Deciphering Galileo: Communication and Secrecy before and after the Trial

Marcus, Hannah; Findlen, Paula

doi:10.1017/rqx.2019.253

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…We already know that Galileo used particular, coded language to communicate with his closest circles during the period surrounding his inquisition trial. 142 The use of the term crystals was no code, but it was yet another instance of the ways that language reinforced Galileo's community.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

Marcus

Hall

2021

Hist Sci

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The terms that Galileo’s contemporaries used for lenses ( cristallo/i, lente/i, and vetro/i) have often been treated, and even translated, interchangeably. In this article, we argue that Galileo used references to crystals as lenses to embed epistemological and cosmological arguments in the material object of the telescope. Across Galileo’s correspondence and letters, the term crystal had many uses and meanings. As a substance, crystal was a form of raw material, but crystal was also a substance that was central to scholastic cosmology and an explanatory device on which scholastics relied to explain first the appearance of the new star of 1604 and then Galileo’s new telescopic discoveries. When Galileo began using the word crystals as a synonym for lenses, he endowed the material of his instrument with cosmological arguments. Galileo’s choice of language was deliberate and polemical, serving as a joke at the expense of scholastics and as a linguistic marker of social proximity to Galileo and his intellectual agenda, especially among the members of the Academy of the Lincei. Rhetorically and linguistically, Galileo chose to refer to his lenses as crystals both because of the material from which they were made and because in so doing he signaled the epistemological work that the lenses would perform. Ultimately, the crystal lenses in Galileo’s telescope and writings shattered the crystalline spheres, replacing explanatory metaphors with a polemical emphasis on the material and empirical realities of objects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

Marcus

Hall

2021

Hist Sci

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“…This later branched, with the more mystical side of arcana becoming occultum (occult) while almost any practical knowledge could become a secretum, or secret (including industrial trade secrets such as that of silk production). The use of cryptography became widespread amongst early scientists and intellectuals to defend themselves from the church, as demonstrated by the use of cryptography by Galileo in his trial (Marcus and Findlen, 2019). After the rise of the classical era of Renaissance cryptology given by Cardano, de Vignere, and Della Porta, the art of encoding and deciphering secrets became a profession in and of itself, with professional cryptographers being employed in the diplomacy of Italian city-states in the 15th century (Strasser, 2007).…”

Section: Secrecy As the Foundation Of The Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2020

2021

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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Following the tradition of previous HistoCrypt conferences, HistoCrypt 2024 will address all aspects of historical cryptography and cryptanalysis. It is inherently crossdisciplinary, incorporating work from various fields such as mathematics, history, history of ideas, computer science, AI, computational linguistics, linguistics, and image processing. The conference's topics include, but are not limited to, the use of cryptography in military, diplomacy, business, and other areas, analysis of historical ciphers using modern computerized methods, unsolved historical cryptograms, mechanical encryption machines, the history of cryptography, the roots of modern ciphers in historical cryptology, linguistic aspects of cryptology, the influence of cryptography on the course of history, cryptology's connections to neighboring fields of study, and teaching and promoting cryptology in schools, universities, and the public.The scientific program was compiled by an international scientific program committee, consisting of researchers in cryptology, history, intelligence, language technology, and linguistics. The program committee welcomed submissions in two tracks: regular papers up to 10 pages (including appendices, excluding references) on substantial, original, and unpublished research, including evaluation results, where appropriate; and short papers up to 4 pages (including appendices, excluding references) on smaller, focused contributions, work in progress, negative results, surveys, tutorials, or opinion pieces. This year's conference received a record high of 42 submissions, a 75% increase compared to the average of 24 submissions in previous HistoCrypt conferences from 2018 to 2023. The submissions came from authors in European countries including Austria,

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Introduction

2023

Cyber Threat Intelligence

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Deciphering Galileo: Communication and Secrecy before and after the Trial

Cited by 4 publications

References 51 publications

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Historical Cryptology HistoCrypt 2020

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