The Science of Everything Podcast - Special Episode: Mario Livio on Galileo

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Astrophysicist Mario Livio joins me to discuss his latest book 'Galileo and the Science Deniers', which chronicles the scientific discoveries of Galileo Galilei and how his advocacy of the heliocentric theory led him into confrontation with the Pope. Our conversation covers the significance of Galileo's discovers, the strengths and weaknesses of his case for the heliocentric theory, his role in establishing the modern scientific method, and what we can learn from this episode in history about the importance of intellectual freedom and science communication in the present day. Check out Mario's book on Amazon. If you enjoyed the podcast please consider supporting the show by making a paypal donation or becoming a patreon supporter. https://www.patreon.com/jamesfodor https://www.paypal.me/ScienceofEverything

You're listening to a special episode of the Science of Everything podcast, Galileo and the Science Deniers. I'm your host, James Fodor. So in this episode, we're going to do something a little bit different to usual. I'm going to be interviewing Mario Livio, who's the author of the book, Galileo and Science Deniers. This is a book about the life and achievements of Galileo, Galilei, who, among other things, was the first scientist to point a telescope at the sky and made a number of observations

that undermined existing understandings of the nature of the cosmos and ultimately provided evidence in favor of the heliocentric theory, which is that the sun is at the center of the solar system and not the prevailing geocentric theory, which was that the earth was at the center of the soul system and the sun and all the planets orbited around. This got Galileo into trouble with the authorities at the time and led to a famous trial in which Galileo was ultimately convicted

and forced to recant his teachings that the sun was at the center of the solar system. So this has been a controversial episode in the history of science, and I'm sure you've all heard about it. So this book examines the life and times of Galileo and his scientific contributions and some of the details behind what led him to that episode, which is called the Galileo Affair. So this is a recent book, which I was privileged to be able to have a review copy of. The book is now available online. Amazon or other online retailers. It is available both in hardcover and also in Kindle form.

So check that out if you're interested. Mario is an astrophysicist. He worked for 24 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is the organization that operates the Hubble Space Telescope. He's published hundreds of articles in cosmology, physics journals, and also written a number of popular science books. Most recently, of course, Galileo and the Science Anise. So without further ado, let's get on to the interview. So today I'm joined by Mario Livio, who has, who is the author of the book Galileo and the Science Deniers. Mario, welcome to the Science of Everything podcast.

My pleasure. So tell me first about why you decided to write this book. Well, there are many reasons, but let me just give you a few. Number one, I'm an astrophysicist, so I've always been a great admirer of Galileo, both as a scientist as the person who essentially founded modern astronomy and astrophysics and also as a hero for intellectual freedom, which I always valued very much. Plus, I sort of thought that the lesson from Galileo is important for today when we encounter unfortunately too much science denial.

Right. So in the case of Galileo, do you think that the controversy that he became involved in with the Catholic Church was more about the science or more about him being engaged in what the church viewed to be philosophical or theological reasonings? Yeah, it was not about the science so much in the sense that, in the sense that the Catholic Church couldn't care less whether the Earth revolves around. around the sun or the sun about the earth, as long as that was taken as some sort of a mathematical convenience for astronomers to use. But once astronomers wanted to claim, starting with Copernicus, that this actually represented reality, they saw that as contradicting scripture. and that was the part which really annoyed them. And then on top of that, Galileo telling them what one should do about interpreting scripture, they regarded as, you know, him entering into an area which they thought was exclusively theirs, namely theology.

Right. So just for our listeners, I think it might be useful to take a step back and talk about the development of the idea of heliocentrism. So maybe you could just talk about that for a few minutes and how Galileo sort of built on the ideas of Copernicus and the reaction to that. Yeah, so there were some ancient Greeks in Carcus of Seamus that suggested already that maybe the sun either the center and the earth revolves around the sun. But those were not picked up, and especially the church adopted Aristotle's and Ptolema's ideas about the sun and all the planets. revolving around the earth, the earth being the center of everything. Now, Copernicus in his book changed all that and suggested that, in fact, the earth and all the planets revolve around the sun. This was not followed by too many people.

