The Clockwork Universe Part 3

At times the king's interest in anatomy grew downright creepy. At a court ball in 1663, a woman miscarried. Someone brought the fetus to the king, who dissected it. To modern ears, the lighthearted tone surrounding the whole episode is almost unfathomable. "Whatever others think," the king joked, "he [i.e., Charles himself ] hath the greatest loss... that hath lost a subject by the business."

When it came to experiments on animals, the seventeenth century was even less squeamish. Newton veered toward vegetarianism-he seldom ate rabbit and some other common dishes on the grounds that "animals should be put to as little pain as possible"-but such qualms were rare. Sages of the Royal Society happily carried out experiments on dogs that are too grim to read about without flinching. They had ample company. Descartes, as deep and introspective a thinker as ever lived, wrote blithely that humans are the only animals who think and feel. The yelp of a kicked dog no more indicated pain than did the sound of a drum when you beat it.

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Another widely admired philosopher of the day, Athanasius Kircher, described an odd invention called a cat piano. The goal was to amuse a despondent prince. A row of cats sat in side-by-side cages, arranged according to the pitch of their meows. When the pianist pressed a key, a spike stabbed into the tail of the appropriate cat. "The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy."

In London shouting, jostling crowds flocked to bear-baitings and bull-baitings, where they could watch a chained animal fight a pack of slavering dogs. (Thus the origin of the English bulldog, whose flat face and sunken nose let it keep its hold on a flailing bull without having to open its powerful jaws to breathe.) Even children's games routinely featured the torment of animals. "No wonder," the historian Keith Thomas writes, "that traditional nursery rhymes portray blind mice having their tails cut off with a carving knife, blackbirds in a pie, and p.u.s.s.y in the well."

Experiments on dogs were considered entertaining as well as informative. Wren, for instance, made a specialty of splenectomies, surgical operations to remove the spleen. With a dog tied in place on a table, Wren would carefully cut into its abdomen, extract the spleen, tie off the blood vessels, sew up the wound, and then place the poor beast in a corner to recover, or not. (Boyle subjected his pet setter to the procedure and noted that the dog survived "as sportive and wanton as before.") The operations provide yet another instance of how new science and ancient belief found themselves yoked together. For fourteen centuries, the Western world had endorsed Galen's doctrine that health depended on a balance of four "humors"-blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile-each secreted by a different organ.16 Too little or too much phlegm, say, made a person Too little or too much phlegm, say, made a person phlegmatic phlegmatic, dreary and sluggish and flat. Just as the heart was the source of blood, so the spleen was the source of black bile (which, in the wrong proportion, caused melancholy). All medical authorities had so decreed for more than a thousand years. Hence Wren's experiment, a new test of an age-old dogma-if health depended on having all four humors in the proper balance, what would it mean if a dog could get along perfectly well with no bile-producing spleen at all?

Countless dogs suffered through transfusions, too. Many of them survived, somehow, even though no one knew about the dangers of infection or mismatched blood types. Boyle wrote a paper calling for answers to such questions "As whether a fierce fierce Dog, by being often quite new stocked with the blood of a Dog, by being often quite new stocked with the blood of a cowardly cowardly Dog, may not become more tame," or "whether a Dog, taught to fetch and carry, or to dive after Ducks, or to sett, will after frequent and full recruits of the blood of Dogs unfit for those Exercises, be as good at them, as before?" Dog, may not become more tame," or "whether a Dog, taught to fetch and carry, or to dive after Ducks, or to sett, will after frequent and full recruits of the blood of Dogs unfit for those Exercises, be as good at them, as before?"

Sometimes the experiments had more serious rationales. How, for instance, did venom from a snakebite spread throughout the body? What about a person who swallowed poison? What would happen if someone injected him with poison instead? Tempting as it might have been to test such ideas on human "volunteers," dogs came first. (Boyle did report a conversation with "a foreign Amba.s.sador, a very curious person," who had set out to inject one of his servants with poison. The servant spoiled the fun by fainting before the experiment could begin.) But many of the experiments were essentially stunts. At dinner one November night in 1666, Pepys listened to an excited report of the events a few days before at the Royal Society. Dr. William Croone gave a vivid account of a blood transfusion between a mastiff and a spaniel. "The first died upon the place," Pepys reported, "and the other very well, and likely to do well."

Croone had been impressed by the "pretty experiment" and even suggested to Pepys that someday transfusions might prove useful "for the amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body." But no one at the Royal Society had dwelt much on the medical significance of the day's entertainment. The mood had been carefree, the company devoting most of its attention to a kind of parlor game. Which natural enemies would make the most amusing partners for a blood exchange? "This did give occasion to many pretty wishes," Pepys wrote cheerily, "as of the blood of a Quaker to be let into an Archbishop, and such like."

Chapter Fourteen.

Of Mites and Men Pepys's light tone was telltale. Science was destined to remake the world, but in its early days it inspired laughter more often than reverence. Pepys was genuinely fascinated with science-he set up a borrowed telescope on his roof and peered at the moon and Jupiter, he raced out to buy a microscope as soon as they came on the market, he struggled through Boyle's Hydrostatical Paradoxes Hydrostatical Paradoxes ("a most excellent book as ever I read, and I will take much pains to understand him through if I can"), and in the 1680s he served as president of the Royal Society-but his amus.e.m.e.nt was genuine, too. ("a most excellent book as ever I read, and I will take much pains to understand him through if I can"), and in the 1680s he served as president of the Royal Society-but his amus.e.m.e.nt was genuine, too.17 All these intellectuals studying spiders and tinkering with pumps. It All these intellectuals studying spiders and tinkering with pumps. It was was a bit ludicrous. a bit ludicrous.

