Volume 34, Number 15 · October 8, 1987
How They Got Galileo
By Italo Calvino, Translated by James Marcus
Galileo: Heretic (Galileo Eretico)
by Pietro Redondi
Princeton University Press, 356 pp., $29.95 (this review of the Italian edition appeared in La Repubblica in September 1983).
A man on the beach at Capua observes the sunset, not for artistic or poetic inspiration but for a scientific purpose: he wants to measure the velocity of the sun. However, he doesn't have measuring instruments of any kind: he has only a system for establishing certain units of time, of which long practice guarantees him constant accuracy: 'As the sun disappeared on the horizon in a symphony of colors, he recited two Miserere, truly a very brief fraction of time.'
Review, 2551 words
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