Giorgio De SantillanaCritiques

$150. Excellent condition.

I'm not as interested in Renaissance politics as I thought I might be, but the diagrams of the solar system according to the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems (both highly complex, with epicycles) are worth keeping the book for. I'm going to shelve it with astronomy.

7/9/22

Fascinating and almost hypnotising in its treatment of mythology but the theory it proposes is rather meaningless. Let's say you're right and the ancients were super smart and had knowledge that was since lost. You've shown there is no way to recover it beyond knowledge we already have and can recognise fragments of in the myths. In my opinion all this is completely unsubstantiated, seeing patterns in toast, like bible code. Still fascinating, shame about how obtuse the writing is. Would read more.

A very comprehensive view of world myth with the aim of demonstrating that seemingly nonsensical tales are actually encoded with knowledge of the procession of the equinoxes and other astronomical lore. I understand why Hamlet was dragged in, though I think it is a bit of a stretch. Interesting but very long and lots of footnotes.

First, this is not formatted very well on the Kindle. This problem made it difficult at times to read. Footnotes, etc., showed up in the middle of text. If I had the hard copy it may have been easier to follow. Also, with a hard copy I would more easily be able to flip back and forth to re-read and/or compare ideas that are presented.
This is not a book if you have no background on comparative myth. I have a little so I could follow on a basic level.
If I were younger (I'm 66) Id have gotten texts and papers referenced and gone much more in-depth with this reading. But I just don't want to take the time that would entail.½

This is a book that reminds me of the mythological discourses by Joseph Campbell. It is an anthropological detective story that traces the origins of myths throughout the world and finds common elements in their origins. One finding is that the geography of myth is not that of the earth but rather is celestial. For anyone who is familiar with Greek mythology this is not a surprise, but we find here again that mythological language transcends cultural and geographic boundaries. The author explores myths unfamiliar and familiar. For example he discusses the Epic of Gilgamesh in "The Adventure and the Quest". In it he finds connections with myths from India to Greece and beyond linking the symbols to constellations in the sky. The chapter concludes with a reference to knowledge:

"The notion of fire, in various forms, has been one of the recurring themes of this essay. Gilgamesh, like Prometheus, is intimately associated with it. The principle of fire, and the means of producing or acquiring it are best approached through them." (p 316)

The essence of human knowledge seems bound up in these mythological origins. A difficult read, but worth persevering, Hamlet's Mill should be of interest to all who are interested in the origins of man's mind and his images of the world.

Fascinating, if somewhat dizzyingly presented and unsystematic. The project is to show that mythic ideas about cyclical time, world ages, their characteristics and dominant players, were actually based in close observation of the heavens and the complex apparent movements of planets and constellations, and particularly the precession of the equinoxes. Since the whole universe was thought to be ruled by the same living, volitional forces, it was by no means a simple “primitive” or childlike fantasy that what happened in the sky was related to what happened on earth in describable ways.

The authors’ point is not to dismiss the modern scientific method but to say that there is a tendency to look at the history of human knowledge in a reductively linear way, from less to more sophistication and mastery of complexity, and that such a view actually runs counter to the evidence provided even by what little we have of these early cosmologies.

For folklore fans, the stories themselves are from a treasure trove of not-the-usual-suspects sources: Guyana, Peru, India, Persia, Africa, Northwest and Plains Indians, as well as the Norse and Greco-Roman standbys.

Molto interessante, pone i miti antichi in una nuova prospettiva con riferimenti molto ampi in una lunga serie di culture e civiltà. Le spiegazioni astronomiche avrebbero beneficiato di qualche illustrazione in più, mentre quelle presenti prima delle corpose appendici sono utili ma un po' slegate dal contesto. Inoltre le parole greche usate a più riprese senza traduzione e con l'alfabeto greco sfuggiranno a chi, come il sottoscritto, non ha fatto il liceo classico. Tuttavia è un libro che consiglio proprio per la sua capacità di spiegare e ricomprendere le leggende base della mitologia in chiave astronomica.

I apologize for the length of this review but it was for a history class and felt like posting it...