The king certainly thought so. He, too, was an aficionado of science. He had, after all, chartered the Royal Society, and he liked to putter about in his own laboratory. But he referred to the Society's savants as his "jesters," and once he burst out laughing at the Royal Society "for spending time only in weighing of ayre, and doing nothing else since they sat."

Weighing the air-which plainly weighed nothing at all-seemed less like a groundbreaking advance than a return to such medieval pastimes as debating whether Adam had a navel. Skeptics never tired of satirizing scientists for their impracticality. One critic conceded that the members of the Royal Society were "Ingenious men and have found out A great Many Secrets in Nature." Still, he noted, the public had gained "Little Advantage" from such discoveries. Perhaps the learned scientists could turn their attention to "the Nature of b.u.t.ter and cheese."

In fact, they had given considerable thought to cheese, and also to finding better ways to make candles, pump water, tan leather, and dye cloth. From the start, Boyle had taken the lead in speaking out against any attempts to separate science and technology. "I shall not dare to think myself a true naturalist 'til my skill can make my garden yield better herbs and flowers, or my orchard better fruit, or my field better corn, or my dairy better cheese" than the old ways produced.

To hear the scientists and their allies tell it, unimaginable bounty lay just around the corner. Joseph Glanvill, a member of the Royal Society but not a scientist himself, shouted the loudest. "Should those Heroes go on, as they have happily begun," Glanvill exclaimed, "they'll fill the world with wonders wonders." In the future, "a voyage to Southern unknown Tracts, yea possibly the Moon, will not be more strange than one to America. To them that come after us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings pair of wings to fly into remotest Regions, as now a pair of Boots to ride a Journey." to fly into remotest Regions, as now a pair of Boots to ride a Journey."18 Such forecasts served mainly to inspire the mockers. By 1676 the Royal Society found itself the subject of a hit London comedy, the seventeenth-century counterpart of a running gag on Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live. The play was called The Virtuoso The Virtuoso, which could mean either "far-ranging scholar" or "dilettante." Thomas Shadwell, the playwright, lifted much of his dialogue straight from the scientists' own accounts of their work.

Playgoers first encountered the evening's hero, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, sprawled on his belly on a table in his laboratory. Sir Nicholas has one end of a string clenched in his teeth; the other end is tied to a frog in a bowl of water. The virtuoso's plan is to learn to swim by copying the frog's motions. A visitor asks whether he has tested the technique in water. Not necessary, says Sir Nicholas, who explains that he hates getting wet. "I content myself with the speculative part of swimming. I care not for the practical. I seldom bring anything to use.... Knowledge is my ultimate end."

Sir Nicholas's family is not pleased. A niece complains that he has "spent 2000 in Microscopes, to find out the nature of Eels in vinegar, Mites in Cheese, and the blue of Plums." A second niece worries that her uncle has "broken his Brains about the nature of Maggots and studied these twenty Years to find out the several sorts of Spiders."

All the favorite Royal Society pastimes came in for ridicule. Gimcrack studied the moon through a telescope, as Hooke had done, and his description of its "Mountainous Parts and Valleys and Seas and Lakes," as well as "Elephants and Camels," spoofs Hooke's account. (Hooke went to see the play and complained that the audience, which took for granted that he was the inspiration for Gimcrack, "almost pointed" at him in derision.) Sir Nicholas experimented on dogs, too, and boasted about a blood transfusion in which "the Spaniel Spaniel became a became a Bull-Dog Bull-Dog, and the Bull-Dog Bull-Dog a a Spaniel Spaniel." He had even tried a blood transfusion between a sheep and a madman. The sheep died, but the madman survived and thrived, except that "he bleated perpetually, and chew'd the Cud, and had Wool growing on him in great Quant.i.ties."

Like his king, Shadwell found much to satirize in the virtuosos' fascination with the properties of air. Sir Nicholas keeps a kind of wine cellar with bottles holding air collected from all over. His a.s.sistants have crossed the globe "bottling up Air, and weighing it in all Places, sealing the Bottles Hermetically." Air from Tenerife is the lightest, that from the Isle of Dogs heaviest. Shadwell had great fun with the notion that air is a substance, with properties, rather than a mere absence. "Let me tell you, Gentlemen," Sir Nicholas a.s.sures his visitors, "Air is but a thinner sort of Liquor, and drinks much the better for being bottled."

Shadwell had a good number of allies among the satirists of his day, many of them eminent. Samuel Butler lampooned men who spent their time staring into microscopes at fleas and drops of pond water and contemplating such mysteries as "How many different Species / Of Maggots breed in rotten Cheeses."

