Academic literature on the topic 'Life of Galileo'

AbstractThomas Salusbury's Life of Galileo (1664) was the first substantial biography of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) in any language. All copies but one were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The surviving copy was lost in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle in the mid-nineteenth century. With the auction of the library in 2004–7, it temporarily re-emerged. This essay presents a preliminary description of the copy and its contents. It argues that to understand the existence and nature of the book we need to explore the social relations governing the control of information in early modern Europe. It is shown that Salusbury's project was launched in the face of social and political information blockades and in direct competition with other similar ventures. In particular, rumours of the future publication of an official biography by Vincenzo Viviani (1622–1703) and continuing negotiations over the memory and reputation of Galileo in Italy presented insurmountable barriers to the successful completion of his project. Despite these problems Salusbury's biography, produced on the margins of the emerging Royal Society, presents a spirited portrait of Galileo. Moreover, nearly four hundred years after the event, it offers a new and provocative explanation of the famous trial.

Galileo participated in exchanges of encrypted correspondence at key moments in his life. In 1610–11, following the publication of the “Sidereal Messenger,” ciphers helped Galileo to diplomatically reveal what he was observing through his telescope. After his Inquisition trial of 1633, Galileo and his closest allies relied on a substitution code (gergo) to protect the privacy of his conversations and to facilitate the removal of his library and manuscripts at Arcetri. Throughout this article, we position Galileo's use of codes within the rich contemporary literature about communicating securely and reflect on cryptic writing as a strategy of communication and dissimulation.

Rome has long been central to the story of Galileo’s life and scientific work. Through an analysis of the metadata of Galileo’s surviving letters, combined with a close reading of the letters themselves, we discuss how Galileo used correspondence to build a Roman network. Galileo initially assembled this network around the members of the Lincean Academy, a few carefully nurtured relationships with important ecclesiastics, and the expertise of well positioned Tuscan diplomats in the Eternal City. However, an analysis of Galileo’s correspondence in the aftermath of the trial of 1633 provides us with a unique opportunity to interrogate how his altered circumstances transformed his social relations. Forced to confront the limitations on his activities imposed by Catholic censure and house arrest, Galileo experienced the effects of these restrictions in his relationships with others and especially in his plans for publication. In the years following 1633, Galileo turned his epistolary attention north to the Veneto and to Paris in order to publish his Two New Sciences. While Galileo’s Lincean network and papal contacts in Rome were defunct after 1633, we see how Rome remained important to him as the site of a number of Roman disciples who would continue his intellectual project long after his own death.

Ever since Galileo Galilei pondered the swinging chandelier in the cathedral at Pisa, the pendulum has been a universal icon in physics and mathematics. Countless students have been introduced to the important concept of periodic motion through this simple device. Recent technology has given new life to the pendulum in the mathematics classroom.

The ArgumentThe purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, I propose to analyze controversies using a “dialectical” model, in the sense described in Aristotle's Topics. This approach presupposes that we temporarily disregard, for the sake of clarity, the concreteness of real life controversies in order to focus on their argumentative structure. From this point of view, the main advantage of controversies is that they allow the interlocutors to test each other's claims and therefore to arrive at relatively corroborated conclusions. This testing function in a dialectical context is implemented through the assent to commonly accepted premises, and the necessity which characterizes each step of the reasoning.Secondly, I shall apply this dialectical framework to the study of the controversy concerning the motion of the Earth, or rather a small episode of it. I shall examine an exchange of letters, written in 1616 and in 1624 respectively, between Galileo Galilei and Francesco Ingoli, one of his Aristotelian opponents. I shall then compare this exchange with the first day of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World (1632), a fictional debate, where Galileo discusses some of the same arguments. While the first exemplifies what I call “negative” testing, and yields a refutation of the opponent's theses, the second exemplifies “positive” testing and yields a dialectical demonstration of the motion of the Earth.

