WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.940 So I want you to close your eyes for just a second. 00:00:03.660 --> 00:00:09.199 Picture a really massive, just incredibly ornate 00:00:09.199 --> 00:00:13.500 lecture hall. It is 1613. We are in the Republic 00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:15.519 of Venice, specifically at the University of 00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:19.079 Padua. And this place, I mean, this is essentially 00:00:19.079 --> 00:00:22.960 the Harvard or the Oxford or the MIT of the 17th 00:00:22.960 --> 00:00:25.719 century. The wood in the room is dark. The air 00:00:25.719 --> 00:00:28.030 probably smells like. You know, beeswax and old 00:00:28.030 --> 00:00:30.649 parchment. And the room is just completely packed. 00:00:30.730 --> 00:00:32.429 Students are everywhere. They're murmuring. They're 00:00:32.429 --> 00:00:34.229 waiting. It's a really high stakes environment, 00:00:34.369 --> 00:00:35.609 too. You have to remember, you've got students 00:00:35.609 --> 00:00:38.310 from all over Europe in that room. German princes, 00:00:38.670 --> 00:00:40.670 Polish nobility, the sons of Italian merchants. 00:00:40.969 --> 00:00:43.289 They are there to learn from the absolute best. 00:00:43.490 --> 00:00:46.009 Exactly. And for the last 18 years, the absolute 00:00:46.009 --> 00:00:48.810 best has been a guy named Galileo Galilei. He 00:00:48.810 --> 00:00:51.689 is the rock star. He's the man who just a few 00:00:51.689 --> 00:00:54.409 years prior to this pointed a telescope at the 00:00:54.409 --> 00:00:57.619 sky and realized that Jupiter has moons, that 00:00:57.619 --> 00:00:59.799 the moon has mountains, that the Milky Way is 00:00:59.799 --> 00:01:02.100 literally made of individual stars. He didn't 00:01:02.100 --> 00:01:05.180 just teach the curriculum. He completely revolutionized 00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:07.799 the entire subject. He was a celebrity in the 00:01:07.799 --> 00:01:10.060 truest, most modern sense of the word. He was 00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:12.519 charismatic. He was incredibly controversial. 00:01:12.780 --> 00:01:14.599 And because of all that, he filled the seats. 00:01:14.859 --> 00:01:18.099 But now he's gone. He got a better offer. The 00:01:18.099 --> 00:01:20.780 Medici family down in Florence offered him a 00:01:20.780 --> 00:01:23.200 position as the court mathematician, which meant 00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:25.700 more money. Absolutely no teaching duties and 00:01:25.700 --> 00:01:28.519 full freedom to just do his research. So he packed 00:01:28.519 --> 00:01:31.200 up his lenses and his loot and he left. Leaving 00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:34.180 just a massive gaping vacuum behind him at Padera. 00:01:34.379 --> 00:01:36.879 A vacuum that somebody has to fill. So I want 00:01:36.879 --> 00:01:39.040 you to imagine you were the guy they hired to 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.819 replace him. Oh man. You have to walk into that 00:01:41.819 --> 00:01:44.739 specific lecture hall, stand behind Galileo's 00:01:44.739 --> 00:01:47.579 actual podium, Look out at this sea of students 00:01:47.579 --> 00:01:50.159 who basically worshiped the ground Galileo walked 00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:53.319 on and say alright everyone settle down I am 00:01:53.319 --> 00:01:55.840 the new guy that is the literal definition of 00:01:55.840 --> 00:01:58.040 a tough gig that is just professional suicide 00:01:58.040 --> 00:02:01.500 waiting to happen It really is and today we are 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:04.840 doing a deep dive into the life of the man who 00:02:04.840 --> 00:02:07.980 actually took that job His name was Giovanni 00:02:07.980 --> 00:02:10.979 Camillo Glorioso. And if you were out there scratching 00:02:10.979 --> 00:02:13.240 your head thinking, you know, I have never heard 00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:15.020 of this person in my life. You are definitely 00:02:15.020 --> 00:02:17.599 not alone. Not at all. History just has this 00:02:17.599 --> 00:02:20.469 way of putting all the spotlights on the mass 00:02:20.469 --> 00:02:22.830 of revolutionaries and leaving the people who 00:02:22.830 --> 00:02:24.629 have to come in and clean up after them entirely 00:02:24.629 --> 00:02:26.469 in the dark. Which is really a shame because 00:02:26.469 --> 00:02:29.590 Glorioso wasn't just some some substitute teacher 00:02:29.590 --> 00:02:31.810 keeping the seat warm. He was a Titan in his 00:02:31.810 --> 00:02:34.830 own right. He was this incredibly rigorous mathematician, 00:02:35.250 --> 00:02:38.330 a brilliant observational astronomer. And as 00:02:38.330 --> 00:02:40.030 we are definitely going to find out today, a 00:02:40.030 --> 00:02:43.550 man with a very, very short fuse. Oh, the fuse. 00:02:43.770 --> 00:02:45.590 We are absolutely going to talk about that fuse 00:02:45.590 --> 00:02:47.669 because this deep dive isn't just going to be 00:02:47.669 --> 00:02:50.270 about math equations and dry star charts, it 00:02:50.270 --> 00:02:53.389 is about the scientific blood sports of the 1600s. 00:02:53.669 --> 00:02:55.569 Blood sport is exactly the right word for it. 00:02:55.669 --> 00:02:58.849 I mean, we tend to romanticize this era. We think 00:02:58.849 --> 00:03:01.870 of it as this time of polite discourse, right? 00:03:02.090 --> 00:03:05.110 Gentlemen scholars sipping wine and quietly discussing 00:03:05.110 --> 00:03:08.180 the cosmos. Right, very civilized. But the reality 00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:11.159 was so much grittier than that. It was a time 00:03:11.159 --> 00:03:15.180 of incredibly vicious pamphlets, wild accusations 00:03:15.180 --> 00:03:17.939 of plagiarism, and these deeply personal feuds 00:03:17.939 --> 00:03:19.979 that lasted until one of the participants died, 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:22.599 and in some cases even continued after they were 00:03:22.599 --> 00:03:24.620 dead. Yeah, we have a stack of sources here to 00:03:24.620 --> 00:03:27.620 go through that are honestly just... wild. We 00:03:27.620 --> 00:03:29.860 have letters, we have these scientific treatises 00:03:29.860 --> 00:03:32.479 with titles that literally sound like death metal 00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:34.939 albums. We have the actual mathematical proofs 00:03:34.939 --> 00:03:36.819 that help force the transition from the Middle 00:03:36.819 --> 00:03:39.250 Ages into the modern scientific era. Our mission 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:43.129 today is to essentially resurrect Giovanni Camillo 00:03:43.129 --> 00:03:45.909 Glorioso for you. We want to see this incredibly 00:03:45.909 --> 00:03:48.430 volatile world through his eyes, the eyes of 00:03:48.430 --> 00:03:50.710 the successor. We want to understand what it 00:03:50.710 --> 00:03:52.530 actually takes to hold your ground when you are 00:03:52.530 --> 00:03:55.250 standing in the shadow of a giant like Galileo. 00:03:55.250 --> 00:03:57.849 And we really want to unpack how the truth of 00:03:57.849 --> 00:04:00.050 science is actually forged. It's not just these 00:04:00.050 --> 00:04:02.930 neat little eureka moments. It is decades of 00:04:02.930 --> 00:04:05.430 arguing, checking the math and dealing with colleagues 00:04:05.430 --> 00:04:08.629 you absolutely cannot stand. Let's strip away 00:04:08.629 --> 00:04:11.050 the Galileo mythos for a minute and look at the 00:04:11.050 --> 00:04:13.909 man who followed him. Where does a guy like Glorioso 00:04:13.909 --> 00:04:17.069 even come from? What is the origin story of the 00:04:17.069 --> 00:04:20.110 person brave enough or maybe crazy enough to 00:04:20.110 --> 00:04:22.850 replace Galileo? To really understand Glorioso, 00:04:22.990 --> 00:04:25.110 you have to mentally map out Italy in the late 00:04:25.110 --> 00:04:28.509 16th century. He was born in 1572, way down in 00:04:28.509 --> 00:04:30.709 the Kingdom of Naples. Now, Kingdom of Naples 00:04:30.709 --> 00:04:32.709 sounds very grand, but we're talking about the 00:04:32.709 --> 00:04:35.439 deep south of Italy, right? We are. Specifically, 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:37.699 he was born in a small place called Monte Corvino 00:04:37.699 --> 00:04:41.660 Ravella. It's new Salerno. So he is very far 00:04:41.660 --> 00:04:44.180 removed from these bustling northern power centers 00:04:44.180 --> 00:04:47.300 like Venice or Florence. He was a southern Italian 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:49.980 boy growing up in an era where those regional 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:52.360 differences dictate almost everything about your 00:04:52.360 --> 00:04:55.160 prospects. In 1572, that puts him squarely in 00:04:55.160 --> 00:04:57.899 this weird generation that straddles the very 00:04:57.899 --> 00:05:01.009 old world and the brand new one. Exactly. He 00:05:01.009 --> 00:05:03.569 is only eight years younger than Galileo, so 00:05:03.569 --> 00:05:06.990 they are effectively contemporaries. But Glorioso 00:05:06.990 --> 00:05:09.730 is just slightly behind the curve chronologically, 00:05:09.970 --> 00:05:12.430 which means he is coming of age in a world that 00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:15.269 is already starting to crack open intellectually. 