But no one brought as much talent to ridiculing science as Jonathan Swift. Even writing more than half a century after the founding of the Royal Society, in Gulliver's Travels Gulliver's Travels, Swift quivered with indignation at scientists for their pretension and impracticality. (Swift visited the Royal Society in 1710, squeezing in his visit between a trip to the insane asylum at Bedlam and a visit to a puppet show.) Gulliver observes one ludicrous project after another. He sees men working on "softening Marble for Pillows and Pincushions" and an inventor engaged in "an Operation to reduce human Excrement to its original Food." In many places, the satire targets actual Royal Society experiments. Real scientists had struggled in vain, for instance, to sort out the mysterious process that would later be called photosynthesis. How do plants manage to grow by "eating" sunlight?19 Gulliver meets a man who "had been Eight Years upon a project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cuc.u.mbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers." Gulliver meets a man who "had been Eight Years upon a project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cuc.u.mbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers."

Swift's sages live in the expectation that soon "one Man shall do the Work of Ten and a Palace may be built in a Week," but none of the high hopes ever pans out. "In the mean time, the whole Country lies miserably waste, the Houses in Ruins, and the People without Food or Cloaths."

Mathematicians, the very emblem of head-in-the-clouds uselessness, come in for extra ridicule. So absentminded are they that they need to be rapped on the mouth by their servants to remember to speak. Lost in thought, they fall down the stairs and walk into doors. They can think of nothing but mathematics and music. Even meals feature such mathematical courses as "a Shoulder of Mutton, cut into an Equilateral Triangle; a Piece of Beef into a Rhomboides; and a Pudding into a Cycloid."

In hardheaded England, where "practicality" and "common sense" were celebrated as among the highest virtues, Swift's disdain for mathematics was widely shared by his fellow intellectuals. In that sense, Swift's mockery of absentminded professors was standard issue. But, more than he could have known, Swift was right to direct his sharpest thrusts at mathematicians. These dreamers truly were, as Swift intuited, the most dangerous scientists of all. Microscopes and telescopes were the glamorous innovations that drew all eyes-Gulliver's Travels testifies to Swift's fascination with their power to reveal new worlds-but new instruments were only part of the story of the age. The insights that would soon transform the world required no tools more sophisticated than a fountain pen. testifies to Swift's fascination with their power to reveal new worlds-but new instruments were only part of the story of the age. The insights that would soon transform the world required no tools more sophisticated than a fountain pen.

For it was the mathematicians who invented the engine that powered the scientific revolution. Centuries later, the story would find an echo. In 1931, with great hoopla, Albert Einstein and his wife, Elsa, were toured around the observatory at California's Mount Wilson, home to the world's biggest telescope. Someone told Elsa that astronomers had used this magnificent telescope to determine the shape of the universe. "Well," she said, "my husband does that on the back of an old envelope."

Those outsiders who did take science seriously tended to dislike what they saw. The scientists themselves viewed their work as a way of paying homage to G.o.d, but their critics were not so sure. Astronomy stirred the most fear. Who needed it, when we already know the story of the heavens and the Earth, and on the best possible authority? To probe further was to treat the Bible as just another source of information, to be tested and questioned like any other. A popular bit of seventeenth-century doggerel purportedly captured the scientists' view: "All the books of Moses / Were nothing but supposes."

The devout had another objection. Science diverted its pract.i.tioners from deep questions to silly ones. "Is there anything more Absurd and Impertinent," one minister snapped, "than to find a Man, who has so great a Concern upon his Hands as the preparing for Eternity, all busy and taken up with Quadrants Quadrants, and Telescopes Telescopes, Furnaces Furnaces, Syphons Syphons, and Air Pumps Air Pumps?"

So science irritated those who found it pompous and ridiculous. It offended those who found it subversive. Just as important, it bewildered almost everyone.

Chapter Fifteen.

A Play Without an Audience The new science inspired ridicule and hostility partly for the simple reason that it was was new. But the resentment had a deeper source-the new thinkers proposed replacing a time-honored, understandable, commonsense picture of the world with one that contradicted the plainest facts of everyday life. What could be less disputable than that we live on a fixed and solid Earth? But here came a new theory that new. But the resentment had a deeper source-the new thinkers proposed replacing a time-honored, understandable, commonsense picture of the world with one that contradicted the plainest facts of everyday life. What could be less disputable than that we live on a fixed and solid Earth? But here came a new theory that began began by flinging the Earth out into s.p.a.ce and sending it hurtling, undetectably, through the cosmos. If the world is careening through s.p.a.ce like a rock shot from a catapult, why don't we feel it? Why don't we fall off? by flinging the Earth out into s.p.a.ce and sending it hurtling, undetectably, through the cosmos. If the world is careening through s.p.a.ce like a rock shot from a catapult, why don't we feel it? Why don't we fall off?

The goal of the new scientists-to find ironclad, mathematical laws that described the physical world in all its changing aspects-had not been part of the traditional scientific mission. The Greeks and their successors had confined their quest for perfect order to the heavens. On Earth, nothing so harmonious could be expected. When the Greeks looked to the sky, they saw the sun, the moon, and the planets moving imperturbably on their eternal rounds.20 The planets traced complicated paths ( The planets traced complicated paths (planet is Greek for "wanderer"), but they continued on their way, endlessly. On the corrupt Earth, on the other hand, all motions were short-lived. Drop a ball and it bounces, then rolls, then stops. Throw a rock and seconds later it falls to the ground. Then it sits there. is Greek for "wanderer"), but they continued on their way, endlessly. On the corrupt Earth, on the other hand, all motions were short-lived. Drop a ball and it bounces, then rolls, then stops. Throw a rock and seconds later it falls to the ground. Then it sits there.

