86 Hooke went to see the play: Shapin, “Rough Trade.”
86 Samuel Butler lampooned: In his poem Hudibras, part 2, canto 3.
87 Swift visited the Royal Society: Nicolson and Mohler, “The Scientific Background of Swift’s Voyage to Laputa,” p. 320.
87 “softening Marble for Pillows”: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, part 3, ch. 5.
87 “one Man shall do the Work”: Ibid., part 3, ch. 4.
88 “a Shoulder of Mutton”: Ibid., part 3, ch. 2.
88 Albert Einstein and his wife: Marcia Bartusiak, “Einstein and Beyond,” National Geographic, May 2005, available at http://science.nationalgeo graphic.com/science/space/universe/beyond-einstein.html.
89 “All the books of Moses”: John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule, and Religion, p. 119, and Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World, p. 130.
89 “Is there anything more Absurd”: Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, p. 175.
Chapter 15. A Play Without An Audience
91fn The moon gave the Greeks: Jurgen Renn, ed., Galileo in Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 198.
92fn The stars will not look: Albert Boime, “Van Gogh’s Starry Night: A History of Matter and a Matter of History, ” Arts Magazine, December 1984, available at http://www.albertboime.com/Articles.cfm. Donald Olson, a Texas State University astronomer, has carried out similar work, notably a study of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
93 “The falling body moved more jubilantly”: Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, p. 6.
93 “a book written in mathematical characters”: The passage is from Galileo’s Assayer (1623), available at http://www.princeton.edu/∼hos/h291/assayer.htm.
94fn Galileo’s intellectual offspring: Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 58.
94 “the actuality of a potentiality”: Quoted in Joe Sachs, “Aristotle: Motion and Its Place in Nature,” at http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-mot/. The remark is quoted in slightly different form in Oded Balaban, “The Modern Misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Theory of Motion,” at http://tinyurl.com/y24yvwo.
94 “If the ears, the tongue”: Galileo, The Assayer.
95 “communicate in the language”: Charles Coulston Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity, p. 43.
95 “Do not all charms fly”: John Keats, Lamia, part 2.
95 “When I heard the learn’d astronomer”: Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”
96 “Shut up and calculate”: The remark is nearly always attributed to Feynman, it seems to have been coined by the physicist David Mermin. See David Mermin, “Could Feynman Have Said This?,” Physics Today, May 2004, p.10, available at http://tinyurl.com/yz5qxhp.
96 People do not “know a thing”: Steven Nadler, “Doctrines of explanation in late scholasticism and in the mechanical philosophy,” in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, eds., The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
96 “not a necessary part”: Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, p. 47, quoting Galileo, Two New Sciences.
Chapter 16. All in Pieces
97 “It is not only the heavens”: Richard Westfall, “Newton and the Scientific Revolution,” in Stayer, ed., Newton’s Dream, p. 10.
98 seventeenth-century Italy feared science: Some recent scholars have argued that this notion is out of date. “The older Italian historiography tended to present late seventeenth-century science as sucked back in time by the black hole of Galileo’s trial,” writes Mario Biagioli, but “recent work has shown that such a simple explanation will not do.” See Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, eds., The Scientific Revolution in National Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 12.
98 “for at the slightest jar”: Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, p. 190, quoting Jean Bodin.
99 “Worst of all”: Ibid., p. 193.
99 “Sense pleads for Ptolemy”: Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture, p. 117.
101 With no other rationale: Richard Westfall, “Newton and the Scientific Revolution,” pp. 6–7.
101 “If the moon, the planets”: Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 498.
102 “The Sun is lost”: John Donne, “An Anatomy of the World.”
Chapter 17. Never Seen Until this Moment
105 “on or about December 1910”: Virginia Woolf, “Character in Fiction.” Woolf had in mind how writers like James Joyce portrayed their characters’ inner lives.
105 “The Mathematical Professor at Padua”: Nicolson, “The ‘New Astronomy’ and English Imagination,” p. 35.
106 He had known “all the stars”: Kitty Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler, p. 46.
106 “the greatest wonder”: Ibid., p. 47.
107 a standing-room-only crowd: Nicolson, “The Telescope and Imagination,” p. 8.
107 On the morning of September 3, 1609: New-York Historical Society Collections, 2nd ser. (1841), vol. 1, pp. 71–74. This is from an excerpt online at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5829.
108 The breakthrough that made the telescope: Albert Van Helden, ed., in his “Introduction” to Sidereal Nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger), by Galileo Galilei (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 2–3.
108 They took turns peering: Ibid., p. 6.
108 “Many of the nobles”: Nicolson, “The Telescope and Imagination,” p. 12.
108 “to discover at a much greater distance”: Van Helden, “Introduction,” p. 7.
109 It revealed true features: Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p. 72. I owe to Shapin these observations about the telescope having had to prove its trustworthiness. Shapin also cites a variety of other factors that made the telescope hard to use and hard to evaluate.
