新概念英语4册第32课 (*)

Galileo Reborn

In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy; but the scientific dust has long since settled, and today we can see even his famous clash with the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective. But, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problem child for historians of science.

The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. He was, above all, a man who experimented: who despised the prejudices and book learning of the Aristotelians, who put his questions to nature instead of to the ancients, and who drew his conclusions fearlessly. He had been the first to turn a telescope to the sky, and he had seen there evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and Ptolemy together. He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tpwer of Pisa and dropped various weights from the top, who rolled balls down inclined planes, and then generalized the results of his many experiments into the famous law of free fall. But a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense of the period, and particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in the scientific revolution, has profoundly modified this view of Galileo. Today, although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings, among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. At the same time our sympathy for Balileo`s opponents has grown somewhat. His telescopic observation are justly immortal; they aroused great interest at the time, they had important theoretical consequences, and they provided a striking demostration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. But can we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if we remember that to use a telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimated familiarity with one`s instrument? Was the philosopher who refused to look through Galileo`s telescope more culpable than those who alleged that the spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse`s great telescope in the eighteen-forties were scratches left by the grinder? We can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of Jupiter were produced by Galileo`s spy-glass if we recall that in his day, as for centuries before, curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth; and if a single curved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them?

在他的一生中，伽利略是争论的焦点。但科学的乌云一直都存在。今天我们认为他与宗教的激烈冲突是有着合适的理由的，但是想法，这正是现代科学家认为伽利略在科学历史上是一个问题少年的出发点。

以前关于伽利略的观点很简单。毕竟，他是唯一做过实验的人，他鄙视偏与和亚里士多德的观点。他将问题放在自然角度而不是历史角度考虑。并且他勇敢地提出自己的结论。