
Galileo
And the Science Deniers
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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By:
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Mario Livio
About this listen
An “intriguing and accessible” (Publishers Weekly) interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history’s greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers.
“We really need this story now, because we’re living through the next chapter of science denial.” (Bill McKibben)
Galileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises - such as minimizing the dangers of climate change - because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities.
Astrophysicist and best-selling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise and uses his “gifts as a great storyteller” (The Washington Post) to provide a “refreshing perspective” (Booklist) into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin.
Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science - which, as Livio reminds us in this “admirably clear and concise” (The Times, London) book, remains threatened everyday.
©2020 Mario Livio (P)2020 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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A novel and brilliant look at how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership: acclaimed historian Michael J. Gerhardt, who appeared during the impeachment proceedings of President Trump, reveals how a group of five men mentored an obscure lawyer with no executive experience to become American’s greatest leader
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Interesting book
- By Brian on 03-07-21
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Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire
- The Biggest Ideas in Science from Quanta
- By: Thomas Lin - editor, Sean Carroll - foreword
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Bringing together the best and most interesting science stories appearing in Quanta Magazine over the past five years, Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire reports on some of the greatest scientific minds as they test the limits of human knowledge. It communicates science by taking it seriously, wrestling with difficult concepts, and clearly explaining them in a way that speaks to our innate curiosity about our world and ourselves.
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Broad collection of specific physics applications
- By James S. on 06-26-19
By: Thomas Lin - editor, and others
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The Birds That Audubon Missed
- Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
- By: Kenn Kaufman
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.
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I LOVE the audible version of this book
- By NYC person on 10-01-24
By: Kenn Kaufman
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Icebound
- Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
- By: Andrea Pitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling tradition of Hampton Sides’ In the Kingdom of Ice, a “gripping adventure tale” (The Boston Globe) recounting Dutch polar explorer William Barents’ three harrowing Arctic expeditions - the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for survival.
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Great book - missing maps :(
- By Stephen on 01-20-21
By: Andrea Pitzer
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Britain's War
- Volume 1, Into Battle, 1937-1941
- By: Daniel Todman
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The most terrible emergency in Britain's history, the Second World War, required an unprecedented national effort. An exhausted country had to fight an unexpectedly long war and found itself much diminished amongst the victors. The outcome of the war was nonetheless a triumph, not least for a political system that proved well adapted to the demands of a total conflict and for a population who had to make many sacrifices but who were spared most of the horrors experienced in the rest of Europe.
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Great Performance, Biased with out a warning!
- By dell992 on 06-21-16
By: Daniel Todman
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The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.
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Few forests, but lots of trees
- By Steve Pagano on 10-05-15
By: Francis Fukuyama
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A Short History of Reconstruction (Updated Edition)
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the quest of emancipated slaves’ searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and one committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.
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Educational
- By Michael G Morgan on 08-31-24
By: Eric Foner
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The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
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Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
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Valley Forge
- By: Bob Drury, Tom Clavin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Valley Forge is the riveting true story of an underdog US toppling an empire. Using new and rarely seen contemporaneous documents - and drawing on a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that capture the innovation and energy that led to the birth of our nation - the New York Times best-selling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin provide a breathtaking account of this seminal and previously undervalued moment in the battle for American independence.
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Moving story about saving the Revolution
- By LEE on 11-15-18
By: Bob Drury, and others
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Race to the Bottom
- Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education
- By: Luke Rosiak
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Race to the Bottom, Luke Rosiak uncovers the shocking reason why American education is failing: Powerful special interest groups are using our kids as guinea pigs in vast ideological experiments. These groups’ initiatives aren’t focused on making children smarter—but on implementing a radical agenda, no matter the effect on academic standards.
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This is literally 100% propaganda.
- By Ekim N. on 03-11-22
By: Luke Rosiak
Completely
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Well-written
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The endless struggle to circle wide and quiet around the obsticles to truth.
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struggled to get through this one
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Excellent
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From time to time is hard to followup with all the characters, but it doesn't diminish the narrative.
Thrilling!