109 Galileo continued to improve: Van Helden, “Introduction,” p. 9.
109 “absolute novelty”: The quotes from Galileo in this paragraph and in the next several sentences come from Nicolson, “The Telescope and Imagination,” pp. 14–15.
111 Why could not the Earth itself?: Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, p. 222.
111 What could be “more splendid”: Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 126.
111 “When the heavens were a little”: Ibid., p. 133.
112 “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces”: Ibid., p. 127.
112 Man occupied “the filth and mire”: Ibid., p. 102. E. M. W. Tillyard, in The Elizabethan World Picture, writes that “the earth in the Ptolemaic system was the cesspool of the universe” (p. 39).
113 Galileo’s adversary Cardinal Bellarmine: Karen Armstrong, A History of God, p. 290.
Chapter 18. Flies as Big as a Lamb
114 He put his own saliva: On September 17, 1683, Leeuwenhoek described his teeth-cleaning routine and the “animalcules” he found in his mouth. Excerpts from that letter, and much other material related to Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries, can be found at http://ucmp.berkely.edu/history/leeuwen hoek.htm.
115 “exceedingly small animals”: Marjorie Nicolson, “The Microscope and English Imagination,” p. 167.
115 And he had witnesses: Ibid., p. 167.
115 the first person ever to see sperm cells: The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeu- wenhoek, edited by a Committee of Dutch Scientists (Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1941), vol. 2, pp. 283–95. This letter was written in November 1677 to William Brouncker, president of the Royal Society.
116 “His Majesty seeing the little animals": Clara Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 69.
116 “limbs with joints, veins in these limbs”: Nicolson, “The Microscope and English Imagination,” p. 210.
117 “Were men and beast made”: Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, p. 149, quoting a notebook entry of Newton’s headed “Of God.”
117 “large Hollows and Roughnesses”: Robert Hooke, Micrographia. See http://www.roberthooke.org.uk/rest5a.htm.
117 “flies which look as big as a
lamb”: “Commentary on Galileo Galilei,” in James Newman, ed., The World of Mathematics, vol. 2, p. 732fn.
118 “a fine moss growing”: Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, p. 164.
118 “one who walks about”: Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 27.
119 “There may be as much curiosity”: Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, p. 145.
Chapter 19. From Earthworms to Angels
120 “Cubes, Rhombs, Pyramids”: Nicolson, “The Microscope and English Imagination,” p. 209, quoting Henry Baker, Employment for the Microscope. Baker wrote much later than Leeuwenhoek, in 1753, but everyone who has ever looked through a microscope has uttered some variant of Baker’s remark.
121 The central idea was that all the objects: Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, p. 26.
121 “We must believe that”: Ibid., p. 40.
122 He strapped himself each day: John Carey, “Pope’s Fallibility,” in Original Copy: Selected Reviews and Journalism 1969–1986 (London: Faber & Faber, 1987), p. 109, and Harold Bloom, Genius (New York: Warner, 2002), p. 271.
123 “The work of the creator”: Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 53.
123 “worthy of an infinite CREATOR”: Ibid., p. 133.
123 “We must say that God”: Ibid., p. 224.
124 “If God had made use”: Ibid., p. 179.
124 “and the characters are triangles”: Galileo, The Assayer.
124 “Nature is pleased with simplicity”: G. A. J. Rogers, “Newton and the Guaranteeing God,” in Force and Popkin, eds., Newton and Religion, p. 232, quoting Newton’s Principia.
124 “It is impossible that God”: Paolo Rossi, Logic and the Art of Memory, p. 193.
125 “God always complies”: Peter K. Machamer, The Cambridge Companion to Galileo (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 193.
125 “Nature does not make jumps”: Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 158.
125 “If triangles had a god”: Montesquieu, Persian Letters, no. 59.
125 “Einstein was a man who”: Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p. 256.
Chapter 20. The Parade of the Horribles
126 “vast Multitude of different Sorts”: John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, available at http://www.jri.org.uk/ray/wisdom/index.htm.
127 “How extremely stupid”: Leonard Huxley, The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (New York: Appleton, 1916), vol. 1, p. 176.
127 “It is natural to admit”: André Maurois cites Voltaire’s remark in his introduction to Voltaire’s Candide, trans. Lowell Blair (New York: Bantam, 1959), p. 5.
128 “Some kinds of beasts”: Michael White, Isaac Newton, p. 149.
128 The world contained wood: Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 20.
128 Even if someone had conceived: Steve Jones, Darwin’s Ghost (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 194.
128 “a thought of God”: David Dobbs, Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral (New York: Pantheon, 2005), p. 3.
Chapter 21. “Shuddering Before the Beautiful”
129 “all things are numbers”: Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, p. 12.
129fn As one of Pythagoras’s followers: Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres (New York: Springer, 1995), p. 35.
130 “one of the truly momentous”: Chandrasekhar, “Shakespeare, Newton, and Beethoven.”
130 St. Augustine explained: Barrow, Pi in the Sky, p. 256.
131 “the first scientific proof”: Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, p. 66.
132 “You must have felt this, too”: Chandrasekhar, “Shakespeare, Newton, and Beethoven.”
