Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo (Berkeley, 2005), 114). Nor does Giuseppe Baretti’s account from 1757, which “remains apparently the first statement of the myth” (M. The painting, pace Drake, does not warrant putting the words into Galileo’s mouth. But ascribing a sentiment to a person is different from attributing a quotation to that person. I have no doubt that Galileo continued to believe that the earth orbited the sun-his subsequent work bears witness to his conviction. I confess that I would prefer stronger evidence for Galileo having said “eppur si muove” than Drake’s colorful recreation of the scene and his qualified assurance that “uite possibly the story, which could not be circulated widely with safety to Galileo, was passed on within the family” and “hereafter it lived on in oral tradition” before being “rinted a century later” (357). Othing would have been more in character for Galileo, at the moment of leaving the hospitality of his good friend and host Ascanio Piccolomini, than-just before entering the waiting carriage-to stamp a foot on the ground, perhaps wink, and utter the famous words (357). The standard account attributing this expression to Galileo derives from Stillman Drake’s Galileo at Work (Chicago, 1978), 356–357. But that does not constitute evidence that Galileo said those words. There is, then, some evidence that the thought “And yet it moves” was ascribed to Galileo in the mid-seventeenth century, at least in Madrid perhaps by one of the Piccolomini brothers who was unhappy with the Church. The Church grew tired of the archbishop’s sympathy for Galileo and ordered him removed from the archbishop’s residence in Siena (see Heilbron pp. Archbishop Piccolomini had few friends in the Vatican and continued to annoy the Church hierarchy by reportedly providing a safe place for Galileo to discuss his opinions.
John Heilbron, in his recent biography of Galileo, Galileo (OUP, 2010), associates the statement with Archbishop Ascanio Piccolomini, who had supported Galileo and his work, and with whom Galileo spent some months after his trial. When unfolded, it revealed that the figure of Galileo was gesturing toward the words “eppur si muove.” The painting seems to have been commissioned by Genreal Ottavio Piccolomini in Madrid, sometime between 16. When cleaned, in 1911, it turned out that the painting was larger than originally framed. Murillo or somebody in his school in Madrid that represents Galileo in prison. There is more at issue here than me just being an “ overly literal type.” I worry that too many of readers won’t recognize why the sentiment and the quotation were ascribed to Galileo or the work the quotation does in our story of science and it’s relationship to non-science (society, politics, religion, etc.). I hope this post will contribute to a conversation about history and its uses. Here I want to offer something of a history of Galileo’s unverifiable “eppur si muove.” My last post was not particularly helpful because it did not elevate the level of the discussion.
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