“Someone who doesn’t know the truth is just thick-headed. But someone who does know it and calls it a lie is a crook” – Galileo.
The legitimacy of truth depends on the knowledge that it has been said. And knowledge is gained through research and constant doubting. The results that come from research show that reality can be reached if one only speaks the truth out loud and openly for everyone to benefit because otherwise the truth is buried into the depths of the silence. In this silence, the legitimacy of truth is lost, and it is longer useful and practical for those who need the truth. The play, ‘The Life of Galileo’ is a good representation of the legitimacy of truth and how it becomes a reality if it is acknowledged and how this acknowledgment creates space for the traditional to take its place in history and make way for the contemporary to takes its place in the present. In this sense, the play can be read as an emphasis on the conflict between the church and the scholar; whereby the church represents the old system of Scholasticism and the scholar represents the new system of the Enlightenment.
The conflict between the conventional and the contemporary is a topic that continues to be trending as long as the differences between the old and the new exists. This traditional side, which can be called the scholastic side, of the conflict portrayed in the play is presented through the church, in which its teachings and doctrines are regarded as valid and acceptable. Because of this, the public we see in the play have become accustomed to a certain way of living, in which there is no questioning of the teachings and no doubting of the doctrines of the church. The people were afraid to say anything against the church, which was why they were silent and kept to their everyday lives. As long as they were safe and had their life moving on, it didn’t matter what the truth was. An example from the play is the character Mrs. Sarti, who is the housekeeper of Galileo. She seems to be continually surveilling Galileo and Andrea, and we see clearly that she does not approve of their experiments, and although she does not do anything in action to prevent them, she is critical of them with her words by saying things like, “You can’t surely tell him such stories? Making him trot it all out at school, so the priests come and see me because he keeps on coming out with blasphemies. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr.Galilei.” (10) Here we see that Mrs. Sarti is afraid of the reaction of the public and the priests. Like the other people, she is oppressed by the church and made to accept certain facts as the truth, and because of this system of the traditionalists, the knowledge of doubting and search for truth does not spread. The scene in which the very old cardinal makes a speech about Galileo’s new theory and says towards the end before he collapses, “… Mankind, God’s great effort, the creature on whom it all centers, made in God’s own image, indestructible and …” (54) The cardinal places the humans in the center of the universe. Here we see that the human is reflected as perfection and indestructible because they are created in the image of God. However, the fact that he collapses as soon as he says this shows that the old theory is problematic and contradicting itself. He is a human being who is supposedly created perfect but collapses, if he were indestructible he would be standing upright. The point that the author tries to make here is a foreshadowing of the fact that the old traditional system of teachings and dogmas and doctrines of the church will collapse and the new enlightened system of doubting and research of the scholar will replace it. Another instance that can be an example is the scene in which the Little Monk and Galileo are talking for the first time and the Little Monk tells Galileo about his family, where he says, “They draw the strength they need to carry their baskets sweating up the stony tracks, to bear children and even to eat, from the feeling of stability and necessity that comes of looking at the soil, at the annual greening of the trees and at the little church, and of listening to the bible passages read there every Sunday.” (65) The author shows here how some kinds of knowledge, the ones that contradict the church, in the new system built by a scholar can bring too much change to a society that has been accustomed to a certain way of living. This change can become a disruption to the lives of the ordinary people who live a quiet life away from troubles because they’re only worried is to get through the day. These worries that seem small for a scholar, like Galileo, are significant for the peasants, which is why they accept the doctrines of the church and do not doubt the teachings that are given to them as the truths of the universe.
The flip side of the conventional system is the contemporary system, which is referred to as the Age of Knowledge or Enlightenment, portrayed in the play and presented as the scholar, who is open to different ideas, does research of the truth and values knowledge more than the daily activities. With his new ideas the scholar, mainly Galileo, breaks away from the traditional views and tries to establish a new system, where doubt is the center of focus. The scholar focuses on observing what is seen; he emphasized that which one sees is not necessarily the truth and that the person should try to look more closely, and more observantly. In this way, the person opens the path to having an open perspective and the approach to finding the truth. Here we are reminded of a famous saying of the author Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories where Sherlock continually says, “You see, but you do not observe.” The author tries to make the point that there are many ways to look at things if one wants to be open to new perspectives and ideas. We see Galileo as a scholar who emphasizes the knowledge part that is gained through doubt. As a scholar, unlike the peasant, he is not afraid of the church and its oppressions because he has no worries about getting through the day. His worries are getting the truth out in the open for the people to know. An example is from the first scene, where Galileo and Andrea are talking about the milk money and while Andrea asks about what should be done, Galileo does not answer the questions but talks about his recent research. In his speech in the first scene, Galileo refers to the changing system by saying, “… The old days are over, and this is a new time… For where faith has been enthroned for a thousand years doubt now sits. Everyone says: right, that’s what it says in the books, but let’s have a look at ourselves. That most solemn truths are being familiarly nudged; what was never doubted before is doubted now,” (7) Galileo here points out that the old traditional system is changing and being replaced by the new that places the method of doubting rather than accepting to the accustomed way of living. The scholar is not afraid to speak his mind because he has seen the truth beyond what he was taught in the scholastic teachings, in other words, he is enlightened and wants to speak his mind so that others also benefit from the reality of the universe. In the scene where the Ballard singer is singing a song, in one of the stances he says, “Up stood the learned Galileo, and told the sun ‘Stop there’, From now the whole creation dei, will turn as I think fair: the boss starts turning from today, his servants stand and stare.” (83) The last lines indicate the change that starts with class when the new replaces the old, where the patrons serve, and the servants wait. This would result in a big uproar between the upper and lower class. In this scene, we see that Galileo becomes a hero because of his theories that oppose the dominance, oppression and scholastic doctrines of the church. His teachings start to preach equality, doubt, freedom of speech and thought and these become motivation for the peasants and servants, who are living in a low standard of living and therefore are in search for a more better and comfortable life. The peasants who are afraid of the church keep silent, but when the church is questioned, and its teachings are put under the microscope, this gives way to the change in the teachings and the destruction of the oppression on the people. Galileo’s emphasis on reason also makes this play rational oriented on thought and the mind. He says, “I believe in Humanity, which means to say I believe in human reason. If it weren’t for that belief each morning, I wouldn’t have the power to get out of bed.” (29) Here we see the scholar who lives not for the necessities of life and getting through the day, but for the sake of reason and the thinking of the mind. He puts human reason and humanity at the center of his own life and has worries of not passing the day smoothly, but worries about finding the truth and gaining knowledge about the reality of the universe. The play presents the scholar of the enlightenment whose necessities are not food and social activities, but thinking, reasoning and research. Here we are reminded of René Descartes who claims, “Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.”
At the end of the play, we see that Galileo recants his theory and starts a quiet life under constant surveillance not just in person also put in his words. He keeps to himself; his writings are read before they are published, and he seems like he has given up the new system, the enlightenment. We think that the tradition has overcome the contemporary the old has triumphed over the new and that the war is over. But, we can see from history and later developments in positive sciences and literature that his teachings have reached us today as the truth. So his deal was not an end of the conflict because even though he denied his theory and the church seemed to have oppressed him, change still happened. Enlightenment happened through the pupils that he raised and the scholars who read about him and his research about the new that became a focus and model for later generations. The search for the truth is a prevalent theme in the play and is played on the conflict between the old and the new. We see the conflict move between the search for reality and the truth for knowledge. In the end, we feel that the truth is being questioned all along, but the fact that this questioning is happening makes the truth legitimate because what occurs otherwise is what Andrea says during the trial of Galileo, “They’re beheading the truth.” (97)