Meet Galileo: The Man Who Looked

What the telescope saw

Moons circling Jupiter. Phases of Venus. Mountains on our Moon. Each observation was small; together they broke a cosmology backed by two thousand years and the full power of the Church. Galileo's crime was simple: he looked, and reported what he saw, in Italian anyone could read.

The cost and the persistence

The Inquisition made him recant on his knees. Under house arrest, old and going blind, he wrote Two New Sciences — founding modern mechanics. You can silence a man and still lose the argument: the evidence was already loose in the world.

Why they belong at your table

Seat him when the data says one thing and the room says another. He paid the full price for that position and can tell you when it's worth it.