Thesis (S.B. in Literature)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, 2010.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70).
Introduction: Translating science as dramatic tradition Scientific and literary traditions are curious bedfellows. Popular perception views contemporary scientists - especially those interested in mathematics or physics - and their occupation as fundamentally other and unknowable to a nonscientific audience. This viewpoint has led to a bizarre treatment of science and its practitioners in literary and dramatic works as most depictions of science in print are restricted to the realm of speculative science fiction geographically and chronologically removed from the author's own time. Those authors or playwrights who do take historical or contemporary science as their subject must present it in such a way that the science is made accessible to a diverse audience. This presentation is particularly important in the theatrical medium. Playwrights have integrated science with drama in a host of different ways, whether as a plot device or thematic concern. I will study plays that entertain broad thematic questions about the nature of truth and morality while still maintaining their focus on the scientific community and its scientific concerns, especially as these concerns intersect with those of society at large. My analysis will focus on two plays that use science more than rhetorically: Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo (editions published in 1937; 1945; 1953) and Michael Frayn's Copenhagen (1998). Although these two plays were written and produced more than fifty years apart and the historical events that they examine are over two hundred years removed from each other, both explore paradigm-shattering moments within physics research. I will argue that both plays use physics to examine, broadly, the responsibility that a scientist has to involve himself with the non-scientific community. Characters in both Life of Galileo and Copenhagen make a case that part of the scientist's responsibility lies in presenting science to the laity, both inside and outside the world of the play. The semantic shift involved in making scientific concepts both understandable and relevant within a dramatic context involves a movement on the part of the playwright and his characters that is, I shall suggest, similar to an act of translation. Translation is generally conceived of as purely linguistic, which might be described as an attempt at transmitting meanings across language barriers or a linguistic shift seeking to conserve the sense of a written text in a second language. In his seminal work "The Task of the Translator," Walter Benjamin sees translation as something more than a direct word-by-word transposition from one language to another. Instead, Benjamin posits that the translator endeavors to elevate his project beyond changing signifiers between tongues. A true translation moves past linguistic accuracy as an end point; instead, it identifies a higher meaning that the original text points to and creates a new text from that original. Benjamin's theoretical re-assessment of the task of the translator as one of unlocking meanings extends its boundaries to include the translation of different kinds of discourse into literary or dramatic forms. The plurality of central characters from Life of Galileo and Copenhagen belong to a scientific, not literary tradition. Although they conceive of their investigations philosophically, even this attitude requires a shift in thinking from an empirical or theoretical viewpoint to a more poetic one. Theorists and even non-academics have noted that the language of science involves a distinct set of signifiers that is highly metaphoric and symbolic. Mathematical formulae rely on a scientist's ability to perceive the inner workings of the world as numerical and then to further abstract from those numbers to abstract signifiers, the Greek pis and sigmas and the well-known "x" that appears in even the most fundamental of algebraic problems. This kind of abstraction is itself a translation that moves the scientist from observation to description and then understanding. Undertaking an act of translation requires a unique kind of mind - which I will refer to in shorthand as a "scientific mind" - which involves being able to conceive of the world around it in a more purely scientific way. The translation involved in viewing things scientifically is implicit within those of Brecht's and Frayn's characters who are presented to the audience as fully formed and educated scientists. For characters like Brecht's Andrea, however, that transition - from curious bystander to member of the scientific community - actually occurs onstage. The scientific mind, therefore, as seen within Brecht's and Frayn's plays, requires the ability to translate understanding from observations of the natural world to a scientific or mathematical understanding of those phenomena. I argue, therefore, that truly responsible science requires something more than the ability to translate into scientific understanding; it demands too a route from esoteric scientific knowledge back into a vernacular. As Benjamin intended, translation becomes a way of unpacking meanings deeper than either original form; it can illuminate questions of essential human nature. In each of the plays examined here, translation mediates the scientist's interactions with society. Galileo presents it as a way for scientific tools and thoughts to be used to benefit to common people; in Copenhagen for example, it is Heisenberg's inability to translate and therefore understand his equations that narrowly prevents him from potentially creating a deadly nuclear weapon for Hitler. The two plays focus on very distinct moments in physics - empirical observations of the planets versus theoretical models of a subatomic universe - and so the physicists' modes of translation are also unique. While Brecht's Galileo relies on explanation bolstered by visual proofs, Frayn's Bohr emphasizes the use of "plain language" as a way of parsing the implications of abstract equations. The plays are undeniably vastly different when it comes to both the scope of their science and dramatic form; the reason for this difference can be located in authorial intention. Brecht, a life-long committed Communist and social radical, is remembered for advancing the technique of epic or dialectical theatre, a style that sought to counter the melodramatic realism pioneered by the actor and director Constantin Stanislavski. Epic theatre is the theatre of the people, appealing to their reason while advancing the cause of social change. Life of Galileo uses the techniques of this epic dramaturgy; its goals are social, political and didactic in nature. Copenhagen is, by contrast, less informed by ideology than by the idea of intention itself: Frayn frames the play as an exploration into his historical character's motivations at a mysterious meeting in Copenhagen during World War II - the meeting itself is historical fact, although what transpired remains a mystery. The play begins by asking a simple question: why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen in 1941? Through the drama, however, Frayn expands his investigations into a full study of how intentions are manifested through acts of scientific study; through an act of thematic mimesis, the more the audience attempts to unravel the characters' intentions, the more those intentions become unclear. Copenhagen's dramaturgy makes this complication explicit through its use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as a structuring metaphor. In parsing intent, Frayn's audience and Brecht's find themselves in a similar position: perhaps due to the numerous revisions Brecht made of the play, Galileo's character embodies a slippery position with respect to his translation and the audience. Unlike Frayn, however, Brecht makes his intended readings of the character clear, creating uncertainty and tension between the audience's reading of the character and the playwright's intentions.
by Anneke Schwob.
S.B.in Literature

