The lively and successful Science in the City two-day series of events held in Valletta last week included the performance of two longish one-act plays in the handsome Neptune courtyard of the President’s Palace in Valletta.

The two pieces presented a number of very important scientific figures from the 16th to the18th centuries.

Figures which, through the clever scripts and very skilful acting of the single actors in the separate pieces, came to life both as people to whom we owe much by way of scientific development, and also as human beings with their frailties and eccentricities.

The first play featured Galileo Galilei in The Trials of Galilei, by Nic Young. The second involved a gallery of scientists – Henry Cavendish, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke – in L’Uomo che pesò il Mondo, a script by the well-known Maltese-Italian actor Pino Scicluna and Katia Caputo.

Both seize the audience’s attention and imagination immediately, thanks to the unusual personalities portrayed by Tim Hardy (Galileo) and Pino Scicluna (Henry Cavendish, Tycho Brahe and the rest) .

Young’s play, moreover, brings out lucidly the conflict between a Catholic Church determined to stamp out anything seen as conflicting with the Old Testament and Galileo’s clever efforts to overcome his indictment for heresy.

What comes out strongly is how Galileo’s book Dialoghi scientifically proved how correct Copernicus had been in positing a heliocentric universe, largely by brilliant interpretation of the data acquired from the excellent telescope he had invented, a beautiful facsimile of which was one of the few props used in the production.

The Scicluna-Caputo play aims to show how Cavendish, building on what predecessors like Robert Hooke (1635-1703) had discovered, successfully concluded what was known at the time as the Cavendish experiment.

This he did by calculating the density and the weight of the Earth. Cavendish was famous for his eccentricity and unsociable nature, so Scicluna makes use of Cavendish’s energetic servant, Fred (a historical figure?) to give us information about his master and about the scientists whose portraits appeared on the stage.

The Dane Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), a nobleman who lost his nose in a duel and seems to have worn a metal nose, invented a series of scientific instruments (but not a telescope) with which he made important discoveries about the positions of stars.

A performance that requires much physical energy

But, he was no mathematician and he believed the Earth was motionless.

He sought the help of the German Kepler (1571-1630) who, after Brahe’s death, was able to establish a correct picture of the sun and the positions/movements of the planets.

Hooke was important for the Cavendish experiment which Cavendish could carry out with the use of the torsion balance invented by Hooke.

Hooke’s study of gravity may have helped Newton (1642-1726) make his momentous discovery on this subject and, for this, the vain Newton never forgave Hooke. Hooke was a small man with a crooked spine, so when Newton said about himself that he stood on the shoulders of giants, he may have been sarcastically denying Hooke’s influence on him.

The play shows how the various scientists influenced Henry Cavendish and ends with the moral that scientific development must always emerge out of discoveries made in the past.

Scicluna makes use of his considerable talent for making us grin, if not guffaw, at the vanity and eccentricity of men, great ones not excluded.

It is a performance that requires much physical energy, as well as an ability to distinguish clearly between a number of very different characters.

Tim Hardy does not require the semi-comical techniques used by Scicluna, but his Galileo has plenty of irony for the Church’s obstinate refusal to accept proven scientific facts.

He is eager to let the audience know all about the manner and nature of his discoveries and about his friendly relationship with Pope Urban VIII.

The latter actually encouraged him to write a book on his discoveries about the cosmos, in the form of a dialogue between two speakers voicing opposite opinions,incorporating Urban’s views.

Unfortunately, in his book, Galileo included Urban’s views as voiced by the speaker he called Simplicius.

Not a flattering name and this, together with the growing ecclesiastical hostility to Galileo’s Copernican views, made all Galileo’s attempts to defend himself useless.

When he is shown the rack, a horrific instrument of torture, Galileo – who admits he is a coward – is unable to resist, making an admission that he knows he is wrong, an admission that is to embitter all his remaining years under house arrest.

Hardy’s Galileo is a semi-tragic figure, a great man who knows he has made huge discoveries but has to disown them in public. He even submits to a prohibition on his publishing any more of his writings.

A true Catholic, he is anguished to find that the Church’s cruel injustice has made him begin to waver in his faith and the famous declaration he weepingly makes to the audience, “Yet the Earth moves” (“Eppur si muove”) is one that historians hold Galileo never made before his judges.

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