[HN Gopher] Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astrono...
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Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text
Author : tzury
Score : 211 points
Date : 2026-03-05 16:47 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| macintux wrote:
| I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when
| researching relatively recent history. To find Galileo's
| handwriting 400 years later, effectively engaging in both
| agreement and debate with Ptolemy through the latter's work...
| even though he specifically was looking for it, it still must
| have been surreal.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _even though he specifically was looking for it_
|
| The historian was looking for conceptual connections between
| Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo's handwriting
| in Ptolemy's book seemed to be a surprise.
| macintux wrote:
| I interpreted the fact that he was reviewing multiple copies
| of the same text as him searching for Galileo's notes, but I
| suppose it's possible that the motivation was the possibility
| of discrepancies between printings.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The Almagest was hand written about 1400 years before
| Galileo lived, so it's not so much looking at different
| printings as at different editions that are based on
| different set of copies of the copies of the copies etc,
| further many editors would try to "fix" the ancient work,
| removing material they didn't like and adding their own
| stuff or material from other works... it can get very
| messy.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Owen Gingerich was a historian of astronomy who did a
| census of printed early editions of Copernicus' book _De
| revolutionibus_. He found a tradition of students copying
| annotations from teachers readings into their own copies of
| the book. I recollect that he was able to trace various
| traditions of commentary each stemming from a well known
| astronomy teacher.
|
| I suppose that checking early printings of key works
| looking for annotations is a pretty standard thing to do
| now.
| Diederich wrote:
| > I have had the experience of serendipitous discovery when
| researching relatively recent history.
|
| I would really love to hear about this. (:
| macintux wrote:
| Nothing all that exciting, just pleasure from finding a photo
| in a local newspaper of my great-great-grandfather's
| (approximately, I don't remember the specifics at the moment)
| car being pulled by horses out of a local river, or
| researching a family name I found in a cemetery and finding
| interesting tidbits about their history.
|
| Probably the most impressive effort I stumbled upon was a
| woman from rural Indiana who collected (and typed up)
| thousands of pages of local history & genealogy in the
| mid-20th century. Was interesting reading personal accounts
| of Morgan's Raid, for example.
| mrose11 wrote:
| What a wild find. Good for the historian.
| behnamoh wrote:
| That's not "ancient". That word often means thousand(s) of years
| ago.
| jswelker wrote:
| I clicked just to make this same pedantic comment, fellow
| traveller.
| kgeist wrote:
| >The pages belonged to The Almagest, in which second century
| polymath Claudius Ptolemy described his vision of an Earth-
| centered cosmos.
|
| Where's the article wrong?
| josefx wrote:
| Galileos notes where found in a 16th century print of The
| Almagest.
|
| If you copy the pythagorean theorem onto a page and cross it
| out, would you be "defacing an ancient text"?
| ant6n wrote:
| pedantry works best when correct.
|
| "Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing
| and recorded human history through late antiquity."
|
| Perhaps you are mixing up "ancient" and "prehistoric".
| brabel wrote:
| Galileo lived in the 16th century. Late antiquity ends around
| the end of the Western Roman Empire I think, which was before
| 500AD!?
| edgyquant wrote:
| But the text his notes were found in is ancient
| lostlogin wrote:
| No it isn't, unless you date reprints to first edition
| publication.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Not particularly important, but the title adding "handwritten"
| implies that they had non-handwritten notes too...
| mock-possum wrote:
| Dictated? Transcribed?
| dotancohen wrote:
| He who is valiant and pure of spirit will find the holy grail
| in the castle of aaaeeerrrrr...
| sjdrc wrote:
| Or it implies they were handwritten by Galileo himself vs his
| words written by someone rlse
| ocean2 wrote:
| Galileo Galilei, and yet people still refer to him by his
| firstname alone. It's painful to read.
|
| It is, as if we refer to Isaac and Albert when speaking about
| Gravity and Relativity.
| yapfrog wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei#Name
|
| Surnames are optional in Italy at that time. Galileo is how he
| refers to himself and how people refer to him.
| spockz wrote:
| There are many Isaacs and Alberts. How many notable Galileo(s,
| not to use Galilei) do we have?
| 9dev wrote:
| His name works like "Bostoner from Boston", so it was
| reasonable for him at the time to refer to himself as just
| Bostoner.