00:05:15.810 --> 00:05:17.790 The old rules are just starting to show some 00:05:17.790 --> 00:05:19.990 stress fractures. Well, let's talk about how 00:05:19.990 --> 00:05:22.410 he was educated, because looking at his resume 00:05:22.410 --> 00:05:25.360 and the sources, He did not start out as a mass 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:27.720 prodigy. No, and almost nobody did back then. 00:05:27.839 --> 00:05:29.680 You didn't just go off to the university to become 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:31.620 a scientist. That word didn't even exist yet. 00:05:31.819 --> 00:05:33.600 Right, natural philosophy was the closest thing. 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:37.100 Exactly. So, Glorioso actually earned his initial 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:39.939 degrees in philosophy and theology from the University 00:05:39.939 --> 00:05:42.779 of Naples. Why was that the standard prerequisite? 00:05:42.939 --> 00:05:45.910 Why not just jump into the numbers? Because before 00:05:45.910 --> 00:05:47.730 you could measure the physical world, you had 00:05:47.730 --> 00:05:49.889 to understand what the physical world fundamentally 00:05:49.889 --> 00:05:53.430 was. Philosophy provided the absolute framework, 00:05:53.709 --> 00:05:56.009 which was almost entirely Aristotelian physics 00:05:56.009 --> 00:05:59.670 at that point. And theology provided the why. 00:06:00.029 --> 00:06:02.920 The ultimate cause. Right. The mindset was that 00:06:02.920 --> 00:06:05.759 you had to understand the creator's intent before 00:06:05.759 --> 00:06:07.879 you had any business looking at the creation's 00:06:07.879 --> 00:06:10.560 mechanics. If you just jumped straight to math 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:13.019 without that deep philosophical grounding, you 00:06:13.019 --> 00:06:15.180 were viewed as just a calculator. You were a 00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:18.000 technician, not a true scholar. Okay, so he gets 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.839 the foundational degrees. He knows his Aristotle 00:06:20.839 --> 00:06:23.649 inside and out. He knows the theology. But then 00:06:23.649 --> 00:06:26.470 he takes a hard pivot. He does. He enters the 00:06:26.470 --> 00:06:29.250 orbit of the Jesuits. He studied mathematics 00:06:29.250 --> 00:06:31.730 specifically at the Jesuit College in Naples. 00:06:31.829 --> 00:06:34.889 And he trained under two really key figures there, 00:06:35.110 --> 00:06:38.009 Vincenzo Filiucci and Giovanni Giacomo Stasario. 00:06:38.170 --> 00:06:39.949 We really need to pause on the Jesuits for a 00:06:39.949 --> 00:06:41.990 second here, because when we hear the word Jesuit 00:06:41.990 --> 00:06:44.550 today, we might just think of a specific Catholic 00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:47.050 religious order, maybe high schools or universities. 00:06:47.509 --> 00:06:49.870 But in the 1600s, in the context of science and 00:06:49.870 --> 00:06:52.540 math, what did it mean to be trained? by the 00:06:52.540 --> 00:06:55.139 Jesuits. It meant you were dealing with the absolute 00:06:55.139 --> 00:06:57.899 intellectual special forces of the era. The Jesuits 00:06:57.899 --> 00:07:00.459 were the undisputed educational elite of the 00:07:00.459 --> 00:07:02.800 Catholic world. They utilized this curriculum 00:07:02.800 --> 00:07:05.800 called the ratio studiorum, and it was incredibly 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:08.560 brutally rigorous. Especially in the sciences. 00:07:08.759 --> 00:07:11.540 Yes. In mathematics specifically, they were strict 00:07:11.540 --> 00:07:14.620 followers of Christopher Clavius. He's the guy 00:07:14.620 --> 00:07:16.439 who basically fixed the calendar, right? Exactly. 00:07:16.519 --> 00:07:19.079 He was the architect of the Gregorian calendar 00:07:19.079 --> 00:07:23.060 that the entire world uses today. And the Jesuit 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:25.240 mathematical tradition that Calavius built was 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:28.079 completely obsessed with precision. They focused 00:07:28.079 --> 00:07:32.600 heavily on Euclidean geometry, an absolute watertight 00:07:32.600 --> 00:07:36.259 logical proof. So no guessing? None. They despised 00:07:36.259 --> 00:07:39.639 hand waving. They didn't like vague poetic theories 00:07:39.639 --> 00:07:41.980 about how the universe might work. They demanded 00:07:41.980 --> 00:07:44.240 mathematical rigor. So if you studied with the 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:46.639 Jesuits, like Glorioso did, you came out with 00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:49.220 a brain that was essentially wired to find errors. 00:07:49.500 --> 00:07:51.839 You were trained to spot the flaw in someone 00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:54.240 else's logic. That feels like a totally crucial 00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:56.879 character trait for Glorioso. He is basically 00:07:56.879 --> 00:07:59.079 trained from the ground up to be a debugger of 00:07:59.079 --> 00:08:00.959 the universe. Debugger is the perfect way to 00:08:00.959 --> 00:08:04.279 put it. He is a debugger. And that specific intellectual 00:08:04.279 --> 00:08:06.759 training totally sets the stage for his future. 00:08:06.600 --> 00:08:09.459 with a guy like Galileo. So how did the two of 00:08:09.459 --> 00:08:11.800 them actually cross paths initially? Is it like 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:14.480 a fan meeting is idle? Not really, no. It was 00:08:14.480 --> 00:08:16.379 much more of a peer -to -peer dynamic. You have 00:08:16.379 --> 00:08:18.339 to remember the scientific community in Italy 00:08:18.339 --> 00:08:20.920 at this time was tiny. It was a very small club. 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:23.459 Right. Everyone wrote letters to everyone else. 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:26.560 Glorioso was already part of this respected mathematical 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:29.639 circle that included guys like Marino Gattaldi 00:08:29.639 --> 00:08:32.080 and Antonio Santini. These are very serious, 00:08:32.259 --> 00:08:35.320 heavy -hitting mathematicians. So Glorioso and 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:37.559 Galileo corresponded. They were friendly enough. 00:08:37.860 --> 00:08:40.320 Glorioso was very much in the club. So the powers 00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:42.980 that be at Padua, they know who he is. He's a 00:08:42.980 --> 00:08:45.940 known quantity. He's smart. He has the theological 00:08:45.940 --> 00:08:49.500 credentials, and he has that intense Jesuit mathematical 00:08:49.500 --> 00:08:53.080 rigor. Right. And then comes 1613, the great 00:08:53.080 --> 00:08:55.740 pivot point. Galileo takes the posh job in Florence. 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:58.740 The chair of mathematics at Padua suddenly opens 00:08:58.740 --> 00:09:00.950 up. And we cannot overstate this. The chair of 00:09:00.950 --> 00:09:03.389 mathematics at Padua was arguably the most prestigious 00:09:03.389 --> 00:09:05.850 academic post for a mathematician anywhere in 00:09:05.850 --> 00:09:08.289 Europe at the time. Padua was under the direct 00:09:08.289 --> 00:09:10.090 protection of the Republic of Venice. It was 00:09:10.090 --> 00:09:12.909 wealthy. It was powerful. And crucially, it was 00:09:12.909 --> 00:09:14.950 slightly more secular and independent than the 00:09:14.950 --> 00:09:16.889 rest of Italy. So you could push the envelope 00:09:16.889 --> 00:09:19.570 a little bit more there. Exactly. It was a known 00:09:19.570 --> 00:09:23.250 safe haven for free thinkers. Well, up to a point 00:09:23.250 --> 00:09:25.929 anyway. And what about the compensation? The 00:09:25.929 --> 00:09:28.190 salary was actually quite significant, even though 00:09:28.190 --> 00:09:30.690 Galileo was famous for constantly complaining 00:09:30.690 --> 00:09:33.830 that it wasn't enough. But the prestige, that 00:09:33.830 --> 00:09:36.950 was the real currency. To be the mathematics 00:09:36.950 --> 00:09:39.929 professor at Padrow was to be the undisputed 00:09:39.929 --> 00:09:43.350 voice of authority. So the university makes Gloriosa 00:09:43.350 --> 00:09:46.769 the offer. He accepts it, he leaves the south, 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:49.570 and moves up north to Venice. He takes the chair. 00:09:50.029 --> 00:09:52.029 I really want to circle back to the psychological 00:09:52.029 --> 00:09:54.860 aspect of this, though. because Galileo was, 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:58.379 at his core, a massive showman. Oh, absolutely. 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:01.320 He intentionally wrote his dialogues in vernacular 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:03.500 Italian so the common merchants could read them, 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:06.279 not just the Latin -speaking elites. He cracked 00:10:06.279 --> 00:10:09.320 jokes. He was incredibly charismatic. Glorioso, 00:10:09.820 --> 00:10:11.960 based on his Jesuit background, sounds like he 00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:14.919 was much more, I don't know... He was entirely 00:10:14.919 --> 00:10:17.039 by the book, and honestly, I think that is the 00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:19.000 exact reason he survived the transition. What 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:20.779 do you mean? Well, if he had walked into that 00:10:20.779 --> 00:10:23.159 lecture hall and tried to play the role of Galileo 00:10:23.159 --> 00:10:26.539 2 .0, he would have failed miserably. You simply 00:10:26.539 --> 00:10:29.220 cannot out -charisma a generational celebrity. 