It was followed by Giordano Bruno, who actually also made himself a nuisance to the Catholic church by suggesting all kinds of other things. and at the end was burnt at the stake. Astronomer Johann Kepler also actually believed in the Copernican system. And Galileo was not immediately, but after some experiments and observations that he has done, became convinced that the Copernican is the correct system, where the Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. And from then on, that's what he adopted.

that's what he wrote about. So Copernicus was, I can't remember exactly, he published quite a few decades before Galileo, right? Right, yes. Yeah, but you see, his book didn't attract too much attention. Right. So in fact, you know, there were no severe objections raised and so on. It was all taken, you know, as some sort of a saving the appearances, as they called it, some sort of a mathematical model that works, but it doesn't necessarily represent reality and so on.

So, you know, when Galileo entered the scene, Copernicus, his book, was not yet under threat. Right. And so what did Galileo do or say that was different to how people had discussed heliocentrism prior to that? Well, Galileo, you know, he started basing his things on actual observations and experiments. So, you know, he started observing with a telescope and he found a variety of things. In particular, for example, he found that Venus shows phases like the moon. And that was very easy to explain in terms of the Copernican model was essentially impossible to explain in the Ptolemaic model. There was another astronomer Tihobrahe who sort of suggested some sort of a compromise hybrid model,

but Galileo didn't go for that because it looked to him to be too complicated. And so Galileo attracted attention to the Copernican system by starting to say that this is how things are. Once he started saying that this is how things are, and not that this is just some sort of a mathematical convenience, then this started raising all kinds of questions. So what about the book of Joshua, where Joshua, God stops the sun in its course, from which, you know, it is assumed that it's the sun that revolves around the earth and so on. So the church started seeing that there are all kinds of discrepancies they thought between interpretation of scripture and what Galileo was saying. And that started attracting attention to the whole thing. Right. So in the book, you talk about how he was initially censured about teaching heliocentrism.

And he basically said, okay, I won't talk about it anymore. And then there was a period of, I think it was 15 years or something where he doesn't, mention it too much or is cautious, but then talk about what happens after that with his publication of the dialogue. Yeah, well, it's true. I mean, he was asked, and there is actually an interesting story concerning that because he had a letter in his possession from Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino who told him, you know, not to talk about this too much, but there was a stronger warning. from a person in the church who told him, oh, you also are not supposed to discuss it,

not to teach it, and so on. Which Galileo later claimed that he forgot all about that because he based all his actions on the letter that he had from Cardinal Baramino. In any case, once his book, the dialogue was published, that's where things started to become more dicey. particular because the Pope discussed the issue with Galileo and basically told him that he was okay with him discussing it as a mathematical thing, but never as a reality. Galileo kind of ignored it, even though he did put the words of the Pope actually directly in the mouth of one of the three internal couters,

who discussed the dialogue the sad thing was that he put it in the mouth of the guy who was ridiculed throughout the entire

book. So that didn't go too well with this thing and on top of that there was another person of

church who also spoke in favor by the name of Oscarini who also spoke in favor of the Copernican model

and this attracted even more attention to this thing. And so, you know, things started to go downhill from there. Yeah, so this is interesting to me because the impression that I got is that Galileo had thought that the new pope was kind of, not exactly on his side, but at least somewhat more favorable to him being able to discuss it as, you know, a mathematical sort of hypothesis. But then he seems to have misjudged the situation pretty badly in the way that he wrote the dialogue and, you know, putting the words into the mouth of one of the characters is ridiculed and then not really asking for permission before writing it and other things

like that that you discuss. Do you think that if he had been more cautious about these things, he would have been able to get away with publishing, maybe not exactly the dialogue, but something like that? Look, when we say had he been more cautious, I think we have to understand what is asked of him to have done. What is really asked of him to have done is to, actually ignore everything he believed in scientifically and say roughly what the Pope told him he could say, namely that, yeah, maybe this is a good mathematical model, but there is no reality. And not only that, you know, the Pope said, well, you know, maybe this is one of the ways that things could have been,

but, you know, God is, you know, omnipotent so he can do it in a million different ways, especially ways that, you know, we don't, cannot even think about. So to say that things are this way and not in any other way is, you know, he considered impossible. Basically, the Pope was under the opinion that humans are never, will never be able to actually understand how things are. You know, they can raise various hypotheses, but they cannot really know how things are. And Galileo really objected to that. So, yes, had he been cautious, in quotation marks, in the sense of, you know, just adopting that type of language, he might have not gotten himself into such big trouble. But this really went contrary to everything, you know, he thought.

