Gutbrain Records

Thursday, 02 October 2008

In 1970 Tom Stoppard wrote a screenplay about Galileo. It never became a film, or a play, as Stoppard at one point thought it might. In 2003 Areté magazine published the full text of Stoppard's Galileo, and it is certainly worth reading.

In the second scene, Galileo's student Cosimo asks, "Does it really matter whether the sun moves round the earth or the other way round?"

Galileo replies: "Matter? Not to the earth or the sun — but there are interests, in Rome, for whom a moving earth is a threat to stability… just another planet, whirling through space, no longer the apple of God's eye — you see? When dogma prevails over truth, it matters, yes."