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SSDD
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The book focuses on the time of his scientific discoveries and his trial by the inquisition. He didn’t invent the telescope but once he got this new invention that could magnify distant things, he kept improving it to see even further and used it to focus on the sky. He discovered that the moon also had mountains and valleys and craters. The moon was thought to be made of something different than the earth which allowed it to float in the sky. He discovered that there were planets that are like our moon and eventually realized that some of them had moons also. But, the most controversial part was that he came to the belief that Copernicus was right, putting him in the crosshairs of the church.
And, this is the real focus of the book. It is about how those who deny science hinder the development of knowledge and progress. In that, it does a fairly good job but overlooks a few less convenient facts. The problem is that Galileo didn’t directly oppose the Bible with his views. He opposed the interpretation of the Bible by the Roman Church. He specifically tried to explain how the Bible could be true while the facts that he saw were also true. The Roman Church’s view was based on a literal interpretation of the actual words of scripture when it states that the sun rises in the east. In other words, the issue was not just whether the Bible was literally true, but whether the Bible could have been using metaphorical language. Every language uses metaphor and only those who don’t know the language don’t understand what they mean.
In addition, it ignores the fact that, at the time, the facts that Galileo saw through his telescope didn’t rule out another interpretation. The view of the Roman Church was that the earth didn’t move and the sun, planets, and stars rotated around the earth. Galileo’s findings clearly showed that that was not true. However, another scientist of the age, Tycho Brahe interpreted those same facts to also show a stationary earth with the sun, moon, and stars circling the earth, but the planets (not including the earth) circling the sun. With the limited knowledge of the day, that view could not be proven wrong. Galileo argued against it by using the tides, which he said rose and fell because of the rotation of the earth, just like water in a pan will slosh around when the pan is moved. However, we now know that is not what causes the tides and that they are instead caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. The Roman Church did not argue against that and thus it was not purely that they were against science per se. They were against Galileo’s interpretation of the science. There were others who defended Galileo without believing that he was correct, believing that Brahe’s view was better. However, the fact remains that the Roman Church did place itself as judge over which science to accept and based it on a misinterpretation of the Bible. By doing so they impeded the free expression that allows science to progress and throttled a brilliant mind who may have gone on to make more discoveries if he had had the freedom to do so. It also took his publications out of circulation so that others could not benefit from them. Though some copies were preserved and spread, the reach was severely limited.
It also tries to extend that to a comparison with science deniers today and again with a mixed result. It certainly is true that there are many deniers of science today and their tribe seems to be increasing. Climate change is an example as is the recent rejection of the science behind Covid-19 (Livio completed the book before the pandemic became well-known and before it had spread widely and doesn’t mention it as an example). Livio discusses both evolution and climate change and ranks the latter as of greater importance (because if a group doesn’t believe in evolution, it doesn’t hurt those around them but if people don’t believe in climate change and take no effort to slow its progress it will have disastrous consequences). What Livio doesn’t note is that science is always changing as new information is found or new explanations for existing information are put forth. Science is based on extant knowledge which is, by definition, always incomplete. It does make mistakes. And, scientists are human. There are great checks and balances in the system, but some scientists still fudge the data (sometimes purposely, sometimes due to preconceived notions) to achieve recognition for their discoveries. While I agree with him on the dangers involved in denying science, scientists have to also accept that some of the blame for that is in their own hubris in making declarative statements too soon which have to be retracted or overturned later, thus reducing the trust of many people who don’t understand the science, but do remember the times when they have been deceived or put down as ignorant.
Overall, the book is good but could be better. The subject is certainly important but not every disagreement with “science” is a denial of science per se and is more of a built-up mistrust of not only scientists but others in authority who have fooled them, not once, and not even twice. It would have been much better if he had treated this part of his subject with more humility and delved more into the reasons that more and more people are denying science. In a sense, his book is aimed more at people who believe, he is preaching to the choir, instead of writing more towards those who are his subjects, who are more and more suspicious of science. It turns out that in today’s world, it’s not religion that is the real problem. It’s much broader than that, and the issue is even much broader than just denying science. It’s more of a suspicion of those in authority and those who are educated but don’t understand the way the average person sees their world.
Good but Incomplete
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Should be required reading by anyone in leadership
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Gets technical
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