And so for a person like Galileo, this was impossible, really, to do. Right. on this point, and this takes us a little bit into the territory philosophy of science, I guess, but I think that, well, at least at the time of Galileo, there wasn't really the separation that we would understand it. So I'm curious about your thoughts as to why you think Galileo found it particularly important to argue that this was really the way it was. So he'd made a bunch of observations and looked at Copernicus's theory and found it persuasive. other scientists of the day, and I would argue today as well, are happy enough just to say, these are the observations, and this is our theory of it, and the theory fits the observations.

And sort of making the claim that, like, that's really the way it is, this is the reality behind it, is, I mean, they may or may not say that, but it's not necessarily the thing that they view is the most important. Whereas Galileo saw that apparently is really important to emphasize that, like, you know, this is truly the way it is in reality. Why do you think that was so important to him? do you think that this is a like a necessary part of scientific inquiry to emphasize on being a true description of reality or just being, arriving at empirically adequate theories? What do you think about that? So you see, Galileo in some sense, founded the whole of modern science in the sense that.

And before that, there was no method, you know, what we like what we would call today the scientific method. And you alluded to part of that scientific. method, which means that you develop a theory which needs to explain all the known facts. But good theories also need to make certain predictions. That's what real scientific theory means. And then you test those predictions, you know, and you only accept if you can make such predictions. And for example, in the case of the phases of Venus, I mean, that was... you know, a very high degree of prediction, because he actually adopted the Copernican model

even before he saw the phases of Venus. But the prediction was that, okay, if this model is correct, that is what you would see. And then he saw that. So his model not only agreed with many of the absurd facts, but it also made the prediction, which turned out to be correct. So he really worked, he was in some sense, the most modern of the scientists that existed until that time. He also was the person who declared that mathematics is the language of the universe and that everything can be explained by mathematical models, which is amazing if you think about this, because, you see, today we're so used to a situation where we write the laws of physics in the form of mathematical equations.

But when he said that, there were still no laws that were written as mathematical equations. In fact, he wrote the very first laws that were written as mathematical equations. So in this sense, you know, he had incredible insight. And yes, he was also, you know,

from his character. He was a stubborn person. He had a very high opinion of himself. one has to acknowledge that. And, you know, so he believed that that's what it was. Now, he also based his thing on an incorrect model, which was, you know, for the tides, for example, which is a wrong model. But, you know, he still took that to be a good evidence. Right.

So one thing that interests me about Galileo is how convinced he was that Copernicanism, so the Heliocentrism model, where the sun is at the center of the solar system and all of the planets orbit around that, that was the correct model. The competing models at the time, as we discussed, were the Ptolemaic models where the Earth is at the center and the sun under the planets orbit around, and then there was Ticabrahe's model where Earth is at the center and the Sun orbits the Earth, but all of the other planets orbit the Sun. That was sort of a compromise model.

And my understanding is that the Tico-Brahase model and Copernican model were at that time observationally equivalent in terms of they both accounted for things like the phases of Venus and the other facts that were known. Galileo, as you mentioned in the book, didn't really like Brahe's model because he found it to be too complicated or just kind of a weird compromise. I'm interested in your view as to whether you think that, because there were people who criticized the Heliocentris model on the basis that it would seem to predict that we should observe stellar parallax in the apparent change in positions of stars as the Orth. as the Earth orbits the Sun, and that wasn't observed.

