Massimo Bucciantini

A disappointing, dry academic description of Galileo's advancements with the telescope and it's impact on our understanding of the solar system. It pits advancement in technology against religious dogma.

Galileo had three things that lead to the great advancement.

The first was the technical advancement in creating a more powerful telescope. Telescopes were stuck at 8x magnification. Technology lacked the understanding of how lenses worked and the skill to create better lenses. Galileo was able to advance the magnification up to 20x and still have a clear image.

With that technology, Galileo also found things in the night sky that challenged the earth-centric view of the universe based on biblical dogma. One was features in the moon. It had mountains and features like Earth. The other was "planets" near Jupiter that followed Jupiter in the sky.

The third was the scientific discipline to track the "planets" near Jupiter from night to night. By tracking the movement, he concluded that they were orbiting Jupiter. They were moons, just as Earth had a moon.

That lead to the conflict the religious dogma that the Earth was unique and the center of the Universe. Others had observed that Venus had phases, indicating that it was orbiting the sun, not the Earth.

The mechanical… (more)

Il bel saggio di Bucciantini, che si muove da un lato tra le pieghe di una attenta lettura delle opere e dell'epistolario di Calvino, e dall'altro scandaglia e precisa alcune letture critiche, prova a raccontare come Italo Calvino durante la sua vita e nella sua poetica (o nelle sue poetiche combinatorie) si spinse con ostinata energia a verificare "se esistono e come funzionano altri orizzonti immaginativi con cui provare a rappresentare la quotidianità".Il testo è scorrevole e puntuali note bibliografiche a piè di pagina forniscono accurati spunti di approfondimento. "Mai che questa gente ti racconti qualcosa di un po' diverso", si stizzì [Calvino], "come, che ne so, gli amori di un uomo e di un cucchiaio".… (more)