The genesis Giorgio de Santillana’s book, “The Crime of Galileo,” grew out of his research for a translation of Galileo’s “Dialogue on the Great World Systems.” The author became drawn farther and farther in to a seminal moment of world history, the secularization of knowledge. De Santillana sets forth his research in an overly erudite and highly scholarly account of Galileo’s so-called crime, which is befitting of the Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1954 until his death in 1974. The author was born in Rome in 1902 and died in the United States.

The book is not strictly a biography, as it only covers the relevant periods of his persecution by the church. The first few chapters cover in great detail the events of 1616, when Galileo published his first of several papers proposing a mobile Earth, and Galileo’s reasons for moving from a low paying university position in Padua to a betterprotected position in Florence. The city of Florence was more insulated from the machinations of the Jesuit and Catholic monopoly on learning, which Galileo knew he would soon have to defend himself against. His concepts of heliocentrism (sun-centered) was counter to the carefully rationalized abstract system that the Catholic church had built every aspect of their world view upon. Any attack on this foundation would bring the entirety of church doctrine, and indirectly their authority, to the ground.

Chapter Three, “Philosophical Intermezzo,” is easily the highlight of the book, and should be circulated as a handy pamphlet. The chapter discusses both the system of Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, as well as the Aristotelian system that the church believed in, both in great detail. An interesting point is that the church did not necessarily believe that their Aristotelian system represented the actuality of the universe, but an Earth-centered system was required as a prerequisite for their religious doctrines expounding the Earth as the God-favored center of Creation.

Chapter Four is devoted to the interesting character of Robert Bellarmine, a highly learned man of his age. While wholly devoted to his beloved church, he was reasonably well informed of the scientific research of his day. He was happy to plead ignorance as an excuse for not understanding the mathematicians of the day, but was clearly aware of contradictions between appearances and actuality. An example of such a contradiction is how a person riding in a cart sees buildings moving by but the viewer clearly knows that he and the cart are the party moving. Balancing this idea with a mobile Earth theory was the biggest problem Bellarmine had with Galileo’s writings, hence his willingness to feign ignorance as a solution. Chapters Five and Six explore the actual charges levied against Galileo in 1616, much of which were false charges brought before a church commission by biased officials who distorted facts and purposely misquoted Galileo’s writings. Galileo had presented a reasonable defense of himself using scripture, but much of what he presented was never read by the inquisition. Heliocentrism was officially declared a heresy, and writings on the subject were either banned, or ordered to revision to avoid any heretical ideas.

Following this is a short chapter of the years between his problems with the church, introducing a series of new characters. One of these is the new Pope, Urban VIII, who is the focus of Chapter Eight. In his pre-Pope days as Maffeo Barberini he had befriended and encouraged Galileo, but as Pope he became too busy with the Thirty Years’ War, and enriching his family on the side, to be bothered with free-thinkers such as Galileo. He could brook no opposition to anything Catholic during his difficult time as Pope. Urban VII ordered Galileo to stand trial for heresy in 1633 for his long-standing anti-church doctrines, and notably for the 1623 publication of his “Dialogues.” This work compares the two competing systems of the universe by way of a dialogue between Salviati (Galileo’s heliocentrism), Simplicio (The Catholic Earth-centered philosophical view) and Sagredo, a neutral observer. The “Dialogue on the Great World Systems” itself is the focus of a short Chapter Nine

The remainder of the book covers the trial of Galileo on “Suspicion of Heresy” in great detail, with chapters devoted to the summons to Rome, the difficulties of the Inquisitors, the actual trial itself is covered in Chapters Twelve through Fourteen. The sentencing to imprisonment at the whim of the inquisition and its swift change to permanent house arrest, followed by an epilogue comprise the remaining two chapters.

His prosecutors had a difficult time pursuing their quarry in the trial because they had such a difficult time understanding Galileo’s ideas. This, plus their bias towards Galileo ridiculing the church (via Simplicio) led to a heated trial based not on facts presented, but emotion and power. The Catholic church was mired in the divisive Thirty Years’ War and rational thinking was often set aside in favor of flash decisions and outbursts designed to bring about a predestined decision in the church’s favor.