Ordinary objects could certainly be set set moving-an archer tensed his muscles, drew his bow, and shot an arrow; a horse strained against its harness and pulled a plow-but here on Earth an inanimate body on its own would not moving-an archer tensed his muscles, drew his bow, and shot an arrow; a horse strained against its harness and pulled a plow-but here on Earth an inanimate body on its own would not keep keep moving. The archer or the horse evidently imparted a force of some kind, but whatever that force was it soon dissipated, as heat dissipates from a poker pulled from a fire. moving. The archer or the horse evidently imparted a force of some kind, but whatever that force was it soon dissipated, as heat dissipates from a poker pulled from a fire.

Greek physics, then, began by dividing its subject matter into two distinct pieces. In the cosmos above, motion represents the natural state of things and goes on forever. On the Earth below, rest rest is natural and motion calls for an explanation. No one saw this as a problem, any more than anyone saw a problem in different nations following different laws. Heaven and Earth completely differ from one another. The stars are gleaming dots of light moving across the sky, the Earth a colossal rock solid and immobile at the center of the universe. The heavens are predictable, the Earth anything but. On June 1, to pick a date at random, we know what the stars in the night sky will look like, and we know that they will look virtually the same again on June 1 next year, and next century, and next millennium. is natural and motion calls for an explanation. No one saw this as a problem, any more than anyone saw a problem in different nations following different laws. Heaven and Earth completely differ from one another. The stars are gleaming dots of light moving across the sky, the Earth a colossal rock solid and immobile at the center of the universe. The heavens are predictable, the Earth anything but. On June 1, to pick a date at random, we know what the stars in the night sky will look like, and we know that they will look virtually the same again on June 1 next year, and next century, and next millennium.21 What June 1 will bring on Earth this year, or any year, no one knows. What June 1 will bring on Earth this year, or any year, no one knows.

Aristotle had explained how it all works, both in the heavens and on Earth, about three hundred years before the birth of Christ. For nearly two thousand years everyone found his scheme satisfactory. All earthly objects were formed from earth, air, fire, and water. The heavens were composed of a fifth element or essence, the quintessence quintessence, a pure, eternal substance, and it was only in that perfect, heavenly domain that mathematical law prevailed. Why do everyday, earthly objects move? Because everything has a home where it belongs and where it returns at the first opportunity. Rocks and other heavy objects belong down on the ground, flames up in the air, and so on. A "violent" motion-flinging a javelin into the air-might temporarily overcome a "natural" one-the javelin's impulse to fall to the ground-but matters quickly sort themselves out.

The picture made sense of countless everyday observations: Hold a candle upright or turn it downward, and the flame rises regardless. Hoist a rock overhead in one hand and a pebble in the other, and the rock is harder to hold aloft. Why? Because it is bigger and therefore more earth-y, more eager to return to its natural home.

All such explanations smacked of biology, and to modern ears the cla.s.sical world sounds strangely permeated with will and desire. Why do falling objects accelerate? "The falling body moved more jubilantly every moment because it found itself nearer home," writes one historian of science, as if a rock were a horse returning to the barn at the end of the day.

The new scientists would strip away all talk of "purpose." In the new way of thinking, rocks don't want want to go anywhere; they just fall. The universe has no goals. But even today, though we have had centuries to adapt to the new ideas, the old views still exert a hold. We cannot help attributing goals and purposes to lifeless nature, and we endlessly anthropomorphize. "Nature abhors a vacuum," we say, and "water seeks its own level." On a cold morning we talk about the car starting "reluctantly" and then "dying," and if it just won't start we pound the dashboard in frustration and mutter, "Don't do this to me." to go anywhere; they just fall. The universe has no goals. But even today, though we have had centuries to adapt to the new ideas, the old views still exert a hold. We cannot help attributing goals and purposes to lifeless nature, and we endlessly anthropomorphize. "Nature abhors a vacuum," we say, and "water seeks its own level." On a cold morning we talk about the car starting "reluctantly" and then "dying," and if it just won't start we pound the dashboard in frustration and mutter, "Don't do this to me."

It was Galileo more than any other single figure who finally did away with Aristotle. Galileo's great coup was to show that for once the Greeks had been too cautious. Not only were the heavens built according to a mathematical plan, but so was the ordinary, earthly realm. The path of an arrow shot from a bow could be predicted as accurately as the timing of an eclipse of the sun.

This was a twofold revolution. First, the kingdom of mathematics suddenly claimed a vast new territory for itself. Second, all those parts of the world that could not not be described mathematically were pushed aside as not quite worthy of study. Galileo made sure that no one missed the news. Nature is "a book written in mathematical characters," he insisted, and anything that could not be framed in the language of equations was "nothing but a name." be described mathematically were pushed aside as not quite worthy of study. Galileo made sure that no one missed the news. Nature is "a book written in mathematical characters," he insisted, and anything that could not be framed in the language of equations was "nothing but a name."22 Aristotle had discussed motion, too, but not in a mathematical way. Motion Motion referred not only to change in position, which can easily be reduced to number, but to every sort of change-a ship sailing, a piece of iron rusting, a man growing old, a fallen tree decaying. Motion, Aristotle decreed in his referred not only to change in position, which can easily be reduced to number, but to every sort of change-a ship sailing, a piece of iron rusting, a man growing old, a fallen tree decaying. Motion, Aristotle decreed in his Physics Physics, was "the actuality of a potentiality." Galileo sneered. Far from investigating the heart of nature, Aristotle had simply been playing word games, and obscure ones at that.