133 “shuddering before the beautiful”: Ibid.
133 “the years of searching”: From a 1933 lecture by Einstein, “About the Origins of General Relativity,” at Glasgow University. Matthew Trainer discusses Einstein’s lecture in “About the Origins of the General Theory of Relativity: Einstein’s Search for the Truth,” European Journal of Physics 26, no. 6 (November 2005).
133 “to watch the sunset”: The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 38.
133 “Of all escapes from reality”: Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts, p. 70.
134 his head, impaled on a pike: Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler, p. 344. My references to witches and Kepler’s mother come from Ferguson and from Max Caspar, Kepler.
134 “When the storm rages”: Benson Bobrick, The Fated Sky (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 70.
Chapter 22. Patterns Made with Ideas
135 Mathematics had almost nothing: For a brilliant account of the difference between math as a mathematician sees it and as the subject is taught in school, see Paul Lockhart, “A Mathematician’s Lament,” http://tinyurl.com/y89qbh9.
135 “A mathematician, like a painter”: G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, p.13, available at http://math.boisestate.edu/∼holmes/holmes/A%20Mathematician’s%20Apology.pdf.
135 “upon which Sir Isaac”: Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 192.
136 “A naturalist would scarce expect”: Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p. 227.
Chapter 23. God’s Strange Cryptography
143 If two dinosaurs: Mario Livio, Is God a Mathematician?, p. 11, quoting Martin Gardner, Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries? (New York: Norton, 2004).
143 “strange Cryptography”: Nicolson, “The Telescope and Imagination,” p. 6, quoting Sir Thomas Browne.
143 Nature presented a greater challenge: In an essay in 1930, Einstein wrote, “What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength.” See Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930.
144 God “took delight to hide”: Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 320.
Chapter 24: The Secret Plan
145 “In what manner does the countenance”: Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 279. Half a century after its publication, The Sleepwalkers remains the best and liveliest account of the birth of modern astronomy. I have drawn repeatedly on Koestler’s superlative history.
145 “I was born premature”: Ibid., p. 231.
146 “That man has in every way”: Ibid., p. 236.
147 The conjunction point after that: My discussion of Jupiter and Saturn follows the account in Christopher M. Linton, From Eudoxus to Einstein, p. 170.
148 “The delight that I took”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 247.
149 “The triangle is the first”: Ibid., p. 249.
Chapter 25. Tears of Joy
152 “And now I pressed forward”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 250.
152 “instead of twenty or one hundred”: Ibid., p. 248.
153 Euclid proved that there are exactly five: One way to see that there can only be a limited number of Platonic solids is to focus on one vertex and imagine the faces that meet there. There must be at least three such faces, and the angles at each vertex must all be identical and must add up to less than 360 degrees. Meeting all those conditions at once is impossible unless each face is a triangle, square, or pentagon. (Each angle of a hexagon is 120 degrees, for instance, so three or more hexagons cannot meet at one vertex.)
153 If you needed dice: Marcus du Sautoy, Symmetry (New York: Harper, 2008), p. 5.
154 He burst into tears: Caspar, Kepler, p. 63.
154 “Now I no longer regretted”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 251.
155 “For a long time I wanted”: Owen Gingerich, “Johannes Kepler and the New A
stronomy,” available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1972QJRAS..13..346G.
155 He happily devoted: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 269.
155 “No one,” he boasted: Caspar, Kepler, p. 71.
155 “too pretty not to be true”: James Watson, The Double Helix (New York: Touchstone, 2001), p. 204.
156 “Never in history”: Gingerich, “Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy,” p. 350.
Chapter 26. Walrus with a Golden Nose
157 “Would that God deliver me”: Rossi, The Birth of Modern Science, p. 70.
158 “the heavenly motions are nothing but”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 392.
158fn Not by the human ear: Rattansi, “Newton and the Wisdom of the Ancients,” p. 189.
158fn The first person to refer: Curtis Wilson, “Kepler’s Laws, So-Called,” HAD News (newsletter of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society), no. 31, May 1994.
158 “My brain gets tired”: Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo, p. 106fn.
159 In his student days: Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler, pp. 31–32.
160 had cost a ton of gold: Gingerich, “Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy,” p. 350.
160 “any single instrument cost more”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 278.
160 “I was in possession”: Ibid., p. 345.
Chapter 27. Cracking the Cosmic Safe
162 Even armed with Tycho’s: By far the best account of the mathematical ins and outs is Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers.
163 But Tycho’s data were twice: Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, pp. 211–12.
163 “For us, who by divine kindness”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 322.
163 “warfare” with the unyielding data: Livio, Is God a Mathematician?, p. 249.
164 Even Galileo, revolutionary though he was: De Santillana, The Crime of Galileo, p. 106fn.
166 “a cartload of dung”: Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 397.
167 “On March 8 of this present year”: Ibid., p. 394.
167 “I have consummated the work”: Ferguson, Tycho and Kepler, p. 340.
168 He saw—somehow: Joseph Mazur provides this example in The Motion Paradox, p. 91.
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