But by now he had learned how to learn. Two or three times he tried turning over, and he grasped a principle, indispensable to every swimmer, namely, when you have your head in the water, you must not breathe—not even with your nose; indeed you must snort hard, as if to expel from the lungs even the little bit of air that you need so badly. Which seems an intuitive thing, and yet it is not, as this story makes clear.
He had further realized that it was easier for him to lie supine, face in the air, than prone. To me the opposite seems true, but Roberto had learned that way first, and for a day or two he continued in that attitude. Meanwhile he dialogued on the Maximum Systems.
He and the Jesuit had resumed their debate about the movement of the earth, and Father Caspar had engaged him in the Argument of the Eclipses. Removing the earth from the center of the world and putting the sun in its place, you must set the earth either below the moon or above the moon. If you put it below, there can never be an eclipse of the sun, because the moon, being above the sun or above the earth, can never come between them. If you put it above, there can never be an eclipse of the moon, because the earth, being above it, can never be interposed between it and the sun. And further, astronomy could no longer predict eclipses, as it has always done so well, because it bases its calculations on the movements of the sun, and if the sun does not move, the exercise would be in vain.
Roberto should consider also the Argument of the Archer. If the earth were to turn every twenty-four hours, then an arrow, when shot straight up, would fall to the west many miles from the archer. Similar is the Argument of the Tower. If you dropped a weight from the western side of a tower, it would land not at the foot of the edifice but much farther on, for it would fall not vertically but diagonally, because in the meantime the tower (with the earth) would have moved eastwards. But as everyone knows from experience, a weight falls perpendicularly, and so terrestrial motion is proved to be nonsense.
Not to mention the Argument of the Birds, which, if the earth turned in the space of a day, would never be able to keep up with it, however indefatigable they might be. Whereas we can see clearly that if we travel, even on horseback, in the direction of the sun, any bird can overtake and pass us.
“Very well. I do not know the answer to your arguments. But I have heard it said that if the earth turns and all the planets, and the sun stands still, many phenomena are explained, whereas Ptolemy had to invent epicycles and deferents and all sorts of other stupidities that do not exist on earth or in heaven.”
“I pardon you, if you wanted to make a Witz. But if you speak serious, then I say you are pagan as Ptolemy and I know well he had many mistakes made. Und so I believe the great Tycho of Uraniborg a very correct idea had: he thought that all the planets we know, namely Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercurius, and Saturnus revolve around the sun, but the sun revolves with them around the earth, the moon around the earth revolves, the earth unmoving stands in the center of the circle of the fixed stars. So you explain the mistakes of Ptolemy and say no heresies, whereas Ptolemy made mistakes and Galilei heresies spoke. And you are not obliged to explain how earth, so heavy as it is, goes roaming around the sky.”
“And how do the sun and the fixed stars manage?”
“You say they are heavy. I say not. They are celestial bodies, not sublunary. Earth, yes, that is heavy.”
“Then how does a ship bearing a hundred cannons sail around on the sea?”
“The sea pulls it, and the wind pushes.”
“In that case, if it is a matter of saying new things without irritating the cardinals of Rome, I have heard of a philosopher in Paris who says that the heavens are liquid matter, like a sea, which circulates everywhere, forming something like whirlpools… tourbillons….”
“What are they?”
“Vortices.”
“Ach so. Vortices, ja. But what do these vortices do?”
“This. The vortices pull the planets in their revolution, and a vortex draws the earth around the sun, but it is the vortex that moves. The earth remains immobile in the vortex that pulls it.”
“Bravo, Signor Roberto! You would not allow that the heavens are of crystal, because you were afraid the comets would break them, but you like them to be liquid, so the birds inside them drown! Further, this idea of vortices explains that the earth turns around the sun, but does not turn on itself as a child’s top spins!”
“Yes, but that philosopher said also that in this case it is the surface of the seas and the superficial crust of our globe that revolve, while the deep core remains still. I think.”
“More stupid than ever. Where did this gentleman write this?”
“I do not know, I think he gave up the idea of writing it, or of publishing it in a book. He did not want to irritate the Jesuits, whom he loves very much.”
“Then I prefer Signor Galilei, who had heretical thoughts but confessed them to very loving cardinals, and nobody burned him. I do not like this other gentleman who has thoughts even more heretical and does not confess, not even to Jesuits his friends. Perhaps one day God will Galilei forgive, but not your friend.”
“Anyway, it seems to me he revised that first idea. Apparently all the accumulation of matter that goes from the sun to the fixed stars turns in a great circle, borne by this wind….”
“But did you not say the heavens were liquid?” “Perhaps not. Perhaps they are a great wind….”
“You see? You do not know even—”
“Well, this wind makes all the planets turn around the sun, and at the same time it makes the sun turn around itself. So there is a minor vortex that makes the moon move around the earth and the earth turn in place. And yet it cannot be said the earth moves, because what moves is the wind. In the same way, if I were sleeping on the Daphne, and the Daphne went towards that island to the west, I would move from one place to another, and yet no one could say that my body has moved. And as far as daily movement is concerned, it is as if I were seated on a great potter’s wheel that moves, and surely you would first see my face, then my back, but it would not be I that moved, it would be the wheel.”
“This is the hypothesis of a malicious who wants to be heretic but not seem one. But you tell me now where are the stars. All of Ursa Major, and Perseus—do they turn in the same vortex?”
“Why, all the stars we see are so many suns, and each is at the center of its own vortex, and all the universe is a great circle of vortices with infinite suns and infinite planets, even beyond what our eye sees, and each with its own inhabitants.”
“Ach! Now I have got you and your hereticissimi friends! This is what you want: infinite worlds!”
“Surely you will allow me at least more than one. Otherwise where would God have set Hell? Not in the bowels of the earth.”
“Why not in the bowels of the earth?”
“Because”—and here Roberto was repeating in a very approximate fashion an argument he had heard in Paris, nor could he guarantee the precision of his calculations—”the diameter of the center of the earth measures two hundred Italian miles, and if we cube that, we have eight million miles. Considering that one Italian mile contains two hundred and forty thousand English feet, and since the Lord must have allowed to each of the damned at least six feet, Hell could contain only forty million damned, which seems few to me, considering all the sinners who have lived in this world of ours from Adam until now.”
“That would be true,” Caspar replied, not even deigning to go over the calculation, “if the damned were inside their bodies. But this is only after the Resurrection of the Flesh and the Last Judgement! And then there will no longer be either earth or planets, but other heavens and other earths!”
“Agreed, if the damned are only spirits, there will be a thousand million even on the head of a pin. But there are stars we cannot see with the naked eye, and instead are seen with your spyglass. Well, can you not think of a glass a hundred times more powerful which will allow you to see other stars, and then one a thousand times more powerful which will allow you to see stars even more distant, and so on ad infinitum? Would you set a limit to Creation?”
“The Bible does not speak of this.”
“The Bible does not speak of Jove, either, and yet you were looking at it the other evening with that damned glass