And people also weren't sure about how to explain why planets would orbit the Sun, but then objects on Earth would fall towards Earth. That seemed to be a bit strange, given the Ptolemaic ideas about objects moving towards the natural place of motion. And the theory was that there was a difference between the natural motion of planets and objects on Earth, but if Earth is just one planet orbiting the Sun, then that didn't seem to make as much sense. So the point is that there were objections that people raised to Heliosensium at the time, which would later be resolved, I think, when Newton developed his theories of gravitation, but Galileo obviously didn't know about that. So I'm curious as to your view, do you think that Galileo was scientifically justified in his strong view that the Heliosensur model was superior to Tycho Brahe's model, given what was known at the time? So the thing is like this.

He found the model that was consistent with the observations. For the parallax, he actually said that stars are way farther, and therefore that cannot be measured, but that one day they will be measured. And he was actually correct in that prediction as well. He had actually one observation, which was the path that sunspots were observed to trace on the surface.

of the sun, which actually could distinguish unambiguously that it was the earth that was moving, but he wrote so little about this that we don't actually know whether he really realized this or, you know, he sort of guessed it. But he certainly did suggest this as one of the pieces of evidence for the fact that the earth is moving around the sun and not the other way around. So he did have a stronger even piece of evidence. And then he also used something that even today we will justify, which is the following. If you have two theories that explain everything equally well, you will choose the one that is the simpler between the two.

And his theory or the Copernican theory was simpler than Tico Brahe's theory. So I would say he really thought like a modern scientist in that way, even though he had no conclusive proof that the earth was actually moving. I think that that's very interesting, and I think you're right to emphasize how Galileo shaped, well, obviously he didn't really realize this at the time, but he kind of developed ways of thinking that were very influential for later development of science as we know it today.

I did get the impression, though, and feel free to disagree if you do, but that Galileo was, well, I mean, obviously he was very convinced about Copernicanism, And you mentioned in the book there are some arguments that he developed for it or defenses for it that we would regard as wrong. So you mentioned briefly about his theory of the tides, which I didn't fully understand, but is not regarded as correct. And he also talked about, one of his books was about talking about comets, and he made some arguments about those that didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. So it seemed to me that sometimes he would start with his conclusion a little bit, that he was convinced that the Earth was at the center and then try to develop arguments. that weren't always that convincing. Do you see that side of him at all? I don't think that the issue of the comets had much influence on what he thought about, you know,

Copernican model. Yes, he had the wrong model for them, but that didn't have much influence. It is true that he thought that the tides provide, you know, the last bit of evidence that he needed to show that the earth was actually moving. That is certainly true, and that was wrong. I mean, the argument that he used was wrong. But look, I mean, somebody from the church, Paschini, who reviewed Galileo's book, said, oh, well, the Catholic Church claimed that Galileo didn't really prove that the earth was moving. And they claimed that because of that they were justified in their disagreement with him. He said, but really, was the evidence for the Ptolemaic model stronger than the Copernican model?

So, you know, so I don't think one can hold it against Galileo the fact that he's, you know, not everything he said was correct. But let me point out something more important than all of that. Let's suppose that Galileo was wrong, okay? And actually, it was the sun that was revolving around the earth. I would argue that still the Catholic Church had absolutely no right to prevent him from publishing history. So that goes and overrides everything else. I mean, it doesn't matter if he was right or wrong. I mean, intellectual freedom should have allowed him to publish his book no matter what.

Yeah, and I think that the Galileo story does, as you discuss in the book, illustrate the importance of intellectual freedom, which, to my understanding, wasn't really something that was valued in the same way at that time as it is now, for some of the reasons you discuss in particular. The Catholic Church did eventually come around to, obviously, the idea of heliocentrism. I've not been able to figure out exactly the timeline of that. I think you mentioned a little bit in your book. They relaxed some bands of some heliocentrist books in the 18th century, and then I think it's only in the early 19th century that they remove Galilee.

Galileo's works from the index of bandbooks. I don't know if you, you don't talk a great deal of detail about this. Do you have much sense of the, I don't know, whether there was much internal debate or concern about that. I understand a lot of this followed Newton and it sort of became incontrovertible that the heliocentrous model was correct. But do you have much of a sense about how that developed? Yes, but, you know, but I didn't want to make the book about that.

