Beautiful Letters from a Genius Daughter to a Genius Father

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	• Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love Dava Sobel Penguin (Non-Classics), 2000 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 239 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Interesting subject, thin prose.

My real issue with this book is that Sobel's writing leaves me cold. I had avoided reading this for a long time because I had not really enjoyed Longitude. But countless critical raves and the response from friends caused me to decide to give Galileo's Daughter a try.

The subject matter is interesting enough. The book is very little about Galileo's daughter and is more a book about the man himself. That is not really a bad thing, since there is sadly not very much to know about Suor Maria Celeste. The episodes Sobel chooses to highlight are interesting, and I believe she succeeds in making Galileo human to the readers.

I would be hard pressed to say what exactly it is that I do not like about Sobel as a writer. It is not something that I can easily articulate. I think that it has something to do with the fact that her prose feels like an overextended magazine article. Both in Longitude and in this book, I felt as though the material were too thin for the weight that she was trying to hang on the pages. I am not sure that this is true, and suspect it may have something to do with the structure. In any case, with both books I had the experience that I was quite impatient with the prose even as I was interested in the material.

If you are interested in scientific history and in the mood for some reasonably light reading, then my review should not discourage you from picking up Galileo's Daughter. Myself, I am probably going to avoid Sobel in the future.

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Beautiful Letters from a Genius Daughter to a Genius Father

GALILEO'S DAUGHTER
By
Dava Sobel
(Penguin Books 2000)
Sour Marie Celeste was the illegitimate daughter of Galileo Galelei - the eldest of his three, and only, children At the age of 13 her father had her admitted to the convent of San Mateo in Arcetri, where she would remain until her death at the age of 34 in 1634. Once admitted, or shortly thereafter, she started writing letters to her father - the most loving, beautiful, intelligent letters I have ever read. There aren't too many of them, but they have been preserved and form the excuse (if that is the right word) for this book - which is a part history of the life of Galileo, part comment on his times and a setting to publish the letters chronologically along with and in tune with events in his life.
Every school child knows something about Galileo - whether it was his "invention" of the telescope (he didn't invent it; he improved it immeasurably) or his "discovery" of the fact that it was the earth which revolved around the sun rather than vice versa - and this too was wrong, He didn't "discover" this. The sun-centered universe (heliocentered) had been discovered and described by Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) in 1543, 21 years before Galileo was born in 1564. Using Copernican theory Tycho Brahe (1545-61) had fixed the positions of may stars both as to distance and location and Johannes Kepler (1591-1630) had established the planetary motion of the planets - or most of them. So it wasn't what he invented or what he "discovered" that eventually got him into trouble with the Catholic Church, it was the fact that he was by far the most gifted and the most prominent man to have advocated - or thought to advocate - the heresy of a heliocentered universe.
He had been a star from the start, one of the most gifted mathematicians of his age or any other, one of the few who, instead of taking things as they are said to be, tried to find out how they really are. And thus was one of the first true scientists, a man who dropped balls of different weights from the tower of Pisa, who rolled balls of different weight and different sizes down inclines of different pitches, who measured the tides, floating bodies - always studying motion and/or the laws of motion - and almost all of modern physics is the study of motion whether it's string theory - action at a distance - or general relativity or the measurement of the effect of a collision of protons in the CORE tunnel in Switzerland this summer.
He was always an academician, teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa or Padua or being the resident mathematician and experimenter for one of the Medici's. And on retainer to the same. He was always ill. He never married. His work was his spouse. However, he recognized his three children by his liaison with the beautiful Marina Gamba of Venice. Domestic life was not for him. To the end he worked and thought, living as a guest or retainer in many ducal palaces in Tuscany and Rome. He lived as an untitled man at the highest level of worldly or ecclesiastical aristocracy. He made enemies - many of them - but he persevered and died in a kind of house arrest at the age of 72, still working and under banishment for daring to support the idea that the earth moved about the sun which the Catholic Church, relying on Aristotelian and Pythagorean thought and on the literal word of Holy Scripter believed as holy writ that it was the sun which revolved about the earth.
I have just spoken of his many enemies and of the ducal residences in which he often made his abode: and the book is full of this detail - too full in my opinion. It would have been better if much of this had either been omitted or if Ms. Sobel had taken the time to tell us something about the governance of his time, I would have been much better informed had I known something of the Medici's or the Doges of Venice or the politics of the Popes who were involved in his life. And I would like to have known more about how people lived in his time.
Similarly I would have liked to know more about convent life. There is enough in the book to indicate that it was perfectly dreadful -cruel, inhuman by our standards. Hared work, cold water, bad food, no rest, small quarters, iron discipline and no sleep. The Hanoi Hilton in San Matteo. Why would anybody lived this way? And why did Galileo put his daughters "away" at age 13. He robbed them of a life! (The excuse given by Sobel is that he learned he had known enemies in court because of his success and wanted to protect them; but this doesn't wash with me. All he had to do was to acknowledge them and, as his heirs, they would have properly evaded his enemy's attempts to take his property. I think he put them away because he was selfish. He didn't want three illegitimate children to be staining his record as he surged his way upward, buoyed by talent and reputation.)
As Galileo stepped through his professional life he wrote to Sour Marie Celeste, but his letters did not survive. Her replies and her spontaneous letters to him did survive, however, and manly of them are quoted here. Would that all children would love their father so much. Would that any one of us would have a child as intelligent, as articulate as she. Would that she were here today - or those like her - to call our attention to enduring love as contrasted to the conditions in which we live.
There are a couple of other comments I want to get down here on paper before I quit. First - about Galileo's "Trial". It is covered accurately and well in the book. In brief Galileo had published in Dialogues the essence of Copernican thought spoken through the mouth of a neutral that was just saying what it was. Then there were two characters, one of which was Galileo under a false name, who discussed it. Thus he never on paper espoused the Copernican heresy. He just said what it was. He thought he had a deal with Cardinal Bellarmino (later Saint Bellarmine) that as long as he didn't teach or espouse it he was not in conflict with Church teaching. However, 15 years later he fell out of favor with Pope Urban VIII. His enemies in the Vatican called on the Inquisition to question him and it was as the result of this that he was sentenced to house arrests.
The trial is well covered in the book, but I wish Sobel had told us more about the Inquisition, how long it lasted, what it did, what procedures were followed, how it was independent (if it was) of the Vatican. What was the Index? What happened to people who wrote things that made their way to the Index of banned books? What kind of books? How many?
I also wish she had told us more about the thirty Years War because it is frequently mentioned and apparently played a direct role in the attitude of the Catholic Church at the time.
Woven through out this history of Galileo's life and the beautiful love expressed by his daughter (who was every bit as bright as he was) is the conflict between science and religion. Sobel never addresses it. But it's pretty clear to me. Religious belief cannot overrule, change or ignore true scientific discovery. And the greatest conflicts in this area have been the Galileo incident with respect to the heliocentered universe and Darwinism. God made the world and He made the rules of nature and God doesn't bend, break or ignore His rules because they are contrary to the ideas of His people