Research object: stocks. Research subject: accounting and audit. Research aim: to investigate the main problems of stocks accounting and audit and to give suggestions that can help to improve stocks accounting and audit. Objectives: 1)To analyze the peculiarities of stocks and production accounting and audit; 2)To carry out an empirical research of stocks and production accounting and audit; 3)To define and analyze the main problems of stocks and production accounting and audit; 4)To formulate conclusions and suggestions in order to develop the field of stocks accounting and audit; Research methods: logical analysis, synthesis, comparison, questionnaire survey and description. In the process of investigation there were analyzed theory and practice of stocks accounting and audit, investigated the main problems of stocks accounting and audit and also given suggestions that can help to solve investigated problems.

碩士
國立中興大學
外國語文學系
89
Abstract In 1938, Brecht completed Life of Galileo, a historical play describing Gali-leo’s twists and turns, glory and changes in his whole life with the heliocentric theory proposed, recognized, and abolished, and rewrote the play in 1945 and 1955. The play concentrates not only on the single man, Galileo, but also on the coexistence and the interrelationship of those issues proposed in his dialec-tical theater concerning individuals and the society. Accordingly, the intention to emphasize any specific topic of the play must be a certain distortion - - no matter it is about the individual or the totality. Therefore, this thesis will proceed from the most obvious debate between religion and science, the potential exclusive-ness of a single viewpoint or narrative, to the inevitability of the permanent re-placement among perspectives, which are hidden under the main topic. Be-sides, I will explicate the reason why Brecht deliberately arranges the other op-posite viewpoint under many issues. By their contradictions and conflicts, Brecht prevents those perspectives from being entirely extracted into the totality. Except for the presentation of multiple perspectives in its content, Brecht stops and suspends observers’ empathy by inserting into its form “constant interrup-tions or interventions,” techniques of the dialectical theater. Through this kind of distracted observation, observers are expected to form criticism by themselves with a reference to past events and present issues.

American jurisprudence currently applies two incompatible validity standards to determine which laws are enforceable. The natural law tradition evaluates validity by an uncertain standard of divine law, and its methodology relies on contradictory views of human reason. Legal positivism, on the other hand, relies on a methodology that commits the analytic fallacy, separates law from its application, and produces an incomplete model of law. These incompatible standards have created a schism in American jurisprudence that impairs the delivery of justice. This dissertation therefore formulates a new standard for legal validity. This new standard rejects the uncertainties and inconsistencies inherent in natural law theory. It also rejects the narrow linguistic methodology of legal positivism. In their stead, this dissertation adopts a pragmatic methodology that develops a standard for legal validity based on actual legal experience. This approach focuses on the operations of law and its effects upon ongoing human activities, and it evaluates legal principles by applying the experimental method to the social consequences they produce. Because legal history provides a long record of past experimentation with legal principles, legal history is an essential feature of this method. This new validity standard contains three principles. The principle of reason requires legal systems to respect every subject as a rational creature with a free will. The principle of reason also requires procedural due process to protect against the punishment of the innocent and the tyranny of the majority. Legal systems that respect their subjects' status as rational creatures with free wills permit their subjects to orient their own behavior. The principle of reason therefore requires substantive due process to ensure that laws provide dependable guideposts to individuals in orienting their behavior. The principle of consent recognizes that the legitimacy of law derives from the consent of those subject to its power. Common law custom, the doctrine of stare decisis, and legislation sanctioned by the subjects' legitimate representatives all evidence consent. The principle of autonomy establishes the authority of law. Laws must wield supremacy over political rulers, and political rulers must be subject to the same laws as other citizens. Political rulers may not arbitrarily alter the law to accord to their will. Legal history demonstrates that, in the absence of a validity standard based on these principles, legal systems will not treat their subjects as ends in themselves. They will inevitably treat their subjects as mere means to other ends. Once laws do this, men have no rest from evil.

