Galileo

Fascinating study of Galileo and his times. Builds a wonderful picture of the complexity associated with how Aristotle's philosophy was embedded in Church dogma and how the political shenanigans involved brought about the stresses associated with the new science. Pope Urban turns out to be the smartest guy in this story and closer to contemporary Model Dependent Realists than Galileo who is the traditional hero. In this biography he turns out to be more of the blundering ox that insists on his interpretation regardless of the hurt feelings he causes. Ego is a major factor. Very interesting read.

I read primarily historical biography. I enjoy seeing historical/political context to a subject and how that subject related to that environment. I liked this book, but found so much of the scientific detailed explanations excessive for my interests as a general reader. I thoroughly enjoyed reading of the conclusions made by clergy and others who hung onto tradition. I liked understanding Galileo's personality. But I really wanted to see more of the geo-politics of that period, the transitions into Renaissance, etc. I am glad I read this book. It was enlightening. But it was a chore.Galileo

An erudite, witty tour of the times, life, and meaning of Galileo. Heilbron brings a career's worth of knowledge and insight to the task, and we get a richly evoked picture of a pivotal time in the early modern era. Readers unfamiliar with the science may find themselves skipping diagrams and explication, but they will not be missing the author's fundamental points. It's not a beginner's introduction to history, but anyone appreciative of serious research and good writing will enjoy this book.

This is a well researched and long review (366 pages) of Galileo's life and accomplishments. The book requires the reader to be well grounded in history as well as science to appreciate the detail discussed. Not for the faint of heart. The New York Times Book Review calls it "An awesome command of the vast Galileo literature".

Bought this after reading a bio of Johannes Kepler. They were contemporaries. The Kepler book was excellent. This one, however, was more academic and not an enjoyable read.

i was shocked at some of the careless typos in the book. here are two egregious examples...1. "from the conception of virginia in 1599 to that of vincenzo in 1506"...clearly they mean 1606. the third child couldn't have been before the first by 93 years!2. "virginia, born 1600, now famous as 'galileo's daughter'; livia, born 1601; and vincenzo, born 1606."...i know the difference between conception (see number 1 above) and birth, but please be consistent. this type of writing irks me, trying to be too clever and then tripping over your untied shoes.these two typos occurred over pages 84 and 89. shouldn't the expert publishers at oxford university press have caught this?there were a couple of others which i am too lazy to go flipping back to point out. after catching these two i had to stop and point them out.

I read mostly non-fiction and history and biographies are two of my favorite topics. I have read many books about Galileo, Newton, Einstein, various American presidents, and many other famous people. What I love about these books is what I learn about each of the people and am amazed how each new biography manages to uncover previously unpublished facts or perspectives. They are informative. This book was a disappointment. The author seems most interested in proving his intellectual prowess with digressions into irrelevant material and frankly uninteresting material. The tone is pedantic - not instructive. I put the book down after less than 100 pages.

I'm going to weigh in with a short one. First Heilbron has a very engaging writing style, with about one dry, droll irony per page. Second, the book is about half math. The math is about at algebra or geometry level, so even if you're not a math person, you can get the point of most of it with a little work. Yes, toward the end I was skipping most of it. Still it gives one the satisfaction of feeling you've gotten a bit of a handle on Galeleo's real intellectual life. The plethora of Italian names will probably be as confusing to many as it was to me, but Heilbron supplies a who's who at the back. There's definitly not a lot of colorful description of sunny Tuscany or rich palace interiors. It's truly what we'd call an intellectual biography, not beach reading. But for an educated scientifically oriented reader or even old philosophy major like me. I'd really recommend it.(From a philosophy of science perspective, I was taken with Heilbron's stessing that it was the implied atomic theory in Galileo's thinking rather than the heliocentric theory that was the danger to orthodoxy. Rightfully so, as Berkeley emphasized a century later!)