In the new view, which Galileo hurried to proclaim, the scientist's task was to describe the world objectively, as it really is, not subjectively, as it appears to be. What was objective-tangible, countable, measurable-was real and primary. What was subjective-the tastes and textures of the world-was dubious and secondary. "If the ears, the tongue, and the nostrils were taken away," wrote Galileo, "the figures, the numbers, and the motions would indeed remain, but not the odors nor the tastes nor the sounds."

This was an enormous change. Peel away the world of appearances, said Galileo, and you find the real world beneath. The world consists exclusively of particles in motion, pool b.a.l.l.s colliding on a vast table. All the complexity around us rises out of that simplicity.

After Galileo and Newton, the historian of science Charles C. Gillispie has written, science would "communicate in the language of mathematics, the measure of quant.i.ty," a language "in which no terms exist for good or bad, kind or cruel... or will and purpose and hope." The word force force, for example, Gillispie noted, "would no longer mean 'personal power' but 'ma.s.s-times-acceleration.' "

That austere, geometric world has a beauty of its own, Galileo and all his intellectual descendants maintained. The problem is that most people cannot grasp it. Mathematicians believe fervently that their work is as elegant, subtle, and rich as any work of music. But everyone can appreciate music, even if they lack the slightest knowledge of how to read a musical score. For outsiders to mathematics-which is to say, for almost everyone-advanced mathematics is a symphony played out in silence, and all they can do is look befuddled at a stage full of musicians sawing away to no apparent effect.

The headphones that would let everyone hear that music do exist, but they can only be built one pair at a time, by the person who intends to wear them, and the process takes years. Few people take the trouble. In the centuries that followed the scientific revolution, as the new worldview grew ever more dominant, poets would howl in outrage that scientists had stripped the landscape bare. "Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?" Keats demanded. Walt Whitman, and many others, would zero in even tighter. "When I heard the learn'd astronomer," wrote Whitman, the talk of figures, charts, and diagrams made him "tired and sick."

Mankind had long taken its place at the center of the cosmos for granted. The world was a play performed for our benefit. No longer. In the new picture, man is not the pinnacle of creation but an afterthought. The universe would carry on almost exactly the same without us. The planets trace out patterns in the sky, and those patterns would be identical whether or not humans had ever taken notice of them. Mankind's role in the cosmic drama is that of a fly buzzing around a stately grandfather clock.

The shift in thinking was seismic, and the way it came about had nothing in common with the textbook picture of progress in science. Change came not from finding new answers to old questions but from abandoning the old questions, unanswered, in favor of new, more fruitful ones. Aristotle had asked why. why. Why do rocks fall? Why do flames rise? Galileo asked Why do rocks fall? Why do flames rise? Galileo asked how. how. How do rocks fall-faster and faster forever, or just until they reach cruising speed? How fast are they traveling when they hit the ground? How do rocks fall-faster and faster forever, or just until they reach cruising speed? How fast are they traveling when they hit the ground?

Aristotle's why why explained the world, Galileo's explained the world, Galileo's how how described it. The new scientists began, that is, by dismissing the very question that all their predecessors had taken as fundamental. (Modern-day physicists often strike the same impatient tone. When someone asked Richard Feynman to help him make sense of the world as quantum mechanics imagines it, he supposedly snapped, "Shut up and calculate.") described it. The new scientists began, that is, by dismissing the very question that all their predecessors had taken as fundamental. (Modern-day physicists often strike the same impatient tone. When someone asked Richard Feynman to help him make sense of the world as quantum mechanics imagines it, he supposedly snapped, "Shut up and calculate.") Aristotle had an excellent answer to the question why do rocks fall why do rocks fall when you drop them when you drop them? Galileo proposed not a different answer or a better one, but no answer at all. People do not "know a thing until they have grasped the 'why' of it," Aristotle insisted, but Galileo would have none of it. To ask why things happen, he declared, was "not a necessary part of the investigation."

And that change was only the beginning.

Chapter Sixteen.

All in Pieces Galileo, Newton, and their fellow revolutionaries immediately turned their backs on yet another cherished idea. This time they banished common sense. Long acquaintance with the world had always been hailed as the surest safeguard against delusion. The new scientists rejected it as a trap. "It is not only the heavens that are not as they seem to be, and not only motion," Descartes argued, in a modern historian's paraphrase. "The whole universe is not as it seems to be. We see about us a world of qualities and of life. They are all mere appearances."

It was a Polish cleric and astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus who had struck the first and hardest blow against common sense. Despite the evidence, plain to every child, that we live on solid ground and that the sun travels around us, Copernicus argued that everyone has it all wrong. The Earth travels around the sun, and it spins like a top as it travels. And no one feels a thing.

This was ludicrous, as everyone who heard about the newfangled theory delighted in pointing out. For one thing, the notion of a sun-centered universe contradicted scripture. Had not Joshua ordered the sun (rather than the Earth) to stand still in the sky? This was a huge hurdle. In the 1630s, nearly a century after Copernicus's death, Galileo would face the threat of torture and then die under house arrest for arguing in favor of a sun-centered universe.

