Life of Galileo Blog Post

In scene 3, the lines starting with “SAGREDO: In other words that it’s just a lot of stars. Then where’s God?” and ending with “GALILEO: Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race” (Brecht 27) really stuck out to me. I actually love this scene because it not only gives us a glimpse of the views of people during Galileo’s time period, but also how those views started to change into more scientific and fact-based ones. In this scene we observe Sagredo’s skepticism of Galileo’s ideas because they are not centered around God. This skepticism emphasizes how people during this time period only chose to believe things if it aligned with what they learned at church or other places of worship essentially. However, Galileo explains that his views have changed because prior to his discoveries about the universe he did not have proof that God was not the underlying reason, while now he does. However, Sagredo also gets mad at this, truly displaying how engrained it was in people’s brains that God had to be the creator and reason for everything back in this time. Specifically, what I found most compelling is Galileo’s statement, “thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race” (Brecht 27), which is honestly quite a beautiful statement. I believe that here, the author is emphasizing both his and Galileo’s view that human’s must think for themselves instead of just adhering to what they are told is the truth, and that this ability is actually one of the best privileges of being human. We also get to catch a glimpse of how as people became more educated, they were able to actually “think” for themselves based on what they actually believed. I find that this says a lot about how and why opinions were changing at this time, but also about how Galileo played a part in this change of viewpoints. In addition to what this scene says about this time period and its views, I also believe that Galileo’s decision to go against the normal shows how confident he was in his findings due to his lack of fear, which is interesting to consider. Personally, I very much enjoy this scene as I agree with Galileo that regardless of what thought or opinion you hold, the simple idea of coming up with your own is truly a magnificent thing.