00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:32.789 The students would have eaten him alive. Instead, 00:10:33.269 --> 00:10:36.690 Glorioso did a hard pivot to pure unadulterated 00:10:36.690 --> 00:10:39.289 competence. He leaned into the math. Exactly. 00:10:39.570 --> 00:10:43.409 He positioned himself as the very serious, highly 00:10:43.409 --> 00:10:46.129 rigorous academic who wasn't going to try and 00:10:46.129 --> 00:10:48.769 dazzle you with optical magic tricks, but who 00:10:48.769 --> 00:10:51.409 was going to teach you the absolute unbreakable 00:10:51.409 --> 00:10:54.269 truth of geometry. So he was the eat your vegetables 00:10:54.269 --> 00:10:57.149 professor compared to Galileo's dessert first 00:10:57.149 --> 00:10:59.490 approach. In a lot of ways, yes. But we also 00:10:59.490 --> 00:11:01.250 have to remember he was stepping into an act 00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:05.179 war zone. By 1613, the conflict between the traditional 00:11:05.179 --> 00:11:07.659 Aristotelian view of the universe and the new 00:11:07.659 --> 00:11:09.840 telescopic observations was getting incredibly 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:12.500 hot, and Glorioso walked right into the dead 00:11:12.500 --> 00:11:15.179 center of it. And he clearly didn't just keep 00:11:15.179 --> 00:11:17.379 his head down and teach the syllabus. He got 00:11:17.379 --> 00:11:21.149 straight to work. Let's dig into his actual astronomy, 00:11:21.590 --> 00:11:24.190 because the outline from our sources points to 00:11:24.190 --> 00:11:27.070 a very specific event that really defined his 00:11:27.070 --> 00:11:29.350 early tenure at Padua, and that is the Great 00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:34.009 Comet of 1618. This was just a massive culture 00:11:34.009 --> 00:11:38.549 -stopping event. Late in the year 1618, three 00:11:38.549 --> 00:11:41.590 different comets appeared in the sky in succession. 00:11:42.250 --> 00:11:45.190 And the third one was absolutely spectacular. 00:11:45.230 --> 00:11:48.190 It was huge. It was incredibly bright. And it 00:11:48.190 --> 00:11:50.889 was visible for weeks on end. Literally everyone 00:11:50.889 --> 00:11:53.549 saw it. Kings, peasants, the pope. Everyone. 00:11:53.610 --> 00:11:55.629 And naturally, because it's the 17th century, 00:11:55.990 --> 00:11:57.769 everyone immediately starts arguing about what 00:11:57.769 --> 00:12:00.169 it actually is. Right. And to fully grasp why 00:12:00.169 --> 00:12:02.009 this was such a bitter argument, we have to do 00:12:02.009 --> 00:12:05.070 a very quick crash course in Aristotelian cosmology. 00:12:05.350 --> 00:12:07.889 Please lay it on us. OK. So Aristotle's physics 00:12:07.889 --> 00:12:10.049 had basically ruled the intellectual world for 00:12:10.049 --> 00:12:12.549 2 ,000 years at this point. And his system states 00:12:12.549 --> 00:12:14.990 that the universe is strictly divided into two 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:18.090 distinct zones. Zone one is everything below 00:12:18.090 --> 00:12:20.509 the orbit of the moon. They called this the sublunar 00:12:20.509 --> 00:12:22.990 sphere. This includes the Earth, our oceans, 00:12:23.129 --> 00:12:26.110 and our atmosphere. And Aristotle said this entire 00:12:26.110 --> 00:12:28.789 zone is made up of four elements, Earth, water, 00:12:28.990 --> 00:12:31.889 air, and fire. The classic four. Right. And the 00:12:31.889 --> 00:12:34.710 key feature of zone one is that it is fundamentally 00:12:34.710 --> 00:12:37.320 imperfect. Things down here change, they grow, 00:12:37.460 --> 00:12:40.639 they die, they rot, they burn, they decay. Chaos 00:12:40.639 --> 00:12:43.139 and unpredictable change are perfectly allowed 00:12:43.139 --> 00:12:46.179 in the sublunar zone. Got it. Zone one is messy 00:12:46.179 --> 00:12:49.179 and mortal. Exactly. Now, zone two is everything 00:12:49.179 --> 00:12:51.559 above the moon. The moon itself, the sun, the 00:12:51.559 --> 00:12:54.259 planets, the fixed stars. Aristotle insisted 00:12:54.259 --> 00:12:56.200 that the superlunar zone is completely different. 00:12:56.500 --> 00:12:58.720 It is made of a mysterious fifth element called 00:12:58.720 --> 00:13:00.860 the quintessence. And what's the rule for the 00:13:00.860 --> 00:13:03.840 quintessence? The rule is perfection. This material 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:06.549 is crystalline. flawless and most importantly 00:13:06.549 --> 00:13:08.950 it is completely immutable. Immutable meaning 00:13:08.950 --> 00:13:12.909 it literally never changes ever. Never. The heavens 00:13:12.909 --> 00:13:15.669 are eternal they operate like perfect frictionless 00:13:15.669 --> 00:13:18.549 clockwork. According to this physics nothing 00:13:18.549 --> 00:13:20.690 new can ever be created up there and nothing 00:13:20.690 --> 00:13:22.649 that is up there can ever be destroyed. Okay 00:13:22.649 --> 00:13:26.129 so suddenly enter the Great Comet of 1618. Right 00:13:26.129 --> 00:13:29.529 here is this giant blazing streak of fire that 00:13:29.529 --> 00:13:32.789 just appears completely out of nowhere, moves 00:13:32.789 --> 00:13:36.070 erratically across the sky, visibly changes its 00:13:36.070 --> 00:13:38.169 shape over several weeks, and then completely 00:13:38.169 --> 00:13:41.549 vanishes. If you are a strict Aristotelian professor 00:13:41.549 --> 00:13:44.710 whose entire career is based on the heavens being 00:13:44.710 --> 00:13:48.350 unchanging, that comet is your absolute worst 00:13:48.350 --> 00:13:51.210 nightmare. It breaks the entire system. Because 00:13:51.210 --> 00:13:53.210 if that comet is actually up in the heavens, 00:13:53.490 --> 00:13:55.690 then the heavens are actively changing. And if 00:13:55.690 --> 00:13:58.090 the heavens are changing, Aristotle is fundamentally 00:13:58.090 --> 00:14:00.649 wrong. And if Aristotle is wrong about physics, 00:14:01.129 --> 00:14:03.470 the entire theological mapping of the universe 00:14:03.470 --> 00:14:05.549 that the Church has built up over centuries starts 00:14:05.549 --> 00:14:07.769 to collapse. The stakes are just incredibly high. 00:14:08.070 --> 00:14:09.909 So what did the Aristotelians actually say to 00:14:09.909 --> 00:14:12.129 defend themselves? Did they just say, Don't look 00:14:12.129 --> 00:14:14.190 up. They basically said, oh, it's not actually 00:14:14.190 --> 00:14:16.409 in the heavens at all. They argued very forcefully 00:14:16.409 --> 00:14:18.850 that comets were just weird atmospheric phenomena. 00:14:18.970 --> 00:14:21.789 They called them exhalations. Exhalations. Yeah. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.720 The theory was that they were essentially swamp 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:29.100 gas, just hot, dry Earth vapors that rose up 00:14:29.100 --> 00:14:32.179 from the ground into the very upper, upper atmosphere, 00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:35.159 but still firmly within zone one, the sub lunar 00:14:35.159 --> 00:14:38.639 sphere. And they simply caught fire due to friction. 00:14:38.980 --> 00:14:41.279 So they were trying to write off the most spectacular 00:14:41.279 --> 00:14:44.700 astronomical event of the decade as just some 00:14:44.700 --> 00:14:47.460 fancy weather. Exactly. It's just a sub lunar 00:14:47.460 --> 00:14:51.120 fire. It's not a celestial body. Crisis averted. 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:53.480 But Glorioso didn't buy that explanation for 00:14:53.480 --> 00:14:56.059 a second. Not for a second. Glorioso was a mathematician. 00:14:56.440 --> 00:14:59.799 He trusted geometry, not ancient dogma. He, along 00:14:59.799 --> 00:15:01.799 with a few other forward -thinking astronomers 00:15:01.799 --> 00:15:05.120 like Tycho Bravo up in Denmark, decided to actually 00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:07.539 measure the comet's position. And they used a 00:15:07.539 --> 00:15:10.100 mathematical technique called parallax. OK, let's 00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:11.820 break down parallax for the listener who maybe 00:15:11.820 --> 00:15:13.419 hasn't thought about high school geometry in 00:15:13.419 --> 00:15:15.450 a while. It's actually very intuitive. Hold your 00:15:15.450 --> 00:15:17.610 thumb out at arm's length right now. Close your 00:15:17.610 --> 00:15:19.669 left eye and look at where your thumb is relative 00:15:19.669 --> 00:15:21.929 to the wall behind it. Okay, doing it. Now open 00:15:21.929 --> 00:15:23.629 your left eye and close your right eye. Your 00:15:23.629 --> 00:15:25.629 thumb appears to jump back and forth across the 00:15:25.629 --> 00:15:27.610 background, right? Right, it shifts completely. 00:15:27.730 --> 00:15:30.049 Now bring your thumb right up to touch your nose 00:15:30.049 --> 00:15:32.629 and do the exact same thing. The jump is huge. 00:15:32.950 --> 00:15:36.750 Massive jump. Exactly. But now, look out your 00:15:36.750 --> 00:15:39.350 window at a building that's a mile away and blink 00:15:39.350 --> 00:15:42.169 your eyes back and forth. The building doesn't 00:15:42.169 --> 00:15:45.529 appear to move at all. Got it. So the closer 00:15:45.529 --> 00:15:48.549 an object is to you, the more it appears to shift 00:15:48.549 --> 00:15:50.269 against the background when you look at it from 00:15:50.269 --> 00:15:52.570 two different angles. Precisely. So apply that 00:15:52.570 --> 00:15:55.610 to the comet. If the comet is just swamp gas 00:15:55.610 --> 00:15:57.850 burning in our local atmosphere, meaning it's 00:15:57.850 --> 00:16:00.629 very close to the Earth, then astronomers observing 00:16:00.629 --> 00:16:03.149 it from widely different parts of Europe should 00:16:03.149 --> 00:16:05.769 see it in significantly different positions against 00:16:05.769 --> 00:16:07.929 the background of the fixed stars. Because they 00:16:07.929 --> 00:16:10.230 represent the two different eyes blinking. Right. 