, merely irritated by the triviality of a Danish nobleman's existence among 'horses, dogs, and luxury'.
He took to astronomy not as an escape or metaphysical lifebelt but rather as a hobby -- which then turned into the only thing held sacred by that Gargantuan heathen.
* * *
'You cannot help it, Signor Sarsi, that it was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else.' [6] The most conspicuous feature in the character of Galileo (1564-1642) and the cause of his tragic downfall was vanity -- not the boisterous and naïve vanity of Tycho, but a hypersensitivity to criticism combined with sarcastic contempt for others: a fatal blend of genius plus arrogance minus humility. There seems to be not a trace here of mysticism, of 'oceanic feeling'; in contrast to Copernicus, Tycho, and Kepler, even to Newton and Descartes who came after him, Galileo is wholly and frighteningly modern in his consistently mechanistic philosophy. Hence his contemptuous dismissal in a single sentence of Kepler's explanation of the tides by the moon's attraction: 'He [Kepler] has lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties and such like "fanciullezze".' [7] The occult little fancy he is deriding is Kepler's anticipation of Newtonian gravity.
Where, then, in Galileo's personality is the sublime balance between self-asserting and self-transcending motives which I suggested as the true scientist's hallmark? I believe it to be easily demonstrable in his writings on those subjects on which his true greatness rests: the first discoveries with the telescope, the foundations of mechanics, and of a truly experimental science. Where that balance is absent -- during the tragic years 1613-33, filled with poisonous polemics, spurious priority claims, and impassioned propaganda for a misleadingly oversimplified Copernican system -- in that sad middle period of his life Galileo made no significant contribution either to astronomy or to mechanics. One might even say that he temporarily ceased to be a scientist -- precisely because he was entirely dominated by self-asserting motives. The opposite kind of imbalance is noticeable in Kepler's periods of depression, when he entirely lost himself in mystic speculation, astrology, and number-lore. In both these diametrically opposed characters, unsublimated residues of opposite kind temporarily dominated the field, upsetting the equilibrium and leading to scientific sterility.
But in the balanced periods of Galileo, the eighteen happy years in Padua in which most of his epoch-making discoveries in the study of motion were made, and in the last years of resignation, when he completed and revised the "Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences" -- in these creative periods we seem to be dealing with a different kind of person, patiently and painstakingly experimenting and theorizing on the motions of the pendulum; on the free fall and descent along an inclined plane of heavy bodies; on the flight of projectiles; the elasticity, cohesion, and resistance of solid bodies, and the effects of percussion on them; on the buoyancy of 'things which float on the water', and a hundred related matters. Here we have a man absorbed in subjects much less spectacular and conducive to fame than the wonders of the Milky Way and the arguments about the earth's motion -- yet delighting in his discoveries, of which only a select few friends and correspondents were informed; delighting in discovery for discovery's sake, in unravelling the laws of order hidden in the puzzling diversity of phenomena.
That order was for Galileo, as it was for Kepler, a mathematical order: 'The book of nature is written in the mathematical language. Without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.' [8] But unlike Kepler and the Pythagoreans, Galileo did not look at the 'dance of numbers' through the eyes of a mystic. He was interes
ted neither in number-lore nor in mathematics for its own sake -- almost alone among the great scientists of his period, he made no mathematical discoveries. Quantitative measurements and formulations were for Galileo simply the most effective tools for laying bare the inherent rationality of nature. The belief in this rationality (and in the rationality of nature's creation, the human mind) was Galileo's religion and spiritual salvation -- though he did not realize that it was a religion, based on an act of faith.
His revolutionary methods of proving the rationality of the laws governing the universe was later called 'experimental philosophy' -- and even later, by the much narrower terms 'experimental science' or 'empirical science'. It was a fertile combination of experimenting and theorizing, which had been tentatively used by some of Galileo's precursors since the fourteenth century -- but it was Galileo who elevated it to a modern technique and a philosophical programme. It was a monumental bisociation of the valid elements in Greek thought transmitted by the Schoolmen (and particularly by the Occamists) on the one hand, and of the experimental knowledge of engineers, artisans, and instrument-makers on the other. The Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences characteristically opens with a most unusual suggestion by Salviati (Galileo's mouthpiece): that, as a philosopher, he had much to learn from mechanics and craftsmen.
