Scholarly, but diagrams are needed

This book tells you everything you might need to know, in huge detail, about the man, his work, and the details of the cultural/political situation he worked in. It helps if you've got some grasp of Italian and European politics of the early seventeenth century and the nature of the Church during the counter reformation, as it is assumed that you have this background knowledge. The use of diagrams that you don't have to explain Galileo's work and thinking is bizarre. Sometimes, if the topic isn't too complex, you can imagine the diagram, but I couldn't do this for most of them. I'll probably try to get hold of a print copy to look them up later. All of that being said, if you want to really understand Galileo, where he was right and wrong, and exactly how he ended up in conflict with the church, this book will give you that knowledge.

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Hard Going

I downloaded this hoping for an insightful biography of a famous man and some clue as to what exactly he had achieved to deserve such fame. All of that is here, but there is a great deal of detail on the various theories and ideas he proposed or discussed, and to be honest it sometimes read more like an A-Level textbook than a pleasureable and informative read. At various stages the text discusses his work on geometry, and frequent references are made to diagrams which, being an audio book, the listener cannot see. You then get a long dialogue telling you about A, B, C and the line G to H, and so on, none of which make any sense without the diagram in question, although frankly it would not make much more sense to me if I did have them. Some mention of Galileo's geometric work is fine as it is part of the man and his legacy, but great swathes of this kind of detail was too much for me and, I suspect, for most general readers.

On his astronomical work the book is on firmer ground, as it is with the difficulties he had with the vested interests of the Church. However here too the long reproductions of conversations he wrote to discuss philisophical ideas are hard going.

In short then this is rather too heavy to be a generally accessible story of the man's life and work, which is what I was looking for. If you want to get heavily into the detail then this is for you (only have a paper copy for the many diagrams to hand), but for those with a more casual interest in the history of natural science this might be a poor choice.

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4 people found this helpful

Not much cop without the diagrams

I expected this to be a fairly dense listen but it is made unfathomable without the illustrations setting out much of the geometric work.

Unless you're prepared to skip the actual science, I'd recommend you read the actual book

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1 person found this helpful

Thought-provoking listen

The down-side to this was the fact that equations and mathematical figures had to be listened to, which probably gave me an insight into the challenges visually impaired people experience in a talk where mathematics is being used. But the biography was lyrically crafted, rendering the assiduous scholarship flow smoothly not only through the worlds of astronomy, mathematics and theology that Galileo's life coursed through and redefined, but also his music, poetry and literary taste including his fascinating (if crackpot) analyses of Dante's circles of hell. This is a scholarly biography, but it reads, and is read, flowingly, making it an engaging and rewarding listening experience.

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1 person found this helpful