00:16:10.409 --> 00:16:13.309 But if the comet is incredibly far away out, 00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:16.600 among the planets in the heavens, then the shift, 00:16:16.899 --> 00:16:19.820 the parallax, will be practically zero. So, Glorioso 00:16:19.820 --> 00:16:21.960 actually sat down and crunched these numbers. 00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:25.139 He did. He made his own rigorous observations 00:16:25.139 --> 00:16:28.460 of the comet from Padua. He collected the observational 00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:30.960 data from other astronomers across Europe. He 00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:34.269 did the math, and he found no parallax. or at 00:16:34.269 --> 00:16:36.570 least none that was measurable with their instruments. 00:16:36.730 --> 00:16:39.049 Which conclusively means the comet is very, very 00:16:39.049 --> 00:16:41.629 far away. It means it is millions of miles away. 00:16:41.690 --> 00:16:44.389 It is absolutely without a dare in celestial 00:16:44.389 --> 00:16:47.450 realm. Glorioso laid this all out in a major 00:16:47.450 --> 00:16:51.509 work published in 1624 called De Cometis Dissertatio 00:16:51.509 --> 00:16:54.830 Astronomico Physica. He effectively said, look, 00:16:54.870 --> 00:16:58.149 the geometry does not lie. This object is currently 00:16:58.149 --> 00:17:00.450 smashing its way right through your supposed 00:17:00.450 --> 00:17:02.710 immutable crystal spheres. He was just driving 00:17:02.710 --> 00:17:07.670 a math math. You was. But here is the massive 00:17:07.670 --> 00:17:10.450 plot twist in all of this. Do you know who famously 00:17:10.450 --> 00:17:12.869 got the comet issue completely wrong? Don't tell 00:17:12.869 --> 00:17:15.730 me. Oh yeah. Galileo Galilei? No way. The guy 00:17:15.730 --> 00:17:18.369 he replaced. The father of modern astronomy. 00:17:18.670 --> 00:17:22.210 The very same. Galileo actually argued that comets 00:17:22.210 --> 00:17:25.029 might just be weird optical illusions, sort of 00:17:25.029 --> 00:17:27.750 like rainbows or strange reflections of sunlight 00:17:27.750 --> 00:17:31.519 hitting atmospheric vapor. Galileo stubbornly 00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:34.039 refused to accept Tycho Brahe's model of comets 00:17:34.039 --> 00:17:36.700 as celestial bodies, mostly because he had his 00:17:36.700 --> 00:17:39.660 own personal beef with Tycho's system. He got 00:17:39.660 --> 00:17:42.019 completely caught up in his own rhetorical arguments 00:17:42.019 --> 00:17:44.519 and missed the truth. That is genuinely fascinating. 00:17:44.619 --> 00:17:47.140 It really humanizes the history of science. Yeah. 00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:48.779 Just because you're an absolute genius doesn't 00:17:48.779 --> 00:17:51.160 mean you bat a thousand on every issue. Exactly. 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:53.920 And it really highlights Glorioso's fierce independence. 00:17:54.039 --> 00:17:56.359 He didn't just blindly echo whatever Galileo 00:17:56.359 --> 00:17:59.180 said. He followed the hard data. He was a rigorous 00:17:59.180 --> 00:18:01.960 his core. If the parallax calculation says the 00:18:01.960 --> 00:18:04.240 comet is celestial, then it's celestial, period, 00:18:04.819 --> 00:18:06.819 regardless of what Aristotle or Galileo thinks. 00:18:07.039 --> 00:18:08.900 He was also heavily involved in watching the 00:18:08.900 --> 00:18:10.799 planets, right? It wasn't just this one comet. 00:18:10.940 --> 00:18:13.839 No, he was a very dedicated long -term observer. 00:18:14.099 --> 00:18:16.500 He became particularly famous for his detailed 00:18:16.500 --> 00:18:19.119 observations of Mars and Saturn. And we really 00:18:19.119 --> 00:18:21.339 have to pause and remember what the word observation 00:18:21.339 --> 00:18:24.880 actually meant back in the 1620s. It wasn't exactly 00:18:24.880 --> 00:18:26.799 sitting in a climate -controlled room looking 00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:29.579 at a computer monitor. Not even close. You are 00:18:29.579 --> 00:18:32.660 standing outside on a stone tower in the freezing, 00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:35.660 damp, Padua winter. You are looking through a 00:18:35.660 --> 00:18:39.160 long, heavy, wooden tube fitted with hand -ground 00:18:39.160 --> 00:18:41.750 glass lenses that probably have tiny bubbles 00:18:41.750 --> 00:18:44.170 and imperfections in them, and you're trying 00:18:44.170 --> 00:18:47.589 to sketch this tiny, blurry, constantly shivering 00:18:47.589 --> 00:18:51.029 blob of light by the flickering light of a candle 00:18:51.029 --> 00:18:53.490 before your hands go completely numb. It was 00:18:53.490 --> 00:18:55.609 a test of physical endurance as much as it was 00:18:55.609 --> 00:18:58.420 intellectual. It really was, and Glorioso did 00:18:58.420 --> 00:19:01.059 the hard, unglamorous work night after night. 00:19:01.400 --> 00:19:03.619 This just reinforces the reality that he wasn't 00:19:03.619 --> 00:19:06.140 just a theorist sitting in an armchair. He was 00:19:06.140 --> 00:19:08.539 a working, practicing astronomer. Let's shift 00:19:08.539 --> 00:19:10.759 gears a little bit and talk about his other major 00:19:10.759 --> 00:19:13.700 superpower, which was math. The source outline 00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:16.380 explicitly calls him one of the leading Italian 00:19:16.380 --> 00:19:19.039 algebraists of his time. Now I know listening 00:19:19.039 --> 00:19:21.240 to two people talk about 17th century algebra 00:19:21.240 --> 00:19:23.799 on a deep dive is usually a guaranteed cure for 00:19:23.799 --> 00:19:26.339 insomnia, but there is actually something incredibly 00:19:26.339 --> 00:19:28.920 cool here about the evolution of the language 00:19:28.920 --> 00:19:31.940 of math. It is incredibly cool because the way 00:19:31.940 --> 00:19:35.309 we do math today The basic symbols we take completely 00:19:35.309 --> 00:19:37.329 for granted. They basically didn't exist yet. 00:19:37.589 --> 00:19:39.410 Or at least they were just in the painful process 00:19:39.410 --> 00:19:41.430 of being born. Right. Like today, if I want to 00:19:41.430 --> 00:19:44.509 write down, say, A to the power of eight, I just 00:19:44.509 --> 00:19:46.450 write the letter A and I put a tiny little eight 00:19:46.450 --> 00:19:49.170 right next to it. Boom. Two characters. I'm done. 00:19:49.329 --> 00:19:52.069 It's simple. It's efficient. It's universal. 00:19:52.430 --> 00:19:55.930 But in the early 1600s, algebra was still desperately 00:19:55.930 --> 00:19:58.309 trying to transition away from what historians 00:19:58.309 --> 00:20:01.630 call a rhetorical style. Rhetorical meaning using 00:20:01.630 --> 00:20:04.730 words instead of symbols. exactly they wrote 00:20:04.730 --> 00:20:07.970 out complex mathematical problems in full grammatical 00:20:07.970 --> 00:20:11.250 sentences so imagine trying to balance a complex 00:20:11.250 --> 00:20:13.789 polynomial equation but you have to write it 00:20:13.789 --> 00:20:15.769 out like you are writing a paragraph of prose 00:20:15.769 --> 00:20:18.569 in an essay the unknown thing multiplied by itself 00:20:18.569 --> 00:20:20.750 which is then added to the unknown thing cubed 00:20:20.750 --> 00:20:25.200 is equal to the number 10 Yes. It was incredibly 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:28.059 maddeningly cumbersome. And the biggest problem 00:20:28.059 --> 00:20:30.420 was that it made it almost impossible to visually 00:20:30.420 --> 00:20:32.799 spot the underlying patterns, because you were 00:20:32.799 --> 00:20:36.000 just drowning in a sea of Latin words. So the 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:38.480 top mathematicians of the era were desperately 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:42.059 trying to invent a shorthand, a new code to compress 00:20:42.059 --> 00:20:44.589 the logic. And Glorioso was one of the guys writing 00:20:44.589 --> 00:20:47.869 that code. He was. His major work in this specific 00:20:47.869 --> 00:20:50.970 field was called Exorcitis Onum Mathematicaerum 00:20:50.970 --> 00:20:53.849 Decades Tres, which he published in parts between 00:20:53.849 --> 00:20:58.410 1627 and 1639. He was aggressively pushing for 00:20:58.410 --> 00:21:01.690 a standardized, symbolic way to represent massive 00:21:01.690 --> 00:21:04.750 exponential powers. Our sources give us a very 00:21:04.750 --> 00:21:07.670 specific visual example of his notation. And 00:21:07.670 --> 00:21:09.470 I have it to say, looking at it, it looks really 00:21:09.470 --> 00:21:11.509 weird to modernize. It does look strange. It's 00:21:11.509 --> 00:21:13.569 the string of letters capital A, lowercase q, 00:21:13.609 --> 00:21:16.109 lowercase q, lowercase c, a, q, q, c. A, q, q, 00:21:16.109 --> 00:21:18.440 c. It sounds like someone's sneezing, or just 00:21:18.440 --> 00:21:20.259 a really terrible hand of Scrabble tiles. It 00:21:20.259 --> 00:21:22.559 definitely does, but it's actually a very logical, 00:21:22.759 --> 00:21:25.359 albeit clunky system once you understand the 00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:28.339 rules he was playing by. Okay, decode at QQC 00:21:28.339 --> 00:21:30.759 for us. What does it actually mean? It literally 00:21:30.759 --> 00:21:33.980 translates to A to the eighth power. Okay, so 00:21:33.980 --> 00:21:37.099 how on earth do you extract the number eight 00:21:37.099 --> 00:21:40.539 from the letters QQC? You have to look at the 00:21:40.539 --> 00:21:42.319 Latin roots of the words those letters stand 00:21:42.319 --> 00:21:46.140 for. The Q stands for quadrato, which means squared. 