Lawrence Lipking

Lawrence Lipking’s What Galileo Saw is a demanding and interesting read. What Lipking is trying to get at is the role of imagination in the scientific revolution. What kinds of worlds did Galileo or Kepler, for example, have to imagine as a result of their observations? Can we observe their imaginations at work in detailed readings of their illustrations that accompanied their scientific writing? Lipking assumes his audience has a solid background in the history of science and familiarity with the different approaches that have been taken in recent biographies of the scientists he discusses. Most readers will have to move through this book slowly, but the effort will be repaid with new ways of understanding how imagination can lead to revolution.… (mehr)

Coming of age is not just about teenagers. In What Galileo Saw, Europeans begin to shed their ignorance in fits and starts. They replace ancient prejudices and common knowledge with mathematical proofs. They replace age-old stories with critical observations. Even hypocrisy takes the occasional shot across the bow. The book collects writers, artists, natural philosophers and thinkers from the 16th and 17th centuries and describes how they changed, and how they changed their world. And ours.

The transition was not sudden or clear. Both Galileo and Kepler depended on casting horoscopes to make a living. Scientific ideas infiltrated and were of course often denied or repressed. Think of computers being more and more widely accepted every year, until now when they are indispensable. At first it was thought no more than five personal computers would be needed in the world. So with these discoveries, theories, and proofs.

Lipking covers a lot of territory, quotes a lot of people, refers up and down the centuries, and tries to link the various scientists, or natural philosophers as they were called, since there was no real science. Inevitably, there are three or four compulsory references to the tiresome Foucault, which have no effect on the text whatever, other than to lengthen it. Sadly, this has become formulaic in the humanities, and lowers my opinion.

The chapters feature Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, death, Descartes, Fludd, Hooke, and end with probably the only real genius among them, Newton.

I’m not sure Lipking achieves his goal of showing how the settings changed as a result of these discoveries. There is nothing new here, other than the framework he has chosen.

David Wineberg… (mehr)