Galileo Galilei - When the World Stood Still (eBook)

The author was born in 1949. He studied language and literature at Oslo University and worked for some years as a teacher at various levels before becoming an independent writer of novels and non-fiction. Among his books is a novel about the Italian painter Caravaggio, translated into English under the title "Doubting Thomas" [in German as "Caravaggio's Flucht"]. His biography of Galileo won the Brage Award for best Norwegian non-fiction book in 2001. Næss' most recent work is a biography of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.

Prologue: A journey to Rome 5 The musician's son 7 A gifted young Tuscan 11 To Rome and the Jesuits 14 A Surveyor of Inferno 17 The spheres from the tower 19 From Pisa to Padua 22 Signs in the sky 24 De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium 28 Lecturer and designer 31 A professor's commitments 33 Modern physics is born 35 A new star in an unchanging sky? 38 Drawing close to a court 40 The balls fall into place 43 The Roman style 45 The tube with the long perspective 47 A new world 49 Jupiter's sons 53 Johann Kepler, Imperial Mathematician 56 Several signs in the sky 60 Friendship and power 64 A dispute about objects that float in water 68 Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon! 71 The letter to Castelli 74 "How to go to heaven, not how the heavens go" 77 Foolish and absurd in philosophy, formally heretical 80 The hammer of the heretics 83 Deaths and omens 86 Comets portend disaster 91 Weighing the words of others on gold-scales 95 A marvellous combination of circumstances 99 War and heresy 102 European power struggle and Roman nephews 105 The old and the new 107 "An advantageous decree" 111 Two wise men - and a third 113 The Inquisition's chambers 117 Diplomacy in the time of the plague 122 An order from the top 126 "Nor further to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever" 131 Convinced with reasons 135 "I, Galileo Galilei" 139 Eternity 143 A death and two new sciences 148 The meeting with infinity 152 "That universe ... is not any greater than the space I occupy" 156 Epilogue 159 Postscript 164 Appendix 166 Sources 167 Name Index 172 References 175