00:21:46.579 --> 00:21:49.940 The C stands for cubo, which means cubed. Okay, 00:21:50.220 --> 00:21:53.420 squared and cubed. Two and three. Right. But 00:21:53.420 --> 00:21:55.720 the system they were working with involved combining 00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:58.480 these terms in a hierarchical way to build bigger 00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:01.099 exponents. So a square, square, q, q would be 00:22:01.099 --> 00:22:03.220 a variable squared and then squared again. So 00:22:03.220 --> 00:22:05.759 x squared times x squared, which is x to the 00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:08.059 fourth. Exactly. And then the c term, sometimes 00:22:08.059 --> 00:22:10.200 referring to cubo or sometimes a related term 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:12.079 like census, depending on the exact regional 00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:14.660 mathematical dialect, would modify that fourth 00:22:14.660 --> 00:22:16.880 power, effectively multiplying the indices to 00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.019 reach the eighth power. The specific mechanics 00:22:19.019 --> 00:22:20.960 of how they stack these abbreviations were very 00:22:20.910 --> 00:22:23.109 slightly from mathematician to mathematician, 00:22:23.569 --> 00:22:26.569 but the core innovation is what matters. Glorioso 00:22:26.569 --> 00:22:28.369 was systematically stacking these letters to 00:22:28.369 --> 00:22:30.250 build a much larger number without writing a 00:22:30.250 --> 00:22:32.890 sentence. So instead of writing out the unknown 00:22:32.890 --> 00:22:36.250 quantity multiplied by its own value eight consecutive 00:22:36.250 --> 00:22:40.250 times, he just jotted down AQC. Exactly. It's 00:22:40.250 --> 00:22:42.589 all about data compression. It allowed him to 00:22:42.589 --> 00:22:45.109 write these incredibly complex multivariable 00:22:45.109 --> 00:22:48.609 equations on a single line of paper. It is literally 00:22:48.609 --> 00:22:50.680 the difference between trying to to download 00:22:50.680 --> 00:22:53.740 a movie on dial -up internet versus using fiber 00:22:53.740 --> 00:22:56.380 optic broadband. It certainly wasn't perfect. 00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:59.640 Obviously, our modern exponent notation is vastly 00:22:59.640 --> 00:23:03.680 superior, but it was a massive necessary step 00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:06.460 forward in the evolution of human thought. It's 00:23:06.460 --> 00:23:08.000 just amazing to think that somebody actually 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:10.180 had to invent the way we physically write math 00:23:10.180 --> 00:23:12.559 down. We just take it as a given, like the alphabet 00:23:12.559 --> 00:23:14.559 or the wheel. But a guy like Gloria also had 00:23:14.559 --> 00:23:16.980 to sit at his desk, look at a massive paragraph 00:23:16.980 --> 00:23:19.200 of text and say, this is way too slow, we need 00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:21.619 a better And by building that better tool, he 00:23:21.619 --> 00:23:24.240 fundamentally sped up the global rate of scientific 00:23:24.240 --> 00:23:26.400 discovery. Because if you can write your thoughts 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:28.839 faster and you can visually process the equation 00:23:28.839 --> 00:23:31.940 faster, you can think faster. He also used his 00:23:31.940 --> 00:23:35.200 math chops to tackle some of the classic impossible 00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:38.180 problems of antiquity, right? The outline specifically 00:23:38.180 --> 00:23:40.900 mentions squaring the circle. Ah, yes, squaring 00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:43.000 the circle. This was the absolute white whale 00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:45.779 of classical geometry. What is the actual challenge 00:23:45.779 --> 00:23:48.269 there for the uninitiated? The challenge, which 00:23:48.269 --> 00:23:49.890 goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, 00:23:50.390 --> 00:23:52.990 is to construct a square that has the exact same 00:23:52.990 --> 00:23:55.789 area as a given circle but you are only allowed 00:23:55.789 --> 00:23:58.170 to use a traditional compass and a straight edge 00:23:58.170 --> 00:24:01.529 to draw it. No measuring rulers, no protractors. 00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:05.059 Just arcs and straight lines. And spoiler alert 00:24:05.059 --> 00:24:08.180 for anyone trying this at home, it is literally 00:24:08.180 --> 00:24:10.720 impossible. It is mathematically impossible. 00:24:10.799 --> 00:24:13.259 We know that for an absolute fact now because 00:24:13.259 --> 00:24:15.819 the number pi is a transcendental number. You 00:24:15.819 --> 00:24:18.079 simply cannot construct it geometrically using 00:24:18.079 --> 00:24:21.220 only those two specific tools. But they did not 00:24:21.220 --> 00:24:24.440 know that in the 1620s. So brilliant people wasted 00:24:24.440 --> 00:24:27.700 years, sometimes their entire lives, obsessively 00:24:27.700 --> 00:24:29.670 trying to solve it. And there was a guy named 00:24:29.670 --> 00:24:32.750 Gian Battista De La Porta who very publicly claimed 00:24:32.750 --> 00:24:35.490 he had finally done it. Right. De La Porta was 00:24:35.490 --> 00:24:39.589 this very famous, very eccentric Neapolitan polymath. 00:24:40.109 --> 00:24:42.769 He was a bit of a magician, a scientist, a playwright, 00:24:42.890 --> 00:24:45.869 a real Renaissance man. And he published a work 00:24:45.869 --> 00:24:48.210 claiming he had successfully squared the circle. 00:24:48.789 --> 00:24:52.349 And Glorioso, true to form, stepped right in 00:24:52.349 --> 00:24:55.269 to be the ultimate academic buzzkill. The ultimate 00:24:55.269 --> 00:24:58.309 fact checker strikes again. Glorioso wrote a 00:24:58.309 --> 00:25:01.769 blistering refutation. He basically took Delaporte's 00:25:01.769 --> 00:25:05.109 supposedly perfect proof, tore it apart gear 00:25:05.109 --> 00:25:08.289 by gear, and showed exactly mathematically where 00:25:08.289 --> 00:25:11.069 the logic completely failed. He confuted him. 00:25:11.309 --> 00:25:13.630 He seems to really, really enjoy proving other 00:25:13.630 --> 00:25:15.829 people wrong. Like it seems to be his primary 00:25:15.829 --> 00:25:18.210 love language. I think enjoy is probably an understatement. 00:25:18.329 --> 00:25:20.490 I think he practically lived for it. Which brings 00:25:20.490 --> 00:25:22.690 us perfectly to the most dramatic and honestly 00:25:22.690 --> 00:25:24.910 the most entertaining part of Gloriosa's entire 00:25:24.910 --> 00:25:28.089 life. Yes. Section four of our sources, the beefs. 00:25:28.329 --> 00:25:30.289 The scientific blood sports. You know we think 00:25:30.289 --> 00:25:32.630 of scientists today having an argument and maybe 00:25:32.630 --> 00:25:34.589 they write a slightly passive aggressive peer 00:25:34.589 --> 00:25:37.210 review or they subtweet each other. But in the 00:25:37.210 --> 00:25:39.210 17th century they absolutely went for the throat. 00:25:39.400 --> 00:25:42.160 It was a full -contact combat sport. Your public 00:25:42.160 --> 00:25:45.059 reputation was literally everything. If someone 00:25:45.059 --> 00:25:47.559 attacked your theory in print, they weren't just 00:25:47.559 --> 00:25:49.460 questioning your math. They were attacking your 00:25:49.460 --> 00:25:51.900 personal honor, your livelihood, and your basic 00:25:51.900 --> 00:25:53.960 intelligence. You couldn't just take the high 00:25:53.960 --> 00:25:55.779 road and let it slide. You had to completely 00:25:55.779 --> 00:25:57.960 destroy them in the public square. And Glorioso 00:25:57.960 --> 00:26:00.920 found his ultimate arch nemesis in a man named 00:26:00.920 --> 00:26:05.099 Scioni Chiaramonti. Chiaramonti. He is either 00:26:05.099 --> 00:26:07.859 the great villain of this story or the tragic 00:26:07.859 --> 00:26:10.640 hero, depending entirely on how much sympathy 00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:13.619 you have for Aristotle. Chiaramonti was a very 00:26:13.619 --> 00:26:16.059 prominent philosopher from Sassina, and he was 00:26:16.059 --> 00:26:19.000 the ultimate diehard defender of the old ways. 00:26:19.180 --> 00:26:21.380 He was Team Aristotle all the way to the bitter 00:26:21.380 --> 00:26:24.420 end. 100%. He fundamentally believed the Earth 00:26:24.420 --> 00:26:26.240 was the center of everything, that the heavens 00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:29.650 were in and that comets were just swamp gas. 00:26:30.109 --> 00:26:33.049 He represented every single thing that Glorioso 00:26:33.049 --> 00:26:35.329 was trying to mathematically disprove. So how 00:26:35.329 --> 00:26:38.609 does this epic feud actually kick off? It started 00:26:38.609 --> 00:26:41.930 with a book. Cura Monte published a major work 00:26:41.930 --> 00:26:45.529 called De Tribus Novus Stellis, which translates 00:26:45.529 --> 00:26:49.599 to On the Three New Stars. He was desperately 00:26:49.599 --> 00:26:52.599 trying to use complex philosophical arguments 00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:56.000 to explain away the recent supernovae and comets 00:26:56.000 --> 00:26:58.039 in a way that would somehow save Aristotle's 00:26:58.039 --> 00:27:00.299 physics. And Glorioso gets his hands on a copy. 00:27:00.539 --> 00:27:02.859 He reads it and he absolutely hates it. He wrote 00:27:02.859 --> 00:27:05.140 a formal critique of the book that the historical 00:27:05.140 --> 00:27:08.259 sources describe as particularly harsh. He didn't 00:27:08.259 --> 00:27:10.420 just point out that Cura Monte's math was a little 00:27:10.420 --> 00:27:13.519 off. He heavily implied that the man was fundamentally 00:27:13.519 --> 00:27:15.880 incompetent. Which... Obviously, Chiaramonte 00:27:15.880 --> 00:27:17.819 is not going to take lying down. Of course not. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:20.220 So Chiaramonte stews on it, does his own writing, 00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:24.279 and in 1636, he fires back. He publishes a new 00:27:24.279 --> 00:27:27.099 book specifically targeting Glorioso titled, 00:27:27.579 --> 00:27:30.630 Examines Sensory Gloriosi. The examination of 00:27:30.630 --> 00:27:32.970 Glorioso's censorship. It sounds a bit dry and 00:27:32.970 --> 00:27:35.130 bureaucratic to us, but in the context of the 00:27:35.130 --> 00:27:37.730 time, it was a brutal public takedown. He tried 00:27:37.730 --> 00:27:40.589 to systematically dismantle Glorioso's mathematical 00:27:40.589 --> 00:27:43.529 credentials. OK, so now it is 1637, round three 00:27:43.529 --> 00:27:45.710 of the heavyweight bout. What does Glorioso do? 00:27:46.049 --> 00:27:48.589 He massively escalates. He publishes his own 00:27:48.589 --> 00:27:52.569 response volume and he titles it Castigatio Examinus. 00:27:52.869 --> 00:27:55.710 Castigatio? Yes. It translates to the castigation. 00:27:56.299 --> 00:27:58.960 Or, more directly, the punishment. The punishment 00:27:58.960 --> 00:28:02.019 of the examination? That is amazing! He is literally 00:28:02.019 --> 00:28:05.380 publicly disciplining Ciaramonti's book. He is 00:28:05.380 --> 00:28:08.180 treating this respected philosopher like a naughty 00:28:08.180 --> 00:28:11.000 little schoolboy who completely failed his arithmetic 00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:13.180 test. That is just incredibly condescending. 00:28:13.299 --> 00:28:15.160 I love the pettiness of it. Oh, it gets so much 00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:17.730 better. Chiaramonte, seeing that he is now being 00:28:17.730 --> 00:28:20.349 publicly punished, spends another year writing 00:28:20.349 --> 00:28:23.849 yet another book. He publishes it in 1638, and 00:28:23.849 --> 00:28:27.029 he titles it Castigazio Ioannis Camilli Gloriosi. 00:28:27.210 --> 00:28:29.470 The punishment of Giovanni Camillo Glorioso. 00:28:29.910 --> 00:28:31.549 He literally just takes the title and throws 00:28:31.549 --> 00:28:34.089 it right back in his face. It is the extremely 00:28:34.089 --> 00:28:37.509 highbrow 17th century equivalent of saying, no, 00:28:37.609 --> 00:28:40.809 you are. But you have to imagine the sheer effort 00:28:40.809 --> 00:28:42.970 involved here. These are not quick little tweets. 00:28:43.269 --> 00:28:46.250 These are massive full -length Latin treatises. 00:28:46.569 --> 00:28:49.529 They are filled with incredibly complex geometric 00:28:49.529 --> 00:28:52.529 diagrams and dense logical arguments. They are 00:28:52.529 --> 00:28:55.289 printed on very expensive paper, painstakingly 00:28:55.289 --> 00:28:57.930 bound, and distributed via carriage all across 00:28:57.930 --> 00:29:00.910 Italy. These two men are spending years of their 00:29:00.910 --> 00:29:03.490 finite lives just to comprehensively insult each 00:29:03.490 --> 00:29:05.289 other. It's pure obsession at this point. It 00:29:05.289 --> 00:29:08.190 absolutely is. Glorioso tries to finally end 00:29:08.190 --> 00:29:11.490 it and get the last word in 1641. He publishes 00:29:11.490 --> 00:29:15.549 a book simply titled, You get the sense he's 00:29:15.549 --> 00:29:17.569 just tired of it. He just wants to lay out the 00:29:17.569 --> 00:29:19.710 final facts and settle the score permanently. 00:29:19.829 --> 00:29:21.609 And then what happens? And then shortly after 00:29:21.609 --> 00:29:24.730 that, Glorioso dies. It's 1643. So ding, ding, 00:29:24.829 --> 00:29:28.089 ding. The fight is over. Glorioso rests in peace. 00:29:28.349 --> 00:29:31.089 The debate is closed. You would think that. Any 00:29:31.089 --> 00:29:33.670 normal person would think that. But Scipiano 00:29:33.670 --> 00:29:37.009 Chiaramanti was a man of truly spectacular historical 00:29:37.009 --> 00:29:40.349 pettiness. He literally waited until Glorioso 00:29:40.349 --> 00:29:45.259 was safely dead and buried. And then, in 1644, 00:29:45.859 --> 00:29:49.119 a full year after Glorioso's funeral, Chiaramante 00:29:49.119 --> 00:29:52.420 published Opus Sabionis Claramontus Citanatus 00:29:52.420 --> 00:29:54.839 De Universum. Which was what, exactly? It was 00:29:54.839 --> 00:29:59.160 a massive 500 -page summary of his entire cosmological 00:29:59.160 --> 00:30:01.779 philosophy. And right in the middle of it, he 00:30:01.779 --> 00:30:04.440 formally declared total absolute victory over 00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:07.200 Glorioso. He dropped a 500 -page brick of a book 00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:10.279 on a ghost. He literally declared himself the 00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:12.160 undisputed winner of the debate solely because 00:30:12.160 --> 00:30:13.859 his opponent was no longer breathing and therefore 00:30:13.859 --> 00:30:15.940 couldn't publish a rebuttal. It has to be one 00:30:15.940 --> 00:30:17.980 of the ultimate cheap shots in the entire history 00:30:17.980 --> 00:30:19.980 of science. But you know, it also really speaks 00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:22.079 to the sheer desperation of the Aristotelians, 00:30:22.220 --> 00:30:24.720 doesn't it? It absolutely does. Kirimanti wasn't 00:30:24.720 --> 00:30:27.339 just fighting one Neapolitan mathematician. He 00:30:27.339 --> 00:30:29.799 was fighting the entire tide of human history. 00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:33.619 I think he knew deep down in his bones that the 00:30:33.619 --> 00:30:36.319 observational data and the math were irrevocably 00:30:36.319 --> 00:30:39.019 turning against Aristotle. He could feel the 00:30:39.019 --> 00:30:41.559 walls of his universe closing in on him. So he 00:30:41.559 --> 00:30:44.019 just shouted louder. He wrote longer, heavier 00:30:44.019 --> 00:30:46.839 books. He tried to physically drown out the truth 00:30:46.839 --> 00:30:49.839 with sheer volume. It's almost tragic in a way. 00:30:49.980 --> 00:30:52.859 He spent his entire life fiercely defending a 00:30:52.859 --> 00:30:55.299 worldview that was already dead. Well, Glorioso 00:30:55.299 --> 00:30:58.400 spent his life building the new worldview, even 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:00.240 if he was kind of a jerk about how he did it. 00:31:00.299 --> 00:31:02.059 And he wasn't just a jerk to Chiaramati, right? 00:31:02.160 --> 00:31:04.660 He had plenty of other feuds going on simultaneously. 00:31:04.759 --> 00:31:08.059 Oh, plenty. He fought bitterly with another scholar 00:31:08.059 --> 00:31:10.579 named Fortunio Licchetti. And weirdly enough, 00:31:10.660 --> 00:31:13.259 he even picked a massive fight with a Swiss mathematician 00:31:13.259 --> 00:31:16.640 named Barthélemy Souvet. Who was Suve? Suve was 00:31:16.640 --> 00:31:18.880 the guy they hired to replace Glorioso at Padua 00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:21.259 when Glorioso finally retired. Wait, hold on. 00:31:21.460 --> 00:31:23.859 So Glorioso takes the immense pressure of getting 00:31:23.859 --> 00:31:26.880 the job after Galileo. He holds the chair successfully 00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:29.579 for years. He finally retires. And then he immediately 00:31:29.579 --> 00:31:31.900 starts heckling the new guy who took his place. 00:31:32.019 --> 00:31:35.240 Yep. In 1630, Glorioso actually published a tract 00:31:35.240 --> 00:31:38.519 called Responsio ad Venditius Bartholome Sovere. 00:31:38.960 --> 00:31:41.759 It implies a very serious, very public conflict 00:31:41.759 --> 00:31:44.180 between them. It seems Glorioso was incredibly 00:31:44.180 --> 00:31:46.859 territory. He treated that chair of mathematics 00:31:46.859 --> 00:31:49.079 at Padua like it was his own personal throne. 00:31:49.420 --> 00:31:51.640 He simply couldn't stand seeing someone else 00:31:51.640 --> 00:31:54.339 sit in it even after he had voluntarily left. 00:31:54.579 --> 00:31:57.359 This just paints a picture of such a deeply complicated 00:31:57.359 --> 00:32:00.700 man brilliant, rigorously scientific, incredibly 00:32:00.700 --> 00:32:04.660 forward thinking, but also prickly, highly defensive 00:32:04.660 --> 00:32:07.319 and maybe just a little bit deeply insecure about 00:32:07.319 --> 00:32:10.039 his legacy. I think that's a very fair psychological 00:32:10.039 --> 00:32:11.980 assessment. But you know, that insecurity or 00:32:11.980 --> 00:32:13.759 maybe we should just call it an absolute obsession 00:32:13.759 --> 00:32:16.700 with correctness. That specific trait led to 00:32:16.700 --> 00:32:18.920 some of his most interesting historical moments, 00:32:19.180 --> 00:32:21.740 which the outline refers to as his hot takes. 00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:24.119 And this directly involves his famous predecessor, 00:32:24.359 --> 00:32:27.460 Galileo. Right. Section five, the hot takes. 