Curved Reality
At St. John’s College Homecoming, Dean Joe Macfarland brought Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to life through the famous tower experiment. He posed a simple test: if a ball drops from a tower, does it fall straight down as appearances suggest, or carry the tower’s motion forward in a curve? Galileo staged the argument between Salviati and Simplicio, one speaking in geometry, the other trusting common sense. The exchange became a symbol of science’s power to look past appearances, showing how mathematical reasoning secured both new physics and freedom to philosophize. Centuries later, the irony deepens: nature’s grand book reveals not straight lines but curves in the fabric of space-time. The lasting legacy is the power of thought experiments to uncover those hidden truths.
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems →
Photo by author, 2025. St. John’s College Homecoming. Public domain.