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2-Minute Stories Galileo's World

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2-Minute Stories Galileo's World OU Libraries National Weather Center Tower of Pisa light sculpture (Engineering) Galileo and Experiment 2-minute stories • Bringing worlds together: How does the story of • How did new instruments extend sensory from Galileo exhibit the story of OU? perception, facilitate new experiments, and Galileo and Universities (Great Reading Room) promote quantitative methods? • How do universities foster communities of Galileo and Kepler Galileo’s World: learning, preserve knowledge, and fuel • Who was Kepler, and why was a telescope Bringing Worlds Together innovation? named after him? Galileo in Popular Culture (Main floor) Copernicus and Meteorology Galileo’s World, an “Exhibition without Walls” at • What does Galileo mean today? • How has meteorology facilitated discovery in the University of Oklahoma in 2015-2017, will History of Science Collections other disciplines? bring worlds together. Galileo’s World will launch Music of the Spheres Galileo and Space Science in 21 galleries at 7 locations across OU’s three • What was it like to be a mathematician in an era • What was it like, following Kepler and Galileo, to campuses. The 2-minute stories contained in this when music and astronomy were sister explore the heavens? brochure are among the hundreds that will be sciences? Oklahomans and Aerospace explored in Galileo’s World, disclosing Galileo’s Compass • How has the science of Galileo shaped the story connections between Galileo’s world and the • What was it like to be an engineer in an era of of Oklahoma? world of OU during OU’s 125th anniversary. mathematical discovery? Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History Galileo and China • How did European and Chinese astronomers Eyes of the Lynx: Galileo, Natural History and the collaborate in the generation of Galileo? Americas Controversy over the Comets • What was it like to explore the living world? • What does it mean to say mathematics is the • What was it like to explore the Americas? language of nature? Eyes of the Lynx: Galileo and the Microscope The Galileo Affair • What was it like to reveal the mysteries of the • What went wrong? Does the Galileo affair very small? represent an inevitable conflict between science Fred Jones, Jr., Museum of Art and religion? The Eyes of Galileo: Renaissance Art and the A New Physics Telescope • How are Galileo's two new sciences connected • What was it like to be an astronomer in an era with other disciplines? when art and mathematics were intertwined? Bird Library, OU Health Sciences Campus The Sky at Night Galileo and Medicine • What is the human, artistic and scientific • How might a friend of Galileo's have practiced heritage of the sky at night? [email protected] medicine? Headington Hall, Athletic Department galileo.ou.edu Schusterman Library, OU Tulsa Galileo and Sports #galileosworld Galileo and the Scientific Revolution • What would Coach Galileo say? • What is nature? How is nature known? oulynx.org Leonardo da Vinci, in Luca Johannes Hevelius, Pacioli, Divina proportione (1519) Uranographia (Gdansk, 1690) Galileo’s telescopic discoveries would have been The Uranographia of Hevelius was the 2nd of the impossible were it not for Galileo’s training and four most important early modern star atlases, all of experience in Renaissance art. Consider this which display a fusion between art and science and geometrical drawing, portrayed with true will be displayed in Galileo’s World. This work perspective and a mastery of light and shadow. It contains 54 beautiful engraved plates of 73 comes from a treatise on art and mathematics by constellations. Unique among the major star Luca Pacioli, printed in 1509. Yet it was drawn by atlases, Hevelius depicted the constellations from Pacioli’s friend Leonardo; this and other similar the outside looking in, which made this work an drawings were the only materials ever put in print important model for the production of celestial by Leonardo during his lifetime. globes. Had there been no artistic tradition, there would Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Hevelius’ observatory in Gdansk was for many have been no telescopic discoveries in 1610. years the best in Europe. Inspired by Tycho, he When Galileo peered through his telescope and nuncius (Venice, 1610) constructed several large telescopes, including one discovered mountains on the Moon, he did so only that was 150 feet long! because he was seeing with the eyes of an artist. Galileo’s “Starry Messenger” was the first published report of observations made with a telescope. In it, Contemporaries without artistic training were not Twelve constellations depicted in this atlas were Galileo reported his discovery of four satellites of able to see what Galileo saw; they were able to look created by Hevelius himself; seven are still Jupiter and mountains on the Moon. The book but not to see. recognized today, including the Lynx, Sextans, made Galileo an international celebrity almost Canes Venatici, Leo Minor, and Lacerta the Lizard. overnight. The OU copy was inscribed by Galileo to Gabriele Chiabrera, a poet in the Medici court. Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della Musica Antica et della Moderna (Florence, 1581) Galileo’s father, Vincenzo Galilei, published a Dialogue on Music, Ancient and Modern. Vincenzo was one of those responsible for the invention of Italian opera. In the father’s Dialogue Johann Kepler, Harmonices we may discern many of the features of Galileo’s Galileo Galilei, trans. Thomas mundi (1619) works, including an emphasis on experimental Salusbury, Mathematical methods of discovery and an ability to As with Galileo, so with Kepler, the connections communicate research results in an engaging Collections (London, 1661) between astronomy and music were significant. literary genre. This book contains the first English translations of This is the work where Kepler explained his 3rd any of Galileo’s works, including Galileo’s law, which still describes how planets and stars The OU copy was acquired in Fall 2014 with Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, and satellites and galaxies revolve around one assistance from the Athletics Department. the book for which he was put on trial. Also another in space. Kepler achieved a synthesis of Eugene Enrico, Ruth Verne Davis Reaugh collected in this volume are several discussions of his new astronomy with recent polyphonic Professor of Music, is a noted expert on principles for interpreting Scripture and science, musical theory by demonstrating that the Vincenzo Galilei. During Galileo’s World, Prof. including Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess motions of the planets according to his 3rd law Enrico will conduct a performance of Vincenzo’s Christina; an essay by Kepler; and a defense of employed precisely the same numerical ratios as music by the classical ensemble Accademia Galileo by Foscarini, a Carmelite monk. the most harmonious musical scales. The story Filarmonica. of science reveals creative leaps across Many copies perished in the Great Fire of London. disciplinary boundaries; in this case, bringing The Oklahoma copy is charred and blackened together music and astronomy. around the edges, perhaps from that fire. OU music student Jonathan Annis has composed a suite for harp, flute and oboe, a cosmic dance entirely comprised of musical themes from Kepler’s Harmonices mundi, which will be performed during Galileo’s World. Above: OU’s copy of the original Italian edition of Galileo’s Dialogo contains his own handwriting in marginal notes. Johann Schreck, Ensei kiki Johann Hevelius, zusetsu rokusai (Wonderful Selenographia (Gdansk, 1647) Machines of the Far West, 1830) This massive book was the first comprehensive Johann Schreck was a friend of Galileo’s who lunar atlas, published less than 40 years after assisted him during his telescopic observations. Galileo’s telescopic discoveries. On the Schreck accompanied Galileo when he presented frontispiece, Hevelius celebrates not the triumph of the telescope to the Medici, and then traveled with a European “scientific revolution,” but a much him to Rome to show the telescope there. Schreck broader heritage. On the left is was inducted into the Accademia dei Lincei only Ibn al-Haytham, a leading about a week after Galileo himself. A few years medieval Islamic astronomer later, Schreck joined the Jesuits and went to China, Francisco Hernandez, Rerum and optical theorist. On the where he wrote this work on engineering in medicarum Novae Hispaniae right, holding a telescope, is Chinese. How many people know Galileo had a Galileo. Who would have friend in China? (Rome, 1650) guessed that one of the most impressive works of the First printed in China as Qi qi tu shuo in 1627; this In the late 16th century, Francisco Hernandez lived “scientific revolution” would is the first edition printed in Japan. This Sino- among the Aztecs in central Mexico and collected portray Galileo in Middle Japanese edition throws light not only on European their knowledge of plants and medicine, preserving Eastern dress as a tribute to and Chinese scientific collaboration in the age of the Aztec names. The result was this monumental the tradition of medieval Galileo, but also on the circulation of knowledge natural history of the new world, incorporating Islamic optics? throughout Asia. approximately 800 woodcut illustrations. Federigo Cesi and the Accademia dei Lincei issued a few This book was acquired to preliminary copies in 1628. Widely anticipated as a celebrate the investiture of guide to the “fountain of youth,” Francesco Stelluti David L. Boren as the 13th finally printed a revised version in 1650. University president on September 15, 1995. How many OU students know that Galileo had something important to do with natural history in the New World? The New World and the world of With the three examples of Schreck, Hernandez Galileo were brought together. How many Native and the Selenographia, one sees that Galileo’s American and Hispanic students know that World brings together worlds as far removed as European progress in the life sciences during the Asia, America and the Middle East.
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