00:32:27.609 --> 00:32:30.809 Because you would naturally think, having successfully 00:32:30.809 --> 00:32:33.609 replaced Galileo and survived, Glorioso would 00:32:33.609 --> 00:32:36.890 be his biggest hype man. Yes, I am proudly following 00:32:36.890 --> 00:32:39.549 in the massive footsteps of the great, untouchable 00:32:39.549 --> 00:32:43.509 genius. But he wasn't. At all. Glorioso absolutely 00:32:43.509 --> 00:32:46.609 refused to be a sycophant. In fact, he actively 00:32:46.609 --> 00:32:49.250 went out of his way to debunk some of the foundational 00:32:49.250 --> 00:32:51.710 myths surrounding Galileo's legacy. There is 00:32:51.710 --> 00:32:54.410 a very specific letter mentioned in the sources 00:32:54.410 --> 00:32:57.990 dated May 29th, 1610. Right. This is quite early 00:32:57.990 --> 00:33:00.130 on, a few years before he even took the Padua 00:33:00.130 --> 00:33:02.750 job. He is writing a private letter to his good 00:33:02.750 --> 00:33:04.970 friend, Johann Schreck. And in this letter, he 00:33:04.970 --> 00:33:08.269 basically decides to completely fact check Galileo's 00:33:08.269 --> 00:33:10.750 entire resume. What specifically does he go after? 00:33:10.859 --> 00:33:13.140 Two major things. First, he goes after the sector. 00:33:13.500 --> 00:33:15.519 Explain what the sector is for us. The sector 00:33:15.519 --> 00:33:18.640 was a really brilliant physical calculation instrument. 00:33:18.980 --> 00:33:21.900 Visually, it looked kind of like a compass. Two 00:33:21.900 --> 00:33:24.279 flat metal rulers joined together by a hinge. 00:33:24.619 --> 00:33:26.720 But it had all these very specific proportional 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:28.880 scales and markings engraved along the legs. 00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:31.619 It was essentially the pocket calculator of the 00:33:31.619 --> 00:33:34.190 Renaissance. What did they use it for? Everything. 00:33:34.609 --> 00:33:37.890 You could use it to calculate complex compound 00:33:37.890 --> 00:33:40.549 interest for merchants. You could use it to determine 00:33:40.549 --> 00:33:42.950 the exact weight and trajectory of artillery 00:33:42.950 --> 00:33:45.250 cannonballs for the military. You could solve 00:33:45.250 --> 00:33:48.109 advanced geometric surveying problems. It was 00:33:48.109 --> 00:33:51.009 an incredibly useful, very highly sought after 00:33:51.009 --> 00:33:53.490 tool. And Galileo was famous for it. Galileo 00:33:53.490 --> 00:33:55.750 manufactured them in his own personal workshop. 00:33:55.980 --> 00:33:58.559 He sold them to wealthy patrons for a premium. 00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:02.099 He even wrote and published the definitive instruction 00:34:02.099 --> 00:34:04.880 manual on how to use them. He made a lot of money 00:34:04.880 --> 00:34:07.099 and built a lot of his early reputation off the 00:34:07.099 --> 00:34:09.739 sector. But in this letter, Glorioso writes, 00:34:10.159 --> 00:34:12.360 Galileo did not actually invent this instrument. 00:34:12.860 --> 00:34:15.059 Michel Coyne did. Was Glorioso actually right 00:34:15.059 --> 00:34:17.789 about that? He was mostly right, yeah. The instrument 00:34:17.789 --> 00:34:21.710 has a very murky, iterative history. Modern historians 00:34:21.710 --> 00:34:24.449 usually credit guys like Fabrizio Mordente or 00:34:24.449 --> 00:34:27.610 Michel Coynier with inventing the early, functional 00:34:27.610 --> 00:34:30.789 versions of the proportional compass. Galileo 00:34:30.789 --> 00:34:33.250 took their designs, he undeniably improved the 00:34:33.250 --> 00:34:35.869 engravings, and he brilliantly popularized it, 00:34:35.889 --> 00:34:38.550 but he did not invent the core concept from scratch. 00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:41.659 Glorioso is quietly pointing out to his friend 00:34:41.659 --> 00:34:44.119 that Galileo was taking way too much credit for 00:34:44.119 --> 00:34:46.059 other people's engineering. And then in that 00:34:46.059 --> 00:34:48.780 same letter, he goes for the absolute big one, 00:34:49.260 --> 00:34:51.840 the telescope. The holy grail of the scientific 00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:54.539 revolution, the single device that completely 00:34:54.539 --> 00:34:57.559 changed humanity's place in the universe. Glorioso 00:34:57.559 --> 00:35:00.440 flatly tells Shrek in the letter, Galileo did 00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:03.519 not invent the telescope. That is just a stunningly 00:35:03.519 --> 00:35:06.039 bold statement to make about the man who is literally 00:35:06.039 --> 00:35:08.380 historically synonymous with the telescope. It's 00:35:08.380 --> 00:35:10.840 bold, but the crazy thing is it's absolutely 00:35:10.840 --> 00:35:13.460 true. It is true. We know for an absolute fact 00:35:13.460 --> 00:35:16.039 now that Dutch spectacle makers, primarily a 00:35:16.039 --> 00:35:18.780 guy named Hans Lippershey, were openly applying 00:35:18.780 --> 00:35:21.599 for patents on these magnifying spy glasses in 00:35:21.599 --> 00:35:25.000 1608. The technology was already floating around 00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:27.309 Europe. Galileo just heard a rumor about the 00:35:27.309 --> 00:35:29.809 Dutch invention, he quickly figured out the underlying 00:35:29.809 --> 00:35:32.590 optics of how lenses bend light, and he managed 00:35:32.590 --> 00:35:35.110 to grind much better glass to build a vastly 00:35:35.110 --> 00:35:38.110 superior version. But he absolutely did not invent 00:35:38.110 --> 00:35:40.150 the concept of the telescope, he just refined 00:35:40.150 --> 00:35:42.789 the engineering to a scientific grade. So why 00:35:42.789 --> 00:35:45.409 was Glorioso so incredibly pressed about this 00:35:45.409 --> 00:35:48.469 specific issue? Why act like the ultimate reply 00:35:48.469 --> 00:35:51.420 guy on Galileo's historical timeline? I really 00:35:51.420 --> 00:35:53.019 don't think it was just professional jealousy, 00:35:53.139 --> 00:35:55.039 though maybe there was a tiny bit of that. I 00:35:55.039 --> 00:35:57.260 think it loops all the way back to his strict 00:35:57.260 --> 00:36:01.119 Jesuit training. Glorioso hated imprecision in 00:36:01.119 --> 00:36:04.159 all its forms. And he especially hated the great 00:36:04.159 --> 00:36:08.099 man narrative, this romantic idea that one solitary, 00:36:08.559 --> 00:36:11.159 untouchable genius just invents everything out 00:36:11.159 --> 00:36:13.840 of thin air while everyone else is asleep. He 00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:17.019 saw science for what it actually is, a very slow, 00:36:17.500 --> 00:36:20.900 highly collaborative, cumulative process. He 00:36:20.900 --> 00:36:23.280 wanted the obscure Belgian scholars and the working 00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:25.920 class Dutch opticians to actually get their rightful 00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:28.460 due in the historical record. He was aggressively 00:36:28.460 --> 00:36:31.840 prioritizing factual historical accuracy over 00:36:31.840 --> 00:36:33.820 hero worship. Exactly. He was effectively saying, 00:36:33.860 --> 00:36:36.239 look, Galileo is great. The astronomical observations 00:36:36.239 --> 00:36:38.579 he made with the tube are amazing and world changing. 00:36:38.860 --> 00:36:40.760 But let's not lie to ourselves about where the 00:36:40.760 --> 00:36:43.099 physical tool actually came from. It is a surprisingly 00:36:43.099 --> 00:36:45.179 modern perspective. Yeah. It's almost like he 00:36:45.179 --> 00:36:48.099 is demanding to see Galileo's citations. He was 00:36:48.099 --> 00:36:51.539 the original uncompromising And as we all know, 00:36:51.719 --> 00:36:53.800 peer reviewers are rarely the most popular people 00:36:53.800 --> 00:36:55.739 in the room, but they are absolutely necessary 00:36:55.739 --> 00:36:58.239 for the integrity of the system. So we have this 00:36:58.239 --> 00:37:01.000 portrait of a man who just spent his entire life 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:03.980 aggressively fighting battles. Battles over the 00:37:03.980 --> 00:37:06.320 distance of comets. Battles over how to write 00:37:06.320 --> 00:37:09.929 algebra notation. brutal pamphlet wars with stubborn 00:37:09.929 --> 00:37:12.849 Aristotelians battles over exactly who gets the 00:37:12.849 --> 00:37:15.289 patent for the telescope. It just sounds physically 00:37:15.289 --> 00:37:17.730 and emotionally exhausting. It must have been 00:37:17.730 --> 00:37:19.389 completely draining. But the interesting thing 00:37:19.389 --> 00:37:21.809 is, as he finally reaches the twilight of his 00:37:21.809 --> 00:37:25.570 life, the tone of his story really shifts. The 00:37:25.570 --> 00:37:27.949 fighting actually stops. Let's talk about that 00:37:27.949 --> 00:37:30.639 legacy, the final years of his life. Glorioso 00:37:30.639 --> 00:37:33.320 eventually leaves Padua for good and returns 00:37:33.320 --> 00:37:36.579 down south to Naples. He goes back home. He is 00:37:36.579 --> 00:37:39.539 in his late 60s. By this point, he is widely 00:37:39.539 --> 00:37:42.519 considered a deeply respected, albeit incredibly 00:37:42.519 --> 00:37:45.079 combative elder statesman of the Italian scientific 00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:47.280 community. And he ends up meeting someone important 00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:50.380 there. He meets a man named Francesco Fontana. 