Yeah, that's, I understand that. I'm just curious. So, yes, I mean, the thing is that, As time went by, you should remember that the Catholic Church for many, many centuries, was not against science per se. I mean, there were actually astronomers and mathematicians in the Catholic Church, some very good ones among them. And what happened was that over the years,

the Catholic astronomers themselves started adopting slowly but surely the Copernican system. And at that point, you know, the feeling was that there is no point anymore, you know, to prohibit the discussion of Copernicanism and so on. Now, of course, the final rehabilitation, if you like of Galileo only happened with Pope John Paul II. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to me how long all that process took. But, yeah, I guess those institutions moved slowly. So one of the themes in the book is about the connections you draw between the Catholic Church in Galileo and the issues that they had, and modern challenges to scientific findings. So you specifically mention creationist or intelligent design against evolution and denialism of climate change. I'm interested in how much of a historical parallel do you think that there is between those cases.

Obviously, it's 400 years later, and the situation is quite different. It's not a situation of people not being out of published so much, and the Catholic Church obviously doesn't have, well, it's actually not really the leader in either of these cases, but also doesn't have the same control that it used to. So, yeah, one question is, how much of a parallel do you think there is between these cases? So there are some parallels, and there are things that are different, definitely. So, you know, there is a little bit more parallel between, things like, you know, teaching intelligent design in the Galileo case.

Because in that case, you know, various studies show that the main reason for the objection to Darwinian evolution actually have to do with religion. So in that sense, again, you know, people, there are people who feel that the description in the Bible is inconcernation. with the concept of Darwinian evolution, and that is the reason for their objection. So in that sense, there is a certain parallel with the Galileo case, because, again, it was a question of interpretation of scripture. You see, what Galileo argued, and that remains true for creationism and everything and so on,

Galileo said, listen, the Bible is not a science book. It was not written as a science book. And the fact is that even the planets are not named there. The Bible was written for our salvation, he said. Consequently, you should not take the language of the Bible literally. You should not interpret things literally. And every time that there is a discrepancy between what experiments, observations and reasoning today in science or in his time,

in science disagree with the language of scripture, then you should interpret things differently. Because he actually said the Bible cannot speak untruth. So it must be that the interpretation is different. But you cannot change the facts. So that's where, so there is a certain parallel between creationism today and what happens during Galileo's time. In the case, let's say, of climate change or, you know, the initial response, let's say, to the coronavirus pandemic, it's not so parallel.

I mean, there is still denialism of science, but it's not for religious or, you know, interpretation of scripture reasons. In the case of climate change, again, studies show that most of those who object, it has to do with basically, political conservatism, things that have to do with more with economical issues and things like that. But the fact remains that the science is being denied, okay, that people try not to take seriously what the results of observations and modeling do. And similarly, you know, if you take the initial response in the U.S. to the coronavirus pandemic, you know, where there are now 15 cases which soon will be zero, you know, and so on, completely contrary to what the scientists were saying. Then again, that was not driven, of course, by

religious issues. It was driven by political issues. But the result was equally disastrous. So my argument is that we should believe in science. Science can make mistakes. But science has a way of correcting itself over time, and therefore we should believe in science. And in particular, in cases where a human life, for example, is at stake, or the future of the planet is at stake, to bet against science is just pure stupid. What do you think is the underlying driver about science denial? I mean, I think you've kind of hinted at it, which is that when people have prior ideological reasons, whether they be religious or political or otherwise.

And that seems to be a broader problem, I would argue, than just the evolution and climate change. Anti-vaccination movement, for example, would be another example, I think. What is it about our culture that you think could change that would make this, I mean, you're never going to get rid of it completely, but that would make science scenario less common or less acceptable? Or are there some cultures that have existed or do exist places in the world words that are more friendly to science.