| srean wrote:
| I have always been intrigued by the similarity of Italian
| naming conventions and that of the Arabs and Persians.
|
| Resident of, son of, father of, family of. Leonardo of Pisa
| of the family of Bonacci being another well known one.
|
| I suppose it is not specific to those cultures and was a more
| widespread convention.
| pmontra wrote:
| In Italy it's extremely usual to refer to the greatests of the
| great people of those ages by their given name: Leonardo,
| Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo. It's testament to their
| greatness. There is only one Dante that matters, so there is no
| need to add Alighieri but if you do nobody notices anything
| strange. It's only a bit redundant. Using only the surname
| would be unusual.
| gignico wrote:
| It's unbelievable how that 16th century book looks like it is
| written in LaTeX. Or plain TeX, probably, given its age XD
| weinzierl wrote:
| Not at all surprising. There were some _" unshakable truths"_
| in typesetting that basically held up from Gutenberg until the
| Internet came along. Knuth (partly through his friend Zapf) is
| well aware of them and respected them in TeX.
|
| It's relatively recent that we've found out some of these _"
| universal"_ rules might not have been so important all along
| and together with technology as another factor things changed.
| cladopa wrote:
| Not that surprising if you consider that books before the
| Gutenberg printing press were artisans work of art that
| required years of work of specialists.
|
| In other words: Today some of those will cost more than a
| Ferrari to make. They use Vellum paper that is much better that
| today's but require killing hundreds of animals each.
|
| Only very rich people could afford that. I had access to
| European books collections of the 16th that are in Color, much
| much better than any normal book we have.
|
| If you think about that it is normal. Color require more
| printing plates in a printer, but just changing your ink if you
| do it manually.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > They use Vellum paper that is much better that today's but
| require killing hundreds of animals each.
|
| Yes, but also, it's more of byproduct. You raise sheep for
| wool, they're going to lamb every year, you eat most of the
| lambs, someone buys some of the skins to turn onto vellum.
|
| The processing to produce vellum would be expensive, and not
| something every shepherd would be making at home, but the
| input sheepskin would be plentiful.
| Aerolfos wrote:
| Really? Because what TeX did was make it possible to write
| "proper" books or formal texts via a computer - that was the
| whole point
|
| A 16th-century formal book like this _would_ be the gold
| standard to replicate if you want to make "serious" texts. And
| yes, in scientific literature, the "serious" text is a narrow
| target and far narrower than you might expect from the possible
| variation in a handmade artisanal work. Mostly because when
| everything is "custom", standardization and regular structure
| is exceptional
| tristramb wrote:
| It's not unlikely that Donald Knuth looked at examples of 16th
| Century typesetting when he came to design TeX. Or looked at
| examples of typesetting that had been influenced by 16th
| Century typsetting.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| He studied them diligently. His book Digital Typography gives
| lengthy accounts of his research and includes photographs and
| examples of how he chose various aspects.
| teleforce wrote:
| Fun facts, the patron of Almagest Abassid Caliph Al-Ma'mun was
| also the founder of Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad that was
| aggressively translating important foreign manuscripts due to
| weight gold equivalence for Greek/Indian/etc manucsripts
| translation compensation [1],[2].
|
| According to history, the Caliph once back off his plan of
| conquering Constantinople (that were later achieved by Ottoman
| Caliph Fatih) due the Roman (Byzantine) offered him an offer he
| cannot refused, the original copy of Ptolemy Almagest as
| important part of the truce arrangements. He certainly capable of
| overcoming and conquering the Constatinople since during his
| time, Afghanistan was conquered under Islamic rule for hundred of
| years that modern Russia and USA cannot achieved. The fact that
| his mother Marajil, was a princess originally from Afghanistan.
| This is where the popular saying that asserted only Afghanistan
| people can conquer Afghanistan. Point in case, the most recent
| Afghanistan conqurer was Mughal Empire, who was originated from
| Indian sub-continent Afghanistan. During his time, Al-Khwarizmi
| published his infamous Algebra book namely Kitab al-Mukhtasar fi
| Hisab al-Jabr wal-Muqabalah (The Concise Book of Calculation by
| Restoration and Balancing), where we got the word algebra, and
| from his name Al-Khwarizmi now we have the word "algorithm" [2].