(Isaac Newton was born in the year that Galileo died. That was coincidence, but in hindsight it seemed to presage England's rise to scientific preeminence and Italy's long drift to mediocrity. What was not coincidence was that seventeenth-century England welcomed science, on the grounds that science supported religion, and thrived; and seventeenth-century Italy feared science, on the grounds that science undermined religion, and decayed.) Copernicus himself had hesitated for decades before publishing his only scientific work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, perhaps because he knew it would stir religious fury as well as scientific opposition. Legend has it that he was handed the first copy of his masterpiece on his deathbed, on May 24, 1543, although by that point he may have been too weak to recognize it.

Religion aside, the scientific objections were enormous. If Copernicus was right, the Earth was speeding along a gigantic racetrack at tens of thousands of miles an hour, and none of the pa.s.sengers suffered so much as a mussed hair. The fastest that any any traveler had ever moved was roughly twenty miles an hour, on horseback. traveler had ever moved was roughly twenty miles an hour, on horseback.

These arguments came from the most esteemed scholars, not from yokels. They knew, on both scientific and philosophical grounds, that the Earth does not move. (Aristotle had argued that the Earth rests in place because it occupies its natural home, the center of the universe, just as an ordinary object on the ground stays in its its place unless something comes along and dislodges it.) Scholars pointed to countless observations that all led to the same conclusion. We can be sure the Earth stands still, one eminent philosopher explained, "for at the slightest jar of the Earth, we would see cities and fortresses, towns and mountains thrown down." place unless something comes along and dislodges it.) Scholars pointed to countless observations that all led to the same conclusion. We can be sure the Earth stands still, one eminent philosopher explained, "for at the slightest jar of the Earth, we would see cities and fortresses, towns and mountains thrown down."

But we don't see cities toppled, the skeptics noted, nor do we see any other evidence that we live on a hurtling platform. If we're racing along, why can we pour a drink into a gla.s.s without worrying that the gla.s.s will have moved hundreds of yards out of range by the time the drink reaches it? If we climb to the roof and drop a coin, why does it land directly below where we let it go and not miles away?

But Copernicus's new doctrine inspired fear as well as ridicule and confusion, because it led almost at once to questions that transcended science. If the Earth was only one planet among many, were those other worlds inhabited, too? By what sort of creatures? Had Christ died for their their sins? Did they have their own Adam and Eve, and what did that say about evil and original sin? "Worst of all," in the words of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, "if the universe is infinite, as many of the later Copernicans thought, where can G.o.d's Throne be located? In an infinite universe, how is man to find G.o.d or G.o.d man?" sins? Did they have their own Adam and Eve, and what did that say about evil and original sin? "Worst of all," in the words of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, "if the universe is infinite, as many of the later Copernicans thought, where can G.o.d's Throne be located? In an infinite universe, how is man to find G.o.d or G.o.d man?"

Copernicus could not disarm such fears by pointing to new discoveries or new observations. He never looked through a telescope-Galileo would be one of the first to turn telescopes to the heavens, some seven decades after Copernicus's death-and in any case telescopes could not show show the Earth moving but only provided evidence that let one deduce its motion. the Earth moving but only provided evidence that let one deduce its motion.

On the contrary, everything that Copernicus could see and feel spoke in favor of the old theories and against his own. "Sense pleads for Ptolemy," said Henry More, a colleague of Newton at Cambridge and a distinguished English philosopher. But common sense lost out. The old, Earth-centered theory that Ptolemy had devised was a mathematical jumble, and that marked it for death. The old system worked perfectly well, but it was a hodgepodge.

The great challenge to pre-Copernican astronomy had to do with sorting out the motions of the planets, which do not trace a simple course through the sky but at some point interrupt their journey and loop back in the direction they've just come from. (The stars present no such mystery. Each night Greek astronomers watched them rotating smoothly through the sky, turning in a circle with the North Star at its center. Each constellation moved around the center, like a group of horses on a merry-go-round, but the stars within a constellation never rearranged themselves.) [image]

The path of Saturn as seen from Earth, as depicted by Ptolemy in 13233 A.D. A.D. From March through June, Saturn appears to reverse course. From March through June, Saturn appears to reverse course.

Accounting for the planets' strange course changes would have been enough to give cla.s.sical astronomers fits. Making the challenge all the harder, cla.s.sical doctrine decreed that planets must travel in circular orbits (since planets are heavenly objects and circles are the only perfect shape). But circular orbits didn't fit the data. The solution was a complicated mathematical dodge in which the planets traveled not in circles but in the next best thing-in circles attached to circles, like revolving seats on a Ferris wheel, or even in circles attached to circles attached to circles.

Copernicus tossed out the whole complicated system. The planets weren't really moving sometimes in one direction and sometimes in the other, he argued, but simply orbiting the sun. The reason those orbits look so complicated is that we're watching from the Earth, a moving platform that is itself circling the sun. When we pa.s.s other planets (or they pa.s.s us), it looks as if they've changed course. If we could look down on the solar system from a vantage point above the sun, all the mystery would vanish.

This new system was conceptually tidier than the old one, but it didn't yield new or better predictions. For any practical question-predicting the timing of eclipses and other happenings in the solar system-the old system was fully as accurate as the new. No wonder Copernicus kept his ideas to himself for so long. And yet think of the astonishing leap this wary thinker finally nerved himself to make. With no other rationale but replacing a c.u.mbersome theory with one that was mathematically more elegant, he dared to to set the Earth in motion set the Earth in motion.