I think that is true. I think that, for example, objections to climate change, for example, in Europe, I think, are much less pronounced than they are, I think, in the US. I think that creationism in Europe is almost non-existent, is my impression, while there are non-negligible circles in the US, which, you know, still adhere to that and talk about teaching it at schools. So, yes, I think that there are differences among different places in the world,

and I think they mostly have to do with science education. And, you know, not just teaching the science, but teaching the importance of science, and teaching the importance of understanding the science at the basic, at the level of an educated person, not necessarily as a scientist. And understanding the scientific process and understanding that, you know, like I said, that scientists can be wrong, but they are more often not wrong. And that over time, science is the only thing which has this self-correction that

happens over time. So, and if you understand this, understand the scientific method, how it works, then the chances of, you know, encountering denials are much smaller. It seems to me that the way science is often presented in Hollywood or the media and other contexts, not always, but often, is of something that is kind of only accessible to people who are, like, really smart, you know, nerds and that it's, you know, like, really complicated and not something that kind of ordinary people can have access to. It's kind of, it's portrayed as a sort of a superpower that nerdy people have

that they can understand and do things with science. I don't know if that is consistent with how you have sort of portrayals of science that you've seen, but I'm interested into whether you think that that might be a problem in terms of if people feel like science is not something that is accessible to them, then they're perhaps less likely to learn about it and understand it and or trust it if it seems like something external. Do you think that that's something that we could, perhaps improve on? Yes, oh, absolutely. And I mean, I regard this part of my job to do precisely that.

Yeah. Why I write popular science books, yes? I write books about science and mathematics, but which, you know, any, you know, relatively educated person can read and understand. And I'm not, of course, the only one who does this. There are quite a few people, you know, who both scientists, science writers and so on, who try to communicate with the public and to give the public an appreciation of science, even if they don't necessarily need to understand the details. I mean, you know, they take the coronavirus pandemic. I mean, not everybody needs to understand, you know, the precise differential equations that enter into modeling of the spread of the pandemic.

Not everybody needs to understand that. But what people do need to understand is that there is a mathematical framework into which you enter all the absurd facts and that that framework can produce predictions. In the same way that, you know, we get predictions even of the weather, which is actually a much more complex system than, you know, than that system of equations which is used in the modeling of a pandemic. So there, you know, people understand that that's what happens. And people use science now every day on everything. I mean, you know, we hold a phone in our hand today, which is, you know, a computer which does all kinds of things. For example, I mean, one of the things that people like to cite is that it has this GPS system, which allows us, you know, to get to where we want to go.

And believe it or not, that GPS system uses... both Einstein's theory of special relativity and general relativity, which you would have thought is so remote from everything you do in your everyday life. And yet, both of those are needed so that you don't miss your target, you know, when you use your to get there. So people rely on science all the time and more so than ever today. and yet somehow some of them cannot bring themselves to trust what the scientists are saying. So on the point about reaching out to a popular audience, you mentioned in your book the idea of a third culture thinker. Yeah, I think it's an interesting idea.

Do you want to explain what that idea means and why you think it's important? Well, you know, it was C.P. Snow, who was a chemist and an author who talked about two cultures, the culture of the human history, and the cultures of the scientists. And he was basically lamenting the fact that he discovered, you know, in the 1940s, 50s, that in England there developed these class of humanists who claimed that scientists are basically illiterate in the humanities

when at the same time they themselves were completely illiterate in the sciences. So he sort of pointed out that there is this schism that develops between the humanists and the scientists. The concept of the third culture basically says that there are today scientists who can communicate directly with the humanists or with the general public. And with all humility, I consider myself a third culture person in the sense that I'm a scientist, but I tried through these popular writings to communicate directly with the educated public. Now, the reason I brought this in this book is because Galileo himself was a perfect example of being both a scientist but also from this third culture. I mean, he did not understand that there is any kind of gap between the humanities and the scientists. He was equally versed in, you know, in literature and in the arts.

He could draw. He studied, you know, art and drawing and all that. And he tried to communicate with everybody by writing his books in Italian rather than in Latin so that everybody will be able to read them and so on. So he was a perfect example of this sort of third culture. And, you know, but I tried to argue, we should. strive to a situation where we speak only about one culture, where we realize that, you know, the humanities and the sciences are all part of one human culture.