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elegant, beautiful prose and story

This book must be read if not for the depth of the actual telling, then for the elegant writing itself. The intertwining of primary source material and the author's own pen is done beautifully. The story's theme of the supposed clash between faith and reason/ science is as relevant today as it was in Galileo's time. Food for thought.

Shhh! It's actually about Galileo himself

I've got a secret. This book is not really about Galileo's daughter, Virginia. It is about Galileo and his life and times as seen through letters from his daughter to him (the letters from him to his daughter were destroyed). As a book about Virginia, it is largely uninteresting and unenlightening. As a book about Galileo, it is terrific. Dava Sobel captures the essence of Galileo's work and his fight with the religious authorities. My emotions as I read the book were: enlightenment in that it shows Galileo to be a far better person than I had given him credit for; sadness because of how he was mistreated; amazement for the honor he showed in all his dealings; and frustration at how much science was held back by religious authorities. And it puts into perspective how little my own daughter actually demands from me. I strongly recommend this book and I look forward to reading other of Sobel's works, including Longitude.

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This is a biography!

I had expected a fictionalized narrative following the daughter of the famous astronomer. What I got was a detailed biography of Galileo himself. However, I still continued reading to the end.
With more warmth and humanity than your average historical account, Sobel's story weaves the life and family of its subject in among the facts of his life. Such things as his recurring illnesses and his struggles with the church authorities are brought to life and made more interesting.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the life of Galileo, or anyone who is interested in the day-to-day activities of Italy in the 17th Century.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Galileo Galilei's telescopes allowed him to discover a new reality in the heavens. But for publicly declaring his astounding argument--that the earth revolves around the sun--he was accused of heresy and put under house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Living a far different life, Galileo's daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through the difficult years of his trial and persecution.

Drawing upon the remarkable surviving letters that Virginia wrote to her father, Dava Sobel has written a fascinating history of Medici--era Italy, a mesmerizing account of Galileo's scientific discoveries and his trial by Church authorities, and a touching portrayal of a father--daughter relationship. Galileo's Daughter is a profoundly moving portrait of the man who forever changed the way we see the universe.

? Winner of the Christopher Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award

? Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, and the American Library Association

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