Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

FEDERICO CESI, THE FIRST ACADEMY, AND UMBRIA 85boat had gone some eight or ten arm’s lengths ahead, with all thatthe key fell down between him and me, because besides going up ithad also acquired from the motion of the boat the other, to go alongwith its movement and follow it, as it did. 114Beyond its extemporaneous character, Galileo’s experiment asrecounted by Stelluti takes on important historical, methodological, andscientific significance. It reveals first of all that some privileged places ofthe land of Umbria, like the Ducal palace itself, were the places in whichfor the first time the principle of the relativity of motion was advancedand discussed, reveals that these were the very places that witnessed theexperimental baptism of the principle of relativity, ‘the true keystone ofmodern physics’. 115Without exaggeration, Galileo’s two-week stay in the region ofUmbria, in Acquasparta, in 1624, can be considered the crucial momentof conjunction between the experience of the Lynceans and the methodologicalhorizon of modern experimental science.And that’s not all. On his journey Galileo had in fact brought with himhis ‘eye-glass’, that is his microscope, ‘to see up close the most minimalthings’. And while on that occasion, having to carry it down to Rome,Galileo did not leave the ‘eye-glass’ with Cesi, he did, however, send himanother one, duly improved, in September of the same year. It was thanksto this same Galilean instrument, in fact, that the Lynceans became thefounding fathers, as was mentioned earlier, of present day scientificmicroscopy. And although, as again Conti observes, ‘in nearly all the universitiesof the time natural philosophy had not followed the investigativeand methodological advances of “Lynceality”’, thanks to the contiguity oftheir interests and experiences, ‘the University, which had contributeddirectly to the cultural preparation of two prestigious Lynceans, wouldsurely have welcomed and developed the legacy left by Cesi’, if it were notthat the controversy over the stars and intolerance had made it so thatthings turned out differently. 116114 Francesco Stelluti to unknown, Rome 8 January 1633, in loc. cit., p. 62.115 L. Conti, Sotto il segno degli astri: lo studio perugino e i Lincei, in G. Sapori, C. Vinti,L. Conti, Il Palazzo Cesi di Acquasparta e la rivoluzione scientifica lincea, op. cit., p. 79.116 Ibid., p. 83.