Galileo's idol : Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the politics of knowledge

__Galileo’s Idol__ offers a vivid depiction of Galileo’s friend, student, and patron, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571–1620). Sagredo’s life, which has never before been studied in depth, brings to light the inextricable relationship between the production, distribution, and reception of political information and scientific knowledge. Nick Wilding uses as wide a variety of sources as possible—paintings, ornamental woodcuts, epistolary hoaxes, intercepted letters, murder case files, and others—to challenge the picture of early modern science as pious, serious, and ecumenical. Through his analysis of the figure of Sagredo, Wilding offers a fresh perspective on Galileo as well as new questions and techniques for the study of science. The result is a book that turns our attention from actors as individuals to shifting collective subjects, often operating under false identities; from a world made of sturdy print to one of frail instruments and mistranscribed manuscripts; from a complacent Europe to an emerging system of complex geopolitics and globalizing information systems; and from an epistemology based on the stolid problem of eternal truths to one generated through and in the service of playful, politically engaged, and cunning schemes. Galileo’s Idol is a historical case-study of the use of information in the making of early modern scientific knowledge. It studies the relationship between natural philosophical and political practices in the Venetian Mediterranean at the start of the seventeenth-century. Using the figure of Galileo’s closest friend and confidant, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571~1620), it shows how techniques of political information exchange were appropriated by early practitioners of the new science. Practices such as intercepting, leaking and archiving documents were used to redirect information towards varied audiences who read, understood and used this information in newly productive ways. Sagredo’s hybrid interventions in both political and natural philosophical debates are described for the first time, within the interlocking contexts of Venetian conflicts with Rome, the jostle of Mediterranean colonialism and the broken networks of Early Modern geopolitics. Special attention is paid to anonymous and pseudonymous texts, published both scribally and in print. A range of historiographical methodologies are deployed to locate and interpret evidence for this book, from extensive archival research, to detailed bibliographical analysis, to traditional art and new material history. What emerges in this microhistorical study is a refreshing corrective to the prevalent image of sombre, virtuous and autonomous natural philosophy: instead we see a satirical, carnivalesque science deeply enmeshed in political subterfuges and machinations, whose geopolitical interests extended well beyond the closed confines of Europe and intervened across the early modern world 'Galileo's Idol' is a historical case-study of the use of information in the making of early modern scientific knowledge. It studies the relationship between natural philosophical and political practices in the Venetian Mediterranean at the start of the seventeenth century. Using the figure of Galileo's closest friend and confidant, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620), it shows how techniques of political information exchange were appropriated by early practitioners of the new science Offers a vivid depiction of Galileo's friend, student, and patron, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620). The author uses as wide a variety of sources as possible - paintings, ornamental woodcuts, epistolary hoaxes, intercepted letters, murder case files, and others - to challenge the picture of early modern science as pious, serious, and ecumenical. This book looks at Galileo's friend, student, and patron, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620). Sagredo's life brings to light the relationship between the production, distribution, and reception of political information and scientific knowledge The generation and dissolution of images Becoming a "great magneticall man" Drawing weapons Interceptions Interconnections Transalpine messengers Masks Conclusion: science, intercepted.