A few intellectuals might have been won over by a revolutionary argument with nothing in its favor but aesthetics. Most people wanted more. How did the new theory deal with the most basic questions? "If the moon, the planets and comets were of the same nature as bodies on earth," wrote Arthur Koestler, "then they too must have 'weight'; but what exactly does 'the weight' of a planet mean, what does it press against or where does it tend to fall? And if the reason why a stone falls to Earth is not the Earth's position in the center of the universe, then just why does the stone fall?"

Copernicus did not have answers, nor did he have anything to say about what keeps the planets in their orbits or what holds the stars in place. The Greeks had had provided such answers, and the answers had stood for millennia. (Each planet occupied a spot on an immense, transparent sphere. The spheres were nested, one inside the other, and centered on the Earth. The stars occupied the biggest, most distant sphere of all. As the spheres turned, they carried the planets and the stars with them.) provided such answers, and the answers had stood for millennia. (Each planet occupied a spot on an immense, transparent sphere. The spheres were nested, one inside the other, and centered on the Earth. The stars occupied the biggest, most distant sphere of all. As the spheres turned, they carried the planets and the stars with them.) No one could yet answer the new questions about the stars and planets. No one knew why objects on Earth obey one set of laws and bodies in the heavens another. No one even knew where to look for answers. John Donne, poet and cleric, spoke for many of his perplexed, frustrated contemporaries. "The Sun is lost, and th' earth, and no man's wit / Can well direct him where to look for it," he lamented, in a poem written a year after Galileo first looked through his telescope.

"The new Philosophy calls all in doubt," Donne wrote in another verse. " 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone."

Part Two: Hope and Monsters

Chapter Seventeen.

Never Seen Until This Moment.

Virginia Woolf famously remarked that "on or about December 1910 human character changed." She might have picked a different date, almost precisely three centuries earlier. On January 7, 1610, Galileo turned a telescope to the night sky. Human nature-or at least humankind's picture of the universe and our own place within it-changed forever.

Three months later Galileo told the world what he had seen, in a book called The Starry Messenger. The Starry Messenger. On the day the book reached Venice, the English amba.s.sador, Sir Henry Wotton, sent a startled letter home. "I send herewith unto his Majesty the strangest piece of news (as I may justly call it) that he hath ever yet received from any part of the world." Sir Henry's emphasis on the word On the day the book reached Venice, the English amba.s.sador, Sir Henry Wotton, sent a startled letter home. "I send herewith unto his Majesty the strangest piece of news (as I may justly call it) that he hath ever yet received from any part of the world." Sir Henry's emphasis on the word news news was fitting. What he was about to pa.s.s on was not merely "news" in the modern, journalistic sense but "news" in the truest sense-a report of something that until that moment had never been seen or even imagined. was fitting. What he was about to pa.s.s on was not merely "news" in the modern, journalistic sense but "news" in the truest sense-a report of something that until that moment had never been seen or even imagined.

What was this astonishing news? "The Mathematical Professor at Padua... hath discovered four new planets rolling about the sphere of Jupiter"-four new planets in the unchanging heavens-and that was only part of the story. Galileo had also uncovered the secret of the Milky Way; he had learned, for the first time, the true nature of the moon, with all its pockmarked imperfections; he had found that the supposedly pristine sun was marred with black spots. In short, Wotton reported in slack-jawed astonishment, "he hath... overthrown all former astronomy."

Four decades before, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe had startled the world with a discovery of his own. In 1572 Tycho saw what he took to be a new star in the constellation Ca.s.siopeia.23 The last of the great naked-eye astronomers, Tycho was a meticulous observer with an unsurpa.s.sed knowledge of the sky. He had known "all the stars in the sky" from boyhood, he boasted, but even casual stargazers knew Ca.s.siopeia, with its striking W shape. The supposed star shone so brightly that it could be seen during the day. It stayed in view for well over a year, which meant that it couldn't be a comet. It never changed its position against the backdrop of other stars, which meant that it had to be immensely far away. Nothing but a star had those properties. It was undeniable, and it was impossible. The last of the great naked-eye astronomers, Tycho was a meticulous observer with an unsurpa.s.sed knowledge of the sky. He had known "all the stars in the sky" from boyhood, he boasted, but even casual stargazers knew Ca.s.siopeia, with its striking W shape. The supposed star shone so brightly that it could be seen during the day. It stayed in view for well over a year, which meant that it couldn't be a comet. It never changed its position against the backdrop of other stars, which meant that it had to be immensely far away. Nothing but a star had those properties. It was undeniable, and it was impossible.

Today every promising actor or athlete is a "new star," and the cliche has lost its force, but the appearance of the first first new star in the immutable heavens was shocking. Tycho proclaimed it "the greatest wonder that has ever shown itself in the whole of nature since the beginning of the world, or in any case as great as when the Sun was stopped by Joshua's prayers." new star in the immutable heavens was shocking. Tycho proclaimed it "the greatest wonder that has ever shown itself in the whole of nature since the beginning of the world, or in any case as great as when the Sun was stopped by Joshua's prayers."

Unable to sort out its meaning, most observers labeled this aberration "Tycho's star" and did their best to put it out of their minds. But in 1604, still another new star appeared, this one perhaps even brighter than its predecessor. Galileo, caught up in the excitement, delivered a public lecture on the new star to a standing-room-only crowd. The discovery of two new stars within three decades shocked the learned world. Stargazers knew the appearance of the night sky as intimately as coast dwellers know the sea. We miss the point if we downplay their astonishment. How could a star appear where no star could be? All Europe was as stunned as another group, on the other side of the Atlantic, at almost the same moment.