In conclusion, de Santillana presents a case that Galileo made more trouble for himself than he needed to by publishing his works in common Italian, instead of dusty old Latin. If he had written in Latin, the unwashed masses of Italy would never have had their little apple-carts upset. Or, more likely, the church would never have needed to take drastic steps to curb Galileo, lest he upset those apple-carts. While too technical for everyday bedtime reading, de Santillana’s account will probably stand for generations as the definitive exploration of the trial of Galileo based on in-depth research into every character on every side involved in the trial and the excruciatingly detailed examination of primary sources. The highlight of the primary sources is a comparison of signatures. The first is the shaky writing of an old man terrified by the threat of lifetime imprisonment, the second is a confident and smooth signature of a man who has accepted that he had been somewhat one sided in his arguments of a decade earlier and had convinced his persecutors of this fact, which allowed for much leniency by the jury. De Santillana, a native of Rome, fluently goes through the Latin and Italian sources from the Vatican and throughout Italy to ferret out every possible detail of this critical moment in tradition versus free thought.

I have read this book twice many years apart; first, as background reading in an overview of the History of Science in college and second, in a study group in recent years where a group of adults pondered the meaning and value of this seminal battle in the history of ideas.
Giorgio de Santillana wrote The Crime of Galileo as an intellectual whodunit which traces not the life but the mental journey of Galileo on his road to personal tragedy. When Galileo was 46 years old, in 1610, he developed the telescope, secured tenure and a big raise at Padua, then went on to make all the discoveries announced in Sidereus Nuncius: mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus, etc. By naming the moons of Jupiter after the Medici family, Galileo landed the job of Mathematician and Philosopher (meaning Physicist) to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was able to return to his native land. This move upset his friends in Venice who had worked so hard to secure his promotion at Padua only months before. Of course, Galileo’s belief that his discoveries with the telescope strongly favored the Copernican world view meant he was headed for trouble with the Church. In fact, his Venetian friends warned him that it might be dangerous to leave the protection of the Venetian state. What we have in this book is the depiction of a martyr second only to Socrates. Santillana succeeds in placing this fascinating episode in the history of science in the context and logic of its own time.½

Cannot possibly say what this book is, finding science in myth would be a lot of understatment. Have read this about five times and have dipped into so often.Yet I totally disagree with the premise.

Zounds what a tangle. It would take a team of Robert Graves' to sort out all of this information. Books like this and THE SIRIUS MYSTERY make me feel that I should have stuck with my childhood football watching buddies. Puts too much strain on my poor little brain.

Amazing scholarship combined with exceptional thought and analysis make this an essential work. The book is marred however by the lack of an hypothesis as to the reasons why our ancestors went to so much pain to pass on the knowledge encoded in the myths. It uncovers many mysteries but it does not offer any answers.

Saggio sul mito e sulla struttura del tempo

This extraordinary book is subtitled: "An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and its Transmission Through Myth".

This is what the book is about, more or less, but it is hard to tell. This essay is both virtually unreadable and amazingly erudite. There is scarcely any document more than 1000 years old that these scholars have not read. What we get is a digested compendium of their knowledge.

From a welter of literary reference an astonishing thesis slowly emerges. It may have helped if the authors had explicitly advanced it at some point, but they give no sign of wishing to make any kind of case at all, merely letting their knowledge speak for itself.

The major lesson we learn here is that vast swathes of ancient literature displayed an obsession with an astronomical phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes.

There is not space here to explain precession and my thoughts on why the ancients found it so important are speculative. However, their interest in this matter convinces me that their scientific knowledge was vastly more advanced than most are prepared to credit.

Fascinating stuff if you can bear it. Best skimmed through quickly and dipped into randomly later.

R.H.M. Elwes

Thomas Salusbury's translation; from Powell's?

Contained lined postcard with purple lines on 1 side and red lines on the other: "Cheltenham Books" Wyndmoor, PA

879232153

In the gallery of what might be called the martyrs of thought, the image of Galileo recanting before the Italian Inquisition stirs the minds of educated modern men second only to the picture of Socrates drinking the Hemlock. That image of Galileo is out of focus . . . because it has been distorted by three centuries of rationalist prejudice and clerical polemics. To refocus it clearly, within the logic of its own time . . . de Santillana has written The Crime of Galileo, masterly intellectual whodunit which traces not the life but the mental footsteps of Galileo on his road to personal tragedy."

15" x 10 1/2" coffee table book....

7/9/22