Blog Post 5

"These selfish and domineering men, having greedily exploited the fruits of science, found that the cold eye of science had been turned on a primeval but contrived poverty that could clearly be swept away if they were swept away themselves. They showered us with threats and bribes, irresistible to feeble souls. But can we deny ourselves to the crowd and still remain scientists?... A human race which shambles around in a pearly haze of superstition and old saws, too ignorant to develop its own powers, will never be able to develop those powers of nature which you people are revealing to it" (Brecht, 104)

This is a quote from Galileo's longest script towards the end of the play. I thought this whole passage was really interesting, but these few lines really stood out to be. Galileo is speaking with a sense of disappointment in humankind. He is disappointed because the people of Italy took his work and morphed it into some shiny, glamorous phenomenon instead of appreciating the hard science behind it and the many, many years of reading and research. He stated "A human race which shambles around in a pearly haze of superstition and old saws, too ignorant to develop its own powers, will never be able to develop those powers of nature which you people are revealing to it," which tells me that Galileo is literally screaming "Hey! Look what I did!" but society is too caught up in their misconceived ideas of religion/witchcraft to appreciate Galileo's discoveries for what they truly are.n

At first, after reading the end of this play, I thought that Galileo was giving up on society as a whole. But after rereading a few passages and thinking about it for a period of time, it almost feels like he's actually laughing at the people of Italy who are attempting to morph his discoveries into something they are not. It seems that towards the end of his life, he was determined to pass away with a sense of pride in his work, regardless of what those around him believed.