The presented work deals with the conception of the Eucharist in the Gospel of John. The first chapter is dedicated to terms of the Eucharist, the Last Supper and the Lord{\crq}s Supper and also to the existing division of possible approaches to the sacramentality in the Gospel of John. In the subsequent chapters it deals in detail with five places of the Gospel of John, that are mostly mentioned in connection with the Eucharist. It is the wedding at Cana (2,1-11), the eucharistic section (6,51-58), washing of the feet of disciples (13,1-20), the Vine and the Branches (15,1-17), opening of the side of Jesus (19,34). The work tries to solve the topic (question) in the context as wide as possible including the question of the johannine sources of inspiration. In this way it can be seen the mutual correspondence of these varios places and the deep theological conception of the hole Gospel. The replacement of the institution of the Eucharist in the thirteenth chapter with the washing of the feet and it{\crq}s displacement to {\clqq}the bread of life discourse`` in the sixth chapter is due to the proper evangelist{\crq}s intention. There was an impending danger, that the Eucharist became a magical medicine without any relation to the incarnation and the sacrifitial death of Jesus. These facts have theirs own consequences for the life of the christian community. So the subject of the sacraments has been subordinated to the christological accent.

The RTS-1 “Galileo Galilei” is an open pool research reactor with light water as moderator and coolant, it has a nominal power of 5 MWth and an average thermal flux of 5 E+13 n/cm2sec. It went critical for the first time on April 1963 and it was definitively shutdown in March 1980. The reactor is situated at CISAM (Joint Centre of Studies for Military Application - Italian Ministry of Defence), S. Piero a Grado, Pisa, Italy, and its decommissioning is in progress. In this paper the preliminary activities necessary to eliminate the most part of radioactive materials present into the plant are described. Emphasis is placed on the description of the “Irradiation Channel” facility, used to manage safely all the activated materials to be conditioned and on the MASCOT robot, used in the channel. All the conditioning devices to be used are described with particular consideration to the cleanness of the cutting process and the radiological risk due to the operations. The first cutting and conditioning operation carried on in the Galilei Reactor is described. This operation regards the conditioning of some experimental equipments used during the reactor life, with particular attention to the radiation protection of the personnel and to the control of radioactive emission.

For any seagoing mission such as rescue missions, coast guard or pilot duties, crew safety is a key parameter. However, in extreme situations there is always a residual risk for crew members to go overboard. In this case the probability of survival is relatively low until today. This paper presents the joint research project “AGaPaS”, which is aimed to significantly raise the chances of survival for a drifting person. The main objective is to develop a self activating, partially autonomously operating rescue system being able to search, find and rescue people gone overboard. The project accounts for all aspects of the rescue process including: • the life jacket equipped with various sensors and a radio transmitter; • the construction of the rescue vessel; • a real time positioning system for the rescue vessel based on Galileo; • a recovery unit for the person overboard; • a recovery system for the rescue vessel; and • the integration into a conventional bridge system. A crucial part of the rescue process is the recovery of the remotely operating vessel including the retrieved person by a mother ship. Similar problems have already been investigated by the Technical University Berlin before [1], [2]. Whereas launching operations are less critical, the recovery of a boat, especially in severe weather, is a challenging task. Therefore, strength analyses, as well as relative motions are to be systematically investigated using model tests and numerical simulations considering a coupled system consisting of the mother ship with an articulated recovery system and the rescue vessel. Furthermore, the manoeuvrability of the rescue system is evaluated at high sea states. As a result of the research project a fully operational testing model at full scale is designed and built.