Yeah, I think that idea is really important, and something I try to do on the Science of Everything podcast as well, is cover a wide range of topics from a sort of an interdisciplinary point of view. It seems that despite this fact of the idea of the third culture being, as you say, quite old, and also despite the fact of having role models like Galileo and the idea of a Renaissance man who has expertise across fields, it does seem to me that we haven't, if anything, we've moved further in the direction of people being more siloids. Obviously, there's increasing specialisation within academia,

and a lot of pressures towards that. But also, it just seems to me that, not everyone, but a lot of people will just sort of, you know, they'll read one type of book. There may be a person who reads philosophy books or a person who reads history or a person who reads science. And obviously, again, there are people. who mix more. But if you look at, for example, if I look up science podcasts or if I look up on

Amazon science books, always the recommendations are like purchased with. There's always things that are basically the same, which is entirely surprising, but it also kind of indicates that people kind of cluster a lot in terms of what they read or listen to or talk about. So I don't know if you have any thoughts or ideas on what we might do to change culture or to move it in one direction or another. What can we be doing better to try to bridge this gap a bit more? Well, I think one thing is to have programs like yours. Another thing is to have more popular science books that try to make science accessible to more people.

Also, I like more the idea. You mentioned that on Amazon, you see, people who like this also like that. Yeah. But this is why I prefer. to that, going to a bookstore or going to February, because you see, when you go to a bookstore, and let's say you are looking for a book by me, I'm just this, okay? So you see my name, okay? But in the same general area, there may be other authors whose last name starts with L also to write about completely different topics. So you don't just see, you know, the things that are

very much like mine, but you also get to see other things. And similarly in a library. And so I think, you know, I would encourage people to do a little bit more of that, although, of course, during the pandemic, now it's difficult to do. But hopefully we'll be out of this at some point, and people will be able to do that again. Yes, hopefully. And I do think there's, I generally prefer going to libraries over bookshops, but it's a similar idea about being able to just browse the shelves and see things. And I think that even, I mean, I really like online stores as well, but there does seem to be something that's lost there. And yeah, I think it's also important, as you've indicated, for people to try to read widely and consider different perspectives and different points of view

and ways of looking at things. So last question I have is, considering, you know, the things we've talked about and what you discuss in your book is, what's the one? main thing, or just if you've already said the main thing, one thing that you haven't said or mentioned before, that you would like readers to take away from your book or the thing that you think's really important? I would say two things. One is a sentence I said before, believe in science. That's one, very important. Believe in science. And this helps in many, many areas. And the other is the absolutely crucial importance of intellectual freedom. These are the two main things I would like people to take away.

Of course, other than, you know, hopefully everybody will be fascinated by, you know, Galileo's personality and his story. Yeah, I think Galileo is fascinated people for centuries, and I think he will continue to do so for quite some time. So thanks very much for your time. Mario, again, is the author of Galileo and the Science Deniers, which I think should be available for purchase around when this episode is release so you can check that out. Cool. Well, thank you very much for your time, Mario. Really appreciate you being on the show. My pleasure. Continue to do this type of work. Great. Thank you very much. Bye. So, hopefully you guys enjoyed that, just something a bit different. Let me know what you thought,

whether you liked this as something extra or whether you prefer to stick to the traditional format. I listed this as a special episode rather than a numbered episode just because just because of the different format. And so I was hoping to be able to do episodes of this periodically. It just is something a bit different and, you know, when the opportunity arises. So let me know what you think. My email address is Fods12 at gmail.com. That's FODDS12 at gmail.com.

You can also visit the website for the podcast at Fods12.podbean.com where you can download previous episodes. If you'd like to support the show, you can also go to that address. And there's a link there to methods of... supporting me either by making a one-off donation via PayPal or if you'd like to become a Patreon supporter, all of my patrons are much appreciated and help me to devote more time to getting out more content. So, thanks again for listening and I'll talk to you next time.