00:37:50.440 --> 00:37:52.280 Now, Fontana wasn't a university professor. He 00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:54.679 was actually a Neapolitan lawyer. But he was 00:37:54.679 --> 00:37:56.760 completely obsessed with astronomy in his spare 00:37:56.760 --> 00:37:59.920 time. And he happened to be a very, very talented 00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:02.960 lens grinder and observer. Now, based on literally 00:38:02.960 --> 00:38:04.940 everything we've learned about Glorioso today, 00:38:05.340 --> 00:38:07.699 I would absolutely expect him to just tear this 00:38:07.699 --> 00:38:10.599 amateur lawyer apart. Like, your lenses have 00:38:10.599 --> 00:38:12.679 aberrations, your math is sloppy, get out of 00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:14.860 my sight. Right, that is exactly what his track 00:38:14.860 --> 00:38:17.219 record would suggest. But he didn't do that at 00:38:17.219 --> 00:38:20.519 all. Glorioso actually befriended Fontana. He 00:38:20.699 --> 00:38:24.079 actively became his mentor. He constantly encouraged 00:38:24.079 --> 00:38:27.239 Fontana to pursue his telescopic research. And 00:38:27.239 --> 00:38:30.519 most importantly, he gave Fontana the absolute 00:38:30.519 --> 00:38:32.880 keys to the intellectual kingdom. He gave him 00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:34.980 full access to his private library. We really 00:38:34.980 --> 00:38:37.239 have to stress what that means in context. In 00:38:37.239 --> 00:38:40.780 1640, a private scientific library was pure, 00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:43.679 unadulterated power. Printed books were rare, 00:38:43.900 --> 00:38:45.840 they were astronomically expensive, and they 00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:48.519 were hard to transport. Scientific data was not 00:38:48.519 --> 00:38:50.139 something you could just look up online. It was 00:38:50.139 --> 00:38:52.400 physically locked inside these heavy, letter 00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:54.699 -bound volumes, and Gloria's personal library 00:38:54.699 --> 00:38:57.019 contained the accumulated knowledge of his entire, 00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:00.059 incredibly dense career. His private letters, 00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:03.000 his annotated treatises, rare observational manuscripts 00:39:03.000 --> 00:39:05.179 from guys like Tico Brahe and Johannes Kepler. 00:39:05.449 --> 00:39:08.409 Giving a younger amateur astronomer free access 00:39:08.409 --> 00:39:11.309 to that collection, that is a staggeringly huge 00:39:11.309 --> 00:39:14.630 deal. It is the ultimate act of scientific generosity. 00:39:15.230 --> 00:39:18.070 It is glorioso implicitly saying, I am finally 00:39:18.070 --> 00:39:20.329 done fighting. I have done all the math I can 00:39:20.329 --> 00:39:23.289 do. I want you to take all of this hard won knowledge 00:39:23.289 --> 00:39:25.489 and go further into the dark than I ever did. 00:39:25.889 --> 00:39:28.230 It really shows that underneath that incredibly 00:39:29.329 --> 00:39:32.570 prickly, defensive exterior, he actually cared 00:39:32.570 --> 00:39:34.530 about the work itself more than his own ego. 00:39:35.070 --> 00:39:37.489 He wanted the methodology of science to survive 00:39:37.489 --> 00:39:40.690 him. He truly did. Glorioso eventually died in 00:39:40.690 --> 00:39:44.389 Naples on January 8th, 1643. He was around 70 00:39:44.389 --> 00:39:47.130 or 71 years old. And what actually happened to 00:39:47.130 --> 00:39:49.349 that incredible library after he was gone? It 00:39:49.349 --> 00:39:51.489 was sold off to the Spanish viceroy of Naples, 00:39:51.650 --> 00:39:54.929 a man named Romero Núñez de Guzmán, which honestly 00:39:54.929 --> 00:39:57.670 was probably the best case scenario because having 00:39:57.670 --> 00:40:00.329 a vastly wealthy and powerful patron acquire 00:40:00.329 --> 00:40:02.269 it meant the physical books were actually preserved 00:40:02.269 --> 00:40:04.469 and protected, at least for a while, rather than 00:40:04.469 --> 00:40:07.590 just being scattered or burned. So we have reached 00:40:07.590 --> 00:40:11.039 the end of the life of Giovanni Camillo Glorioso. 00:40:12.159 --> 00:40:14.519 When you zoom all the way out past the petty 00:40:14.519 --> 00:40:17.900 pamphlet wars, past the weird acuac algebra, 00:40:18.500 --> 00:40:21.500 past the comets, what do you actually see? What 00:40:21.500 --> 00:40:24.219 does a guy like this represent in the grand sweep 00:40:24.219 --> 00:40:26.800 of history? I see him as the dark matter of the 00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:28.800 scientific revolution. I really like that image. 00:40:29.070 --> 00:40:31.010 break that down for us. When we look back at 00:40:31.010 --> 00:40:33.150 the history of science, we naturally tend to 00:40:33.150 --> 00:40:36.070 only look at the brightest stars, Galileo, Isaac 00:40:36.070 --> 00:40:38.489 Newton, Kepler. They shine incredibly bright 00:40:38.489 --> 00:40:40.909 and they blind us to everything else. But a galaxy 00:40:40.909 --> 00:40:43.130 is actually held together by the massive amounts 00:40:43.130 --> 00:40:44.849 of dark matter that we don't always talk about 00:40:44.849 --> 00:40:48.070 and rarely even see. Glorioso is that mass. He 00:40:48.070 --> 00:40:50.170 is the quintessential working scientist. He is 00:40:50.170 --> 00:40:52.690 the guy quietly doing the unglamorous, tedious 00:40:52.690 --> 00:40:55.090 verification of the data. He's the one fighting 00:40:55.090 --> 00:40:57.730 the brutal, exhausting rearguard action against 00:40:57.730 --> 00:41:00.869 the enfrenched so that the new ideas can actually 00:41:00.869 --> 00:41:03.130 take root and survive. He is the guy in the trenches 00:41:03.130 --> 00:41:05.710 doing the dirty work. He absolutely is. He's 00:41:05.710 --> 00:41:08.889 a perfectly transitional figure. He has one foot 00:41:08.889 --> 00:41:11.670 stuck firmly in the medieval world, fighting 00:41:11.670 --> 00:41:14.690 these ridiculously petty Latin pamphlet wars 00:41:14.690 --> 00:41:17.880 over honor. And he has his other foot. stepping 00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:21.239 boldly into the modern world using advanced algebraic 00:41:21.239 --> 00:41:23.760 compression and proving through geometry that 00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:27.239 the heavens are actual, physical, changing places. 00:41:27.440 --> 00:41:29.739 He essentially proves that the scientific revolution 00:41:29.739 --> 00:41:32.320 wasn't just magic. It wasn't just apples falling 00:41:32.320 --> 00:41:34.820 on heads. It was work. It was a daily frustrating 00:41:34.820 --> 00:41:37.360 grind. And looking at his life leaves us with 00:41:37.360 --> 00:41:40.440 one final, slightly haunting thought to chew 00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:43.280 on. The Kirimanti feud. Yes. Think about the 00:41:43.280 --> 00:41:45.829 timeline there. Glorioso spent decades of his 00:41:45.829 --> 00:41:48.369 life aggressively arguing for the objective truth. 00:41:48.690 --> 00:41:50.849 He had the math, he had the observational data, 00:41:50.989 --> 00:41:52.929 he had the reality of the universe on his side. 00:41:53.429 --> 00:41:55.409 But simply because he happened to die one year 00:41:55.409 --> 00:41:57.989 too early, his bitterest rival got to write the 00:41:57.989 --> 00:42:00.329 final word. Chiaramanti published that massive 00:42:00.329 --> 00:42:02.690 book claiming total victory, and there was absolutely 00:42:02.690 --> 00:42:04.969 no one left with the specific authority to answer 00:42:04.969 --> 00:42:08.110 him. It raises a really massive, slightly uncomfortable 00:42:08.110 --> 00:42:11.150 question for all of us. It does. In the grand 00:42:11.150 --> 00:42:13.809 scheme of human progress, how much of what we 00:42:13.809 --> 00:42:16.230 accept as historical truth is actually established 00:42:16.230 --> 00:42:18.730 by the weight of the evidence? And how much is 00:42:18.730 --> 00:42:21.349 established simply by the sheer biological luck 00:42:21.349 --> 00:42:23.989 of outliving your opponents? If Glorioso had 00:42:23.989 --> 00:42:26.590 just lived 10 more years, he absolutely would 00:42:26.590 --> 00:42:28.230 have written the responsio to the responsio. 00:42:28.110 --> 00:42:31.070 He would have mathematically crushed Chiaramante 00:42:31.070 --> 00:42:33.369 once and for all in the public record. But you 00:42:33.369 --> 00:42:35.789 know, in the very end, the math still won out. 00:42:36.130 --> 00:42:38.929 The comets were real. Glorioso was fundamentally 00:42:38.929 --> 00:42:41.190 right, even if he didn't personally get to write 00:42:41.190 --> 00:42:43.449 the final chapter of his own story. That is the 00:42:43.449 --> 00:42:46.130 ultimate comfort of the scientific method. The 00:42:46.130 --> 00:42:49.090 individual scientist dies, the massive egos eventually 00:42:49.090 --> 00:42:51.949 fade away into dust, but the equation itself 00:42:51.949 --> 00:42:54.969 remains completely true. On a surprisingly profound 00:42:54.969 --> 00:42:57.679 note, I think we will wrap up this deep dive 00:42:57.679 --> 00:43:00.179 into the life of the man who replaced Galileo, 00:43:00.679 --> 00:43:02.980 a man who reminds all of us to always check our 00:43:02.980 --> 00:43:06.179 sources, to rigidly respect the data, and maybe 00:43:06.179 --> 00:43:08.619 just maybe to keep our book titles under 10 words. 00:43:09.079 --> 00:43:11.039 Please, for the sake of the historians and the 00:43:11.039 --> 00:43:13.159 librarians, keep it brief. Thanks for joining 00:43:13.159 --> 00:43:15.280 us for this deep dive, everyone. We will see 00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:16.940 you on the next one. Goodbye.