Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism

"This brilliantly original reexamination of Galileo" (New Yorker) is a cultural and social history revealing the relationship between patronage and science.

In the court of the Medicis and the Vatican, Galileo fashioned both his career and his science to the demands of patronage and its complex systems of wealth, power, and prestige. Science historian Mario Biagioli argues that Galileo's courtly role was integral to his science—the questions he chose to examine, his methods, even his conclus...