Salviati: The constant activity which you Venetians display in your famous arsenal suggests to the studious mind a large field for investigation, especially that part of the work which involves mechanics; for in this department all types of instruments and machines are constantly being constructed by many artisans, among whom there must be some who, partly by inherited experience and partly by their own observations, have become highly expert and clever in explanation. Sagredo: You are quite right. Indeed, I myself, being curious by nature, frequently visit this place for the mere pleasure of observing the work of those who, on account of their superiority over other artisans, we call 'first-rank men'. Conference with them has often helped me in the investigation of certain effects including not only those which are striking, but also those which are recondite and almost incredible. [9]
We are reminded of Pythagoras visiting the blacksmith's shop to discover the secret of vibrating chords -- to learn from those dark, sweaty, and ignorant men about the harmony of the spheres. This is the point where hubris yields to humility; in his best and happiest moments, Galileo achieves not only this transition, but is also transformed from a scientist into a poet. In the midst of his formidable polemical onslaught on the Platonist dualism of despair -- which contrasted the perfect, immutable, crystalline heavens to the earthy corruption of generation and decay -- his imagination and language suddenly grow wings:
Sagredo: I cannot without great wonder, nay more, disbelief, hear it being attributed to natural bodies as a great honour and perfection that they are impassible, immutable, inalterable, etc.: as, conversely, I hear it esteemed a great imperfection to be alterable, generable, mutable, etc. It is my opinion that the Earth is very noble and admirable by reason of the many and different alterations, mutations, generations, etc., which incessantly occur in it. And if, without being subject to any alteration, it had been all one vast heap of sand, or a mass of jade, or . . . an immense globe of crystal, wherein nothing had ever grown, altered, or changed, I should have esteemed it a wretched lump of no benefit to the Universe, a mass of idleness. . . . What greater folly can be imagined than to call gems, silver, and gold noble and earth and soil base? . . . If there were as great a scarcity of earth as there is ofjewels and precious metals, there would be no king who would not gladly give a heap of diamonds and rubies . . . to purchase only so much earth as would suffice to plant a jessamine in a little pot or to set a tangerine in it, that he might see it sprout, grow up, and bring forth goodly leaves, fragrant flowers, and delicate fruit. . . . These men who so extol incorruptibility, inalterability, etc., speak thus, I believe, out of the great desire they have to live long and for fear of death, not considering that, if men had been immortal, they would not have had to come into the world. These people deserve to meet with a Medusa's head that would transform them into statues of diamond and jade that so they might become more perfect than they are. [10]
In another work, Galileo wrote a charming and profound allegory on the motives, methods, and limitations of the 'experimental philosophy' which he had created. The work is Il Saggiatore, 'The Assayer' -- which has only recently been translated into English, presumably because most of it consists of querulous, scientifically worthless polemics against the Jesuit scholar Grassi on the subject of comets (which Galileo insisted on treating as optical illusions -- largely because Tycho and Grassi held the opposite views). Yet hidden in this nasty bunch of nettles are flowers of rare beauty:
Once upon a time, in a very lonely place, there lived a man endowed by nature with extraordinary curiosity and a very penetrating mind. For a pastime he raised birds, whose songs he much enjoyed; and he observed with great admiration the happy contrivance by which they could transform at will the very air they breathed into a variety of sweet songs. One night this man chanced to hear a delicate song close to his house, and being unable to connect it with anything but some small bird he set out to capture it. When he arrived at a road he found a shepherd boy who was blowing into a kind of hollow stick while moving his fingers about on the wood, thus drawing from it a variety of notes similar to those of a bird, though by a quite different method. Puzzled, but impelled by his natural curiosity, he gave the boy a calf in exchange for this flute and returned to solitude. But realizing that if he had not chanced to meet the boy he would never have learned of the existence of a new method of forming musical notes and the sweetest songs, he decided to travel to distant places in the hope of meeting with some new adventure. Subsequently, the man discovered that there are many other ways of producing musical notes -- from strings and organs, to the swift vibrations on the wings of mosquitoes and the 'sweet and sonorous shrilling of crickets by snapping their wings together, though they cannot fly at all'. But there was an ultimate disappointment waiting for him: Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming tones could possibly exist . . . when, I say, this man believed he had seen everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into ignorance and bafflement than ever. For having captured in his hands a cicada, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings, yet he could not see it move the scales that covered its body, or any other thing. At last he lifted up the armour of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice, so that he was still unable to determine whether the song had originated in those ligaments. And by this experience his knowledge was reduced to diffidence, so that when asked how sounds were created he used to answer tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable. [11]
Hubris is temporarily submerged by humility. Galileo was the first of a race of modern experimental scientists convinced of the infallibility of their 'exact empirical methods'; in fact he created the type. It comes as a surprise to hear him talk about things 'not only unknown but unimaginable'. But this ultimate modesty, derived from a sense of wonder close to mysticism, is found in all great scientists -- even if hidden by an arrogant façade, and allowed to express itself only on rare occasions.
About Kepler I have said enough, in this book and elsewhere, to show that mysticism was the mainspring of his fantastically laborious life -- starting with the analogy between God the Father and the Sun, continued in his lifelong conviction that the universe was built around the frames of the five Pythagorean solids, and that the planetary motions were regulated by the laws of musical harmony. But his mystic convictions, and the disarmingly child-like streak in his character, d
id not prevent him from casting horoscopes for money -- however much he despised himself for it; from indulging in naïve snobbery, and quarrelling like a fish-wife with the overbearing Tycho. His vanity had a perverse twist: he was very proud of himself when his astrological forecasts of a cold spell and an invasion by the Turks came true; but towards his real discoveries he was completely indifferent, and he was astonishingly devoid of professional jealousy. He naïvely expected the same of other astronomers; and when Tycho's heirs delayed publication of his priceless collection of observational data, Kepler simply stole the material to put it to proper use -- his ethics did not include respect for private property in Urania's domains.
When Kepler had completed the foundations of modern astronomy by his Third Law, he uttered a long Eureka cry:
The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not by the ear); a music which, through discordant tensions, through sincopes and cadenzas, as it were (as men employed them in imitation of those natural discords), progresses towards certain pre-designed, quasi six-voiced clausuras, and thereby sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time. It is, therefore, no longer surprising that man, in imitation of his creator, has at last discovered the art of figured song, which was unknown to the ancients. Man wanted to reproduce the continuity of cosmic time within a short hour, by an artful symphony for several voices, to obtain a sample test of the delight of the Divine Creator in His works, and to partake of his joy by making music in the imitation of God. [12]
Here we have the perfect union of the two drives: the vain-glorious ego purged by cosmic awareness -- ekstasis followed by katharsis.