On the morning of September 3, 1609, a band of Indians fishing from dugout canoes just off present-day Manhattan saw something odd in the distance. At first, it was only clear that the strange object was "something remarkably large swimming or floating on the water, and such as they had never seen before." These first witnesses raced to sh.o.r.e and recruited reinforcements. The object drew closer. The guesswork grew frenzied, "some [of the Indians] concluding it either to be an uncommon large fish or other animal, while others were of opinion it must be some very large house." The mysterious object drew closer still and then halted, its huge white wings billowing. In fear and fascination, the Indians on sh.o.r.e and the sailors on the deck of Henry Hudson's Half Moon Half Moon stood staring at one another. stood staring at one another.

What was it like to see what no one had ever seen before?

In that same year of 1609, perhaps in May, Galileo heard talk of a Dutch invention, a lens maker's device with the power to bring far-off objects into close view. By this time, reading gla.s.ses to compensate for farsightedness were centuries old. Gla.s.ses to help with nearsightedness were more recent but widely available, too. Lenses for farsightedness were convex, thick in the middle and thin at the edges (lentil-shaped, hence the word lens lens); lenses for nearsightedness were concave, thinner in the middle than at the edges. The breakthrough that made the telescope possible was to combine a convex lens with a concave one. Everything hinged on the proportion between the strengths of the two lenses, which called for difficult feats of grinding and polishing.

By the end of August, Galileo had built one of the sorcerer's tubes for himself. It didn't look like much-a skinny tube about a yard long made mostly from paper and wood, it resembled a tightly rolled poster-and it took a bit of fiddling to get the hang of seeing through it. Galileo unveiled it to a group of high-ranking Venetians. They took turns peering through his telescope and responded with "infinite amazement," in Galileo's proud words.

"Many of the n.o.bles and senators, although of a great age, mounted more than once to the top of the highest church tower in Venice," Galileo reported, "in order to see sails and shipping that were so far off that it was two hours before they were seen, without my spy-gla.s.s, steering full sail into the harbor." The military advantages of such an invention were plain, but Galileo made sure that no one could miss them. The telescope, he pointed out, allows its users "to discover at a much greater distance than usual the hulls and sails of the enemy, so that for two hours and more we can detect him before he detects us."

Galileo rocketed to fame. Thrilled by what they had seen, the senators immediately doubled his salary and awarded him a lifetime contract at Padua. (Galileo had helped his own cause by presenting the senators an elaborate telescope as a gift, this one no drab tube but an ornate instrument in red and brown leather decorated, like an elegant book, in gold filigree.) Galileo's decision to highlight the telescope's value for warfare and commerce was cagey, but it was necessary, too. Galileo had grand ambitions. He knew from the start that the real discoveries would come from looking up to the stars, not out to sea. Which meant that the world had to be cajoled into believing that it could trust the sights revealed by this new, mysterious invention. In Rome, in 1611, he pointed his telescope at a palace far in the distance, and "we readily counted its each and every window, even the smallest." With the telescope trained on a distant wooden sign, "we distinguished even the periods carved between the letters."

So the telescope provided honest information. It revealed revealed true features of faraway objects; it didn't somehow, through trickery or strange properties of light and lenses, conjure up mirages. If Galileo had simply aimed his telescope at the heavens, without preliminaries, skeptics might have dismissed the wonders he claimed to see. (Even so, some people refused to look, as today some might shy away from a purported ESP machine.) true features of faraway objects; it didn't somehow, through trickery or strange properties of light and lenses, conjure up mirages. If Galileo had simply aimed his telescope at the heavens, without preliminaries, skeptics might have dismissed the wonders he claimed to see. (Even so, some people refused to look, as today some might shy away from a purported ESP machine.) Galileo continued to improve his design and soon produced a telescope able to magnify twenty times, twice as powerful as his first model. He could now be certain that the new stars that had appeared in 1572 and 1604 were the merest prelude, a two-note introduction to a visual symphony.

His own excitement fully matched that of the ecstatic senators in San Marco's belltower. The "absolute novelty" of his discoveries, Galileo wrote, filled him with "incredible delight." He marveled at the sight of "stars in myriads, which have never been seen before, and which surpa.s.s the old, previously known stars in number more than ten times." The moon, the perfect disc of a thousand poets' odes, "does not possess a smooth and polished surface but one rough and uneven and just like the face of the Earth itself, everywhere full of vast protuberances, deep chasms, and sinuosities."

The Milky Way was not some kind of cosmic fog reflecting light from the sun or moon, as had long been speculated. A glance through the telescope would at once put an end to all "wordy disputes upon this subject," Galileo boasted, and would leave no doubt that "the Galaxy is nothing else but a ma.s.s of innumerable stars planted together in cl.u.s.ters... many of them tolerably large and extremely bright, and the number of small ones quite beyond determination."

Yet another discovery was the most important of all, guaranteed to "excite the greatest astonishment by far." But even for Galileo the astonishment was slow in dawning. He had aimed his telescope at Jupiter and spotted several bright objects near the planet. The next day they were still there, but they had rearranged themselves. A few days later, another rearrangement. Some days there were four objects; some days only two or three. What could it mean?