LISA SCHLESINGER

“Welcome to the Theatre of Things Are Not What They Seem. If you are willing to suspend your disbelief, please allow us the pleasure of disrupting the narrative. This is the story of Galileo Galilei. Or not. The telescope. Or not. Turn it around and look through it the wrong way.  Or not. Please consider your perspective. But don’t forget what year this is, which lens you look through, whose trial this is, and who rules. The playwright calls this the Visitation. Because we are. Just visiting. And now we are off.”– Ghost of Leonardo, Visitation 1

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Celestial Bodies

A Tragicomedy in Three Acts

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The body is a device to calculate

The astronomy of the spirit.

MMMMMMRumi

MMMMMMMMMMThe Fragile Vial

 

And calculate the stars: model heaven how wield

The mighty frame; how built; unbuild, contrive

To save appearances; how gird the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er

Cycle, epicycle, orb in orb.

MMMMMMMMilton

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmParadise Lost viii 79-84

 

“It has often been maintained that Galileo became the father of modern science by replacing the speculative, deductive method with the empirical, experimental method. I believe, however, that this interpretation would not stand close scrutiny. There is no empirical method with speculative concepts and systems; and there is no speculative thinking whose concepts do not reveal on closer investigation, the empirical material from which they stem.”

Albert Einstein on Galileo in his introduction to Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems

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