|
| In addition to having translation Baitul Hikmah in Baghdad, Iraq
| and in other Islamic knowledge center in Toledo Spain (before
| fall to Spanish Christian and started the European Renaissance),
| the Islamic civilization also engaged in contributing to science,
| math, astronomy, etc. Al-Haitham (Alhazen), the founder of
| optics, and he's also the founder of modern scientific
| methodology [3].
|
| Having said that, there several Islamic astronomers
| (Arab/Persian/etc) already proposing against the geocentric idea
| that most probably that was inspired Galileo. I think he most
| probably did not come with the original idea of heliocentric
| model and the Islamic astromoners mosy probably have proposed it
| before Galileo, but he failed to credit them properly as normally
| practiced by European scientists at the time.
|
| [1] al-Ma'mun:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%27mun
|
| [2] Graeco-Arabic translation movement:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Arabic_translation_move...
|
| [3] Ibn al-Haytham:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham
| darkwater wrote:
| > Al-Khwarizmi published his infamous algebra book
|
| Math can be hard, but calling that book "infamous" is a bit too
| much... /s
| graemep wrote:
| There are a number of factual mistakes, misleading/unclear
| statements and speculation in your "fun facts".
|
| Al-Ma'mun failed to conquer Byzantium and died while preparing
| his next attempt to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
| Ma'mun
|
| He cannot possibly have been the patron of the Almagest as
| Ptolemy lived centuries before he did. Maybe you mean of a
| translation.
|
| Everyone knows Galileo did not originate a heliocentric model,
| because he was promoting the Copernican model.
|
| Heliocentric models had been proposed by ancient Greeks, but
| the Copernican model was a huge advance. There is big
| difference between just speculating that the sun was the centre
| of the the universe and an actual mathematical mode.
|
| There is a lot more to the scientific method than al-Haytham's
| minor contribution:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
| teleforce wrote:
| >He cannot possibly have been the patron of the Almagest as
| Ptolemy lived centuries before he did. Maybe you mean of a
| translation.
|
| The Almagest version of the Galileo notes are Latin
| translation of the Arabic translation by Gerard of Cremona in
| Toledo around 1175. This makes Al-Ma'mun the patron of
| Almagest [1].
|
| >Heliocentric models had been proposed by ancient Greeks, but
| the Copernican model was a huge advance. There is big
| difference between just speculating that the sun was the
| centre of the the universe and an actual mathematical mode.
|
| The Islamic scholars were not speculating they were the
| original and earlier researchers of the heliocentric model
| that Copernicus and Galileo were famous for. It's not
| exxageration that both very highly dependent of Islamic
| scholars work on the required mathematics and the earlier
| astronomy works as the OP article indicated. Most of these
| original works by Islamic have been lost and many have not
| throughly studied. I will argue that Copernicus himself
| probably plagiarated some if not all his works from the
| Islamic scholars wothout properly attributing the original
| Islamic scholars' sources. Heck the so called telescope
| invention by Galileo was invented by Islamic scientists
| several hundreds years before him [2].
|
| >There is a lot more to the scientific method than al-
| Haytham's minor contribution
|
| Al-Haytham is father of scientific methods, nothing minor
| about that.
|
| The will and audacity to whitewash Islamic scholar
| contributions are beyond believe. They even had to change the
| name from Ibnu Sina to Avicennia, Al-Haytham to Alhazen, Ibnu
| Rush to Averroes, etc.
|
| [1] Gerard of Cremona's Latin translation of the Almagest and
| the revision of tables
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00218286221140848
|
| [2] How a Muslim invented the Telescope centuries before
| Galileo:
|
| https://www.secondgoldenage.com/p/how-a-muslim-invented-
| the-...
| hiro1986 wrote:
| Beyond the facts corrected by other user, graemep, the
| translator school was in fact established after the christian
| kingdom of Castile conquer the city of Toledo, and the king
| Alfonso X [1], actually is what is studied as main promoter of
| it. [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_School_of_Translator
|
| Then, first heliocentrism with some approximations of size and
| distance, as far as I know was Aristarchus of Samos